Haunted happenings at Crook Hall

Crook Hall and Gardens

That time of year is here again. The nights are drawing in and at Crook Hall in Durham City, my team and I are preparing for one of our most popular events – Halloween at Crook Hall.

Crook Hall is notorious for its paranormal activity. Ghostly sightings and strange experiences have been well documented for hundreds of years. One of the earliest stories was when a banquet had been set up in the Medieval Hall and when the Lord and Lady of the Manor led their guests in, the entire Hall had reputedly been ransacked by a poltergeist, as no one else had been allowed in to the Hall.

In the 19th century when there was a coalmine up near the railway line, the young miners relied on their mothers to escort them past ghostly Crook Hall – even tough miners can get spooked! And I’m not surprised, as the previous owner told me that she had actually seen the White Lady who haunts the older parts of the Hall.

Many visitors have also had strange experiences at Crook Hall – including one who saw children playing on the gallery an hour after the last child had left the premises. Another visitor rang from the coach he was travelling home on to report that he had seen an old man in bedclothes asleep in a chair before he left. Other people on his coach had also seen the man. I knew it wasn’t my husband Keith, who sometimes falls asleep in a chair but never wears a nightcap and gown!

Halloween at Crook Hall

This Halloween is expected to be just as spooky as previous ones, as the Grade 1 listed Hall and Gardens are taken over by the Witches of Crook Hall for the Halloween weekend.  The Hall has been given a creepy makeover, making it a fitting place for ghosts, ghouls and witches to congregate for a weekend of all things scary.

Maggie Bell – Crook Hall
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24 hour street life: your guide to doing it all at this year’s Streets of… Durham Summer Festival

Streets of… is now in its fifth year and this year is our strongest line up yet. As ever we’ve  got the very best of international street theatre and live music, but we’ve also put together a package of exclusive ticketed events in some of Durham’s best loved venues. And the biggest news of all? We’re squeezing the whole festival in to just over 24 hours!

We’ll tell you everything you need to know for packing a whole festival in to one day!

Friday 26th – 8.15pm to 11pm
On Friday night we kick the festival off with the Durham debut of Sing-a-Long-a Rocky Horror Picture show! The cult classic hits the big, big screen at the Gala theatre’s 500 seater auditorium. A special performance outside the theatre in Millennium Place by The 5 Ring Circus from 8.15pm will get you in the mood before you head through to the theatre to collect your goody bag of props, and be introduced to the freaky but fabulous Dr Frankenfurter, a Transvestite from Transylvania.

Friday 26th – 11pm to 2am
After dancing the time warp in the aisles of the Gala you can head over to Streets of…’s first ever fringe event, a very special Jam Jah at Alington House. Jam Jah is Durham’s premier club night with live music, reggae and dub DJs, plus fantastic food and drink all served up in the setting of Alington House a historic community centre near Durham Cathedral. For the Jam Jah Streets of… special you can see one of the North Easts best loved buskers, one man bass machine ‘Ojay’, as well as special guests from the rest of the festival.

Saturday 27th – 2am to 10am
Get some sleep! There’s plenty more coming…

Saturday 27th – 10.30am to 6pm

Performers take to the streets

HIT THE STREETS – The Great Dave kicks off the street performance at the Carillion Stage in Durham Market Place with his amazing improvised comedy and high skill performances! Throughout the rest of the day you’ll be able to see African acrobats, german gymnasts, a performing painter and wonderful walkabout acts.

At the same time at the Walkergate Stage in Millennium Place you’ll be able to see some fantastic folk acts. Marit Falt and Rona Wilkie a duo based in Newcastle get us started at 12 midday followed by Samling, Peter Tickell and the Poozies. To bring the house down we then welcome Canadian trio Po’Girl and legends of the festival scene Transglobal Underground who are both making their Durham debut. 

Saturday 27th – 6pm to 10pm

After all that activity you’ll probably be ready for a rest (we certainly will!) so head over to one of Durham finest venues, Crook Hall, for a picnic and some live music at our picnic in the park style event: Folk In the Garden. Spend an evening  in the tranquil surroundings of a 13^th century, grade 1 listed medieval hall and let the Bottle Bank Band take you on a wonderful musical journey with the help of special guests Andy May and Benny Graham.

