Sitting opposite Jonathan Ruffer in the green-walled drawing room of his house in Bishop Auckland, in County Durham, I realised, as I crossed my legs, that I had gravel dust all over my shoes. It was a stifling day, and outside the window the noise of angle grinders and the clanging of scaffolding poles lent a sense of urgency to what would otherwise have been a languid afternoon. I had enjoyed the privilege of a preview of the new Faith Museum at Auckland Castle, and had sunk into a sofa to speak to the man behind the project.
It is no secret that Ruffer maintains a spectacularly successful career that has made him a lot of money; similarly it is no secret that he is a spectacularly generous philanthropist who continues to make spectacularly generous donations to a number of worthy causes. Chief among these is Bishop Auckland, to whose regeneration he has been estimated to have contributed about £150 million, and where he has also made a home. He greeted me at the front door like an old friend; his wife, Jane, brought me a mug of tea. Ruffer’s latest brainchild opened on October 7; it’s the next addition to the Auckland Project, which began in 2012 with his rescue of the castle – the former country palace of the Prince Bishops of Durham.
A decade earlier the Church Commissioners, who control the Church of England’s finances, had voted to sell the castle’s much-fêted set of 17th-century paintings, “Jacob and his Twelve Sons”, by Francisco de Zurbarán. Ruffer bought the paintings, along with the buildings and their other contents, and opened the site to the public. Apart from the Grade I-listed mansion, Ruffer’s palatinate now also encompasses a stunning museum of Spanish paintings – opened last year by the Queen of Spain and the then Prince of Wales – and a Mining Art Gallery, which he describes as a tear-jerker. The latter seems to represent exactly what Ruffer is about in this once thriving but now struggling part of post-industrial north-eastern England: bringing it out of itself, restoring a sense of local pride and rebuilding its aspirations.
A former railway line was added to the Auckland Project last year, operating with heritage diesel rolling stock. It’s a nice day out, certainly, with spectacular views, but the reinstated 18 miles of track have also added to the sense of connection of various parts of the neighbouring countryside with each other. Then there is the millennia-old Roman fort at Binchester, and the ultra-modern Auckland Tower, and the rest. Ruffer talks about all these ventures with a child-like enthusiasm, free of patrician condescension or any sense of modern-day noblesse oblige.
Now, with additional help from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Jerusalem Trust, there is the Faith Museum: a spectacular re-imagination of a medieval tithe barn done entirely in local sandstone by Niall McLaughlin and filled with items from across the local area and further afield. It charts the course of belief from prehistory to paganism, from the coming of Christianity to its post-Reformation divergences, from persecution to religious toleration and then on to the present complicated realities of a multi-faith society.
The genius loci behind it all is Amina Wright; Ruffer could scarcely have found a better-suited curator to turn his ideas into reality. She has woven together a tale of British belief (and unbelief) that tells the story of an island nation fumbling its way towards God and then, perhaps, stumbling away again. It is full of contradictions, as might be expected; after all, the Christian faith first came to the British Isles on the coat-tails of the unwitting Roman Empire, one of the earliest institutions committed to its wholesale destruction. But the story begins before then.
We know that long ago people believed in something – in many things – but pinning it down is tricky. Grave goods remind us that our distant ancestors were possessed of some kind of sense that the human body was more than just an animated vessel, and something to be treasured even in death. Other pieces are even more obscure: a piece of local stone carved with holes and rings, dating from somewhere between 4000-2500 BC, must have meant something to the person or people who carved it; but what?
As the museum unfolds the territory becomes more familiar; Catholicism is well represented, and Ushaw – the former seminary just a few miles down the road, and now the Centre for Catholic Studies at the University of Durham – has been generous with loans from its collections. A lovely, understated Pugin thurible competes for attention with an enormous Baroque monstrance; both are effortlessly kicked into touch by the Opus Anglicanum Morton frontal, with its rich and subliminal messages for those with eyes to see.
Other faiths take their place as well; all those who have been woven into the warp and weft of the tapestry of national life. The millennium celebrations in the year 2000 form a kind of hinge; a metaphorical ascent to the top floor of the museum brings visitors into the present day. It focuses the mind, and the questions that bubble up uninvited are complicated and disconcerting. Without wanting to give too much away, a huge video installation in the cavernous main upstairs space hit me like a brick. There will be tears in that room, I am sure.
Ruffer, Wright and their team have produced a remarkable venture which looks like a conventional museum, but certainly isn’t. The timeline it follows is ordinary enough, but the selection and presentation of the artefacts with which it illuminates the passage of time and changes of practice somehow prise open the soul in a totally unnerving way. There is something deeper at work here that is rather difficult to pinpoint, but having spoken to its progenitor it comes as no surprise.
His openness is totally disarming, and Ruffer is clearly passionate about people: who they are and what makes them tick; what they believe and what, in the absence of belief, guides their lives. He seems to read voraciously, and his knowledge of the classical spiritual tradition puts my own to shame; he asks for book recommendations for the new museum shop, and I do my best to oblige. His interest in my own story and thoughts is so engaging that in retrospect I wonder if he might in fact have been interviewing me.
Ruffer describes his religious instincts as Evangelical, but mentions that his theological study is generally Catholic; it was while on retreat with the Jesuits at St Beuno’s in North Wales, undertaking the Ignatian Exercises, that he realised that his future lay in County Durham. Having done so much for its physical heritage, he has now turned his thoughts to the metaphysical. The Faith Museum therefore makes perfect sense; a timely and much-needed lens through which to view the region, the nation, and the world beyond the sea.
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