Bowes Museum With Steps And Railings Attached

The Bowes Museum, a private museum now publicly owned, was constructed between 1869 and around 1885, opening to the public in 1892. Designed by J Pellechet, with JE Watson of Newcastle-upon-Tyne acting as the builder, it was commissioned for John Bowes, son of the 10th Earl of Strathmore. The building is constructed of ashlar with a roof of light grey slates, and is designed in a Chateau style.

The museum is arranged over two main floors, a basement, and attics, with a 3:5:4:5:3-window facade and symmetrical central and end pavilions. The entrance pavilion is three storeys high and features high plinths supporting paired free Corinthian columns that frame a round-headed arch. The arch has a cartouche key and pilasters, leading to double, painted-iron doors with studded framed panels and a split semicircular overlight featuring fishscale fret and leaf-carved spandrels below a deep-bracketed entablature. A similar panelled plinth and entablature continue along the set-back side bays and returns, featuring two-light windows. The first floor has a similar columnar arrangement on smaller plinths and windows from floor level. The top floor has two-light windows with panelled pilasters and pedimented entablatures. The end pavilions feature paired windows and wide panels on the ground floor, a high round-headed window on the first floor between paired columns, and narrower, pedimented attic windows. The links between the pavilions have similar ground-floor windows in corniced panels under a continuous cornice; the first floor is pedimented and sits under a bracketed cornice extending across the entire facade. The rusticated basement has plain two-light stone mullioned windows. The steeply pitched pseudo-Mansard roof is hipped over the pavilions and convex-hipped over the centre, with two levels of windows. The lower level has dormers with pediments at eaves level, while the upper level has round-headed windows within archivolts, except in the pavilions where they are oeils-de-boeuf (round windows). Tall corniced chimneys are situated at the sides and behind the front slope. The pavilions have raised, low pyramidal tops.

The interior is lavishly decorated, featuring extensive marble cladding and notable marble staircases with wide grip handrails on turned balustrades. The museum houses a collection of architectural fragments, some sourced locally, including a panelled room from West Auckland Manor House. Spear-headed railings enclose the areas at the rear and sides of the building.