Nick Malyan – Streets of… Festival Team
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Follow in fashion’s footsteps at The Bowes Museum

Monday 6th June: manic, manic, manic

It’s installation week here at The Bowes Museum and with only 4 days before Vivienne Westwood Shoes: An Exhibition 1973-2011 opens, there don’t seem to be enough hours in the day! The Fashion & Textile Gallery is buzzing – designers run around, men in hardhats build display cases, and three 1920’s Haute Couture dresses are relocated to make room for the 130 Vivienne Westwood shoes, which (we hope) are now on their way to us. After so many weeks of preparation, I can’t wait to finally see these gorgeous shoes up close (I am a girl after all!) and with so much still to do before Friday’s launch, they better hurry up and get here soon.

Tuesday 7th June: guess what… they’re here!

Unpacking the Vivienne Westwood shoes collection

This morning over 100 gorgeous Vivienne Westwood shoes arrived at The Bowes Museum, fresh from their exhibition in Beirut. We couldn’t be more excited to get them unpacked and see the fantastic collection that would soon be filling one side of the Fashion & Textile Gallery. As we get to work unpacking boxes and unwrapping shoes, Alex Krenn from Vivienne Westwood is making his way north to begin installing the exhibition. It’s now 5.00pm, almost all of the shoes are in place and the exhibition is really beginning to take shape. From all those visitors lucky enough to get a sneaky peaky at the work in progress, there was consensus… it looks amazing. I have to agree – and it’s not even finished yet!

Wednesday 8th June: calm before the storm?

Having anticipated craziness today, it’s surprisingly calm here at The Bowes Museum! There are now more than 100 Vivienne Westwood shoes

The finishing touches

on display in the Gallery. Alex is making his final artistic adjustments – moving shoes this way and that, securing them with double-sided tape, and adding hand-written labels. The lighting designers are busy up their ladders, repositioning spotlights to show off these little sculptures to best effect, meanwhile, I’m being snap happy! In the absence of our museum photographer it’s fallen to me to document, for posterity (and this blog), the installation of what is rapidly turning out to be a truly stunning exhibition. I’ve been working on this project for weeks and I don’t know what I expected but it’s safe to say that I never thought shoes could look this fantastic.

Thursday 9th June: paparazzi!

It’s the Vivienne Westwood Exhibition press launch at The Bowes Museum today. By the time I arrive the Fashion & Textile Gallery is already filling up with photographers, cameramen and journalists brandishing notebooks. I’m slightly at a loss as to what to do, other than stand guard and make sure no one disturbs the perfectly arranged shoes. Joanna Hashagen, Keeper of Textiles, has just finished her appearance on ITV’s flagship Daybreak programme and is being trailed by a gaggle of journalists and photographers. Then someone asks if they can take my photograph – turns out he’s from the Press Association and within 20 minutes I’ve done an on-camera interview, been photographed moving shoes without actually moving them and agreed to record a radio interview. While all this is going on, technicians are attempting to hoist enormous blow-ups of Dame Vivienne and a tumbling Naomi Campbell into position around the gallery, then the acrylic panels arrive… good job we work well under pressure!

Friday 10th June: D-Day!

The famous 'Naomi Campbell' shoe

Its official… Vivienne Westwood Shoes: An Exhibition, is open to the public! If I’m honest there were times when it seemed like it would never happen, but it has, and it’s busy (someone even arrived at 8.30 – an hour and half before the Museum opens) And we’re in all the papers, even the LA Times. We should all be able to relax, but there’s still the small matter of this evening’s exclusive launch party. In a few hours, 400+ specially invited guests will descend upon The Bowes Museum, consume copious amounts of fizz and canapés and (we hope) fall in love with the exhibition and tell all their friends to come visit. I’m excited, we all are, but at this point I’m running on adrenaline and too much caffeine… the thought of adding champagne and lots of glamorous fashionistas to the mix is slightly daunting.

Saturday 11^th June

Well I guess that’s it! The exhibition is open, last night’s launch party was an unprecedented success and so far everyone loves the shoes. Fingers-crossed that over the next four weeks there’ll be lots more visitors to The Bowes Museum who love them too.

