Gibside — Land & Legacy

About this place

Gibside is a Georgian landscaped park in the Derwent valley near Rowlands Gill, on the Gateshead side of the border with County Durham.

At its centre stands Gibside Hall, a Grade II* listed house that is now roofless and empty.

A half-mile-long avenue, known as the Long Walk, leads through the grounds to the Palladian chapel designed by James Paine, one of several eighteenth-century structures scattered across the estate.

The National Trust looks after most of the property today.

Read more on Wikipedia

History

The estate came to the Bowes family in the late seventeenth century. Sir George Bowes (1701-60), whose wealth came largely from Durham coal, spent decades reshaping the grounds into a fashionable landscape park, working with the designers Stephen Switzer and William Joyce. The estate was broken up and sold piecemeal during the twentieth century, with Daniel Garrett's banqueting house eventually passing to the Landmark Trust while the greater part came to the National Trust.

Architecture

James Paine's Palladian chapel and Daniel Garrett's banqueting house are the best-preserved of several designed structures on the estate, with William Newton also contributing work. Gibside Hall itself dates in part from the seventeenth century but survives only as a shell.

Worth knowing

Sir George Bowes's daughter Mary Eleanor Bowes married into the Lyon family of Strathmore, a union traditionally linked to the later Bowes-Lyon line that produced Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the Queen Mother.

Gardens & grounds

The Long Walk, a half-mile-long avenue, links the chapel and the hall through woodland and open parkland laid out under Sir George Bowes in the eighteenth century.

Facilities