Louise Cooling – The Bowes Museum

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Durham’s landscapes spring to life

Gardens at Crook Hall spring in to life

There is a theme to my travels at the moment. Colour. And specifically the colour yellow. This is the time of year which I call the ‘yellow season’. Crocus, forsythia, daffodils and the lovely primroses all scatter their own version of the colour yellow through the fields and hedgerows of the Durham countryside. And it’s the time of year when, as a Blue Badge guide, I can really begin to build into my tour commentaries all those lovely stories of the English countryside.

Visitors are not just interested in history and culture whilst on tours. If they are from overseas, such as the group I led last week on a countryside walk from Barnard Castle to the ruins of Egglestone Abbey, they want to know about the sheep they see in the fields. They want to know why Durham has so many stone walls and who built them. And they love hearing the little anecdotes about the flora and fauna we see along the route.

Names of plants intrigue these particular visitors, a group of international teachers on a training course here in the north east of England. I get my group to think about the name “primrose”. Say it out loud and say it slowly. What language could it possibly come from, I ask? As most of them are from countries where Latin is the base of their modern language, it’s not long before they hit right on it. Prim….prima…..Latin! ‘Prima rosa’ the ‘first rose’. The name Benjamin Disraeli doesn’t mean much to this particular group but I explain how the primrose was the Victorian Prime Minister’s favourite flower and that Primrose Day on 19 April – the date of his death – is marked at Westminster Abbey when primroses are placed on his statue. Amazing to think how this delightful little flower links Teesdale with such a famous London building.

The spectacular High Force Waterfall

We then clamber up the steep slope from the riverbanks onto Abbey Bridge. Terrific views down into the River Tees which is looking its turbulent best at the moment after heavy spring rain in the Pennine hills. We stroll up the tarmac road towards the ruins of Egglestone Abbey. The sky is that vivid springtime blue, splashes of yellow are everywhere and the air has that feeling of northern freshness and clarity about it. And for a brief moment, it’s very nice to see my international visitors take time out from their busy schedule just to have a little chill out time to soak up the pleasures of Durham’s springtime countryside. No doubt about it: the colours of Durham are coming alive at the moment.

Jan Williams – Blue Badge Guide

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Gala Panto Rehearsals – Day 7

Cinderella's carriage arrives in Durham

Day Seven

I had to remind myself this morning that it was only this time last week – seven days ago – that a rather nervous group of actors and dancers had gathered together for the first time in the Gala’s foyer. They’re now working together like they’ve known each other for months, if not years. It would make a good team building course for one of those management training thingies – you have two weeks to put on a panto which will be seen by over 20,000 people. It’s the impending audience, just over a week away now, which certainly focuses the mind. Problems have to be solved, and solutions have to be found. There’s no time to sleep on it and see if it looks better in the morning. By tomorrow we will have moved on.

The set also arrived today, which is another turn on the tension gauge. I’ve seen pictures of it in another venue and gone through technical

Panto set begins to take shape

 drawings to work out what elements are in each scene, but it’s not until you watch it all coming out of the back of an articulated lorry that you really see what you’ve got. And it looks great. Bright and vibrant, solid and well made. It’ll take about five days to fit it into the Gala stage. Meanwhile we’ll carry on working through the show; It’s looking great!

Simon Stallworthy – panto writer (and creative director of the Gala Theatre!)

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Day three in the Gala Theatre panto rehearsals

Day Three

The slop scene.  Ah, the slop scene.  AHHHHH the slop scene!!!  There is no other scene in theatre which goes on such a huge journey from rehearsal to performance.  In Aladdin three years ago, we did a cooking slop scene where Ping and Pong make a cake – which left four buckets of ‘slop’ on the set, covering costumes and the front three rows of the audience.   

This year we’re trying something a little bit more controlled, and the traditional slop scene for Cinderella is a decorating scene.  So, today we started with four empty buckets, some rolls of wallpaper, and a step ladder.  It is painfully slow  to rehearse – “You pick up the brush, cover it with paste, then brush it on my face, one two three.  Then I stand in the bucket, it sticks on my foot, and I stomp around.  You fall in the wallpaper…” 

It feels like it will never be funny, but I know from two years ago that it was lots of people’s favourite scene. It’s slapstick in its purest form –  people falling over and covering themselves in goo.  There’s nothing sophisticated about it and the kids love it.  There are probably prehistoric versions involving dinosaur bones and swamp water.  There’s certainly a very funny version emerging involving four buckets of wallpaper paste and couple of rolls of Laura Ashley.

Simon Stallworthy – panto writer (and creative director of the Gala Theatre!)

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Panto season begins

Day One

Donald McBride plays Ugly Sister Sarah Gristle

The first thing you learn as a panto writer is not to be precious about the script.  You may have spent long Autumn evenings carefully crafting a comic masterpiece, but once the actors get their hands on it they show no mercy.  If they don’t think a line will get a laugh, or if they know how to get a bigger laugh, then out come the red pens.  And by the end of today there was probably more red ink than black ink!

But that’s a good sign.  This is the third panto I’ve done with several of these actors and I trust them implicitly.  They have to stand in front of 500 screaming kids at 10 o’clock in the morning, when I’ll be sat in my office on my second cup of coffee, so it’s them it needs to work for.  And if it works for them – it works for me.

Panto scripts are more of a template; a set of notes which the actors will improvise on, and I’ll do my best to hang to their ideas, keep them focused, and stop them having too many coffee breaks!

Panto dancers begin their rehearsals

Today we also worked on the high energy opening number with the professional dancers and the 24 children in the show.  It suddenly becomes very real when you try to imagine these talented groups of people in front of a packed auditorium, with wonderful sets and costumes, and a live band, in only two weeks time.  We’ve got a busy two weeks ahead of us.  But huge fun!

Simon Stallworthy – panto writer (and creative director of the Gala Theatre!)

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Behind the scenes at The Bowes Museum

Monday November 1st
Well, what a week it’s shaping up to be.

My time over the past weeks has been taken up with furiously drumming up attention in magazines, newspapers, TV, radio and on the internet for The Bowes Museum’s latest exhibition, Damien Hirst: Print Maker, which opens to the public on Saturday. And this week is make or break time.

The whole room looks very dark and foreboding at the moment, as the gallery walls have been painted black so that nothing detracts from the prints. The curator, Greville Worthington, is to begin hanging them today, but I must admit, when I see an empty gallery, with a show that simply must open at the end of the week, I wonder how on earth it will come together in time. 

There are guys measuring and marking, massive prints being unloaded and stacked against the gallery walls, and huge scaffolding in the centre of the room.

Tuesday November 2nd
Whoever thinks a job in PR is exciting should see me today! I’m muffled up to the nines, in Durham with colleagues on a cold morning, a sky threatening rain, handing out flyers for the exhibition and asking shops, colleges, bars etc to display them. Not very glam, but it’s another way to get the word out there. Despite the cold, people stopped to chat, and it was great to hear we have fans of the Bowes around the region.

Popped into the gallery when I got back, and was relieved and delighted to see how much had been achieved since yesterday. Gradually, as the works of art go up it’s beginning to lighten up, as white framed colourful prints of drug packaging begin to colour a whole wall. I’m bound to be biased, but they do look stunning. Most are from private collectors, and it’s brilliant to be given an opportunity to show them off to the public. What a coup for us; can’t wait to see the rest.

Wednesday November 3rd
Busy, busy, busy with media interest, but managed to pop into the gallery to find butterflies and skulls filling another wall. Really interested to hear Greville’s explanation of their meaning and why they’re displayed together – linked to the colours of life and the inevitability of death. The whole exhibition seems scary and cheering at the same time. How can this be?

Thursday November 4th
Well, here we are. The exhibition preview is tonight and all the works now in situ. The finishing touches are being put to the lighting, creating even more of an atmosphere. The Northern Echo is filming a podcast for the website, and the BBC is due any minute to film for tonight’s Look North programme, so I’m like a cat on a hot tin roof until they arrive, hoping no big story breaks to drag them elsewhere! They’re also hoping to run a live link from the preview to the programme, so that’s fantastic news for us to be showcased around the region.

Sheila Dixon – Media and PR Officer, The Bowes Museum

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British Food Fortnight

British Food Fortnight runs until Sunday, October 3rd. Taste Durham award-winning restaurant Oldfields serves british food at its best, with locally sourced produce and simple, yet delicious food. Restauranteur Bill Oldfield writes below about why British Food Fortnight is so important.

As a nation, we’re very influenced by the cooking of others. In our multi-cultural environment, we happily embrace food from afar to such an extent that a dish from the Indian sub-continent can become the nation’s favourite. But in recent history, and by that I mean the last century or so, our biggest influence has to have been the French.

It could be because they’re our nearest foreign neighbours or even that their army successfully invaded us ten centuries ago. But the main cause is a man called Escoffier who, some years ago, taught us to cook – or at least, how to cook his way. But the legacy is such that we eschewed much of our tradition. Along with changing the titles of our chefs on their career ladder – sous, chef de partie and so on – we threw out much of our respect for our indigenous dishes.

At Oldfields, in order to champion British food over the years, we’ve had to go to war with the French influence so that we may serve such things as chunky carrots rather than ‘julienned’, use the term ‘gravy’ rather than ‘jus’ and ‘custard’ rather than ‘crème anglais’. And it’s this fight that makes the British Food Fortnight as important as ever.

No matter which style of food you cook, its success is dependent on the quality of the ingredients. But none more so than traditional British cooking where the basic components are messed about with to a minimum and are allowed to speak for themselves.

The modern emergence of farmers’ markets and farm shops, of which Durham has many, along with the drive for recognition of local produce, means that there’s an abundance of quality ingredients for us to use in our British dishes. It’s time we took another leaf out of the French book, and promoted our pride in our British food.

An example of great local produce is the Durham Blue Cheese. But don’t take our word for it – try out the recipe below.

Durham Blue Cheese by the Durham Cow Cheese Company is something we were one of the first to champion since we discovered it a couple of years ago. But now we’re not its only fans as it’s won a number of national awards including ones from Waitrose and Tescos – a fabulous achievement for Julia Cammiss who only started making cheese so recently. Here we’ve used Durham Blue as part of a twist on the traditional Ploughman’s lunch, and it’s a popular dish that’s often on our menu.

Serves two:
A couple of handfuls of bread – torn into bite-size pieces
One very fresh free-range egg
50g of Durham Blue – torn into bite-size pieces
A couple of handfuls of mixed salad leaves
A few pickled onions – sliced in half
Two dessertspoons of Branston Pickle
Rapeseed oil
Sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C (gas mark 4). Place the bread pieces in a bowl, sprinkle with a tablespoon of rapeseed oil and toss, adding a little salt and pepper as you do so. Spread the bread out on a roasting sheet and bake in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes until beginning to turn golden. Remove and allow to cool. Meanwhile, bring a pan of water to the boil, lower in the egg, bring back to the boil and simmer for seven minutes. Remove from the heat and place under the cold tap to stop the egg cooking. Place the baked bread pieces, the cheese, onions and salad leaves into a bowl. Sprinkle with rapeseed oil and gently toss. Pile the salad onto two plates. Carefully peel the egg, slice in half lengthways and put a half on top of each pile of salad. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper over the lot before spooning the Branston Pickle alongside.

Bill Oldfield – Oldfields Noted Eating House, Durham City

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‘Best in the fest’ preview of this weekend’s Streets of… festivals

This weekend will see Millennium Place and Walkergate burst into life with the Streets of… festivals – and we’re giving you a sneak preview of the best activities and performances that you can see over the three days.

First up on Saturday 28^th August we have Streets of…Play. Streets of Play; Durham International Buskers Festival is jam packed with juggling, comedy, parkour and more. It’s hard to choose a highlight from such a great programme but we highly recommend you check out African acrobatics, The Black Eagles of Tanzania: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHKTF1GRFQ8

There’s also loads of participatory activities for the kids including the latest craze, straight from the US, Crate Building: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGMjYn5CTM&feature=related

At Streets of…Folk on Sunday you can enjoy an afternoon of the best in contemporary folk from the UK and US. Here’s an example of the brilliant Adrienne Young Ramsey.

Adrienne Young-Ramsey’s My Love Will Keep Forever: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-1nWzAzlU0

Finally, spend your Bank Holiday Monday doing and viewing at Streets of Dance. The Streets of Dance features a range of dancing styles both contemporary and traditional from the UK and across the globe. Most of them need to be seen to be believed including the fantastic Carnival Crew Tees Valley.

Newcastle Kingsmen’s infamous Rapper Dance http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCFPIPdasKs

Nick Malyan – Festival Durham

Find out more about Durham by logging on to thisisdurham.com or visit us on Facebook.