Latest news with #Kynren
Yahoo
19-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Are shops and food places open on Easter Sunday in the North East?
If you're planning a shopping trip on Easter Sunday (April 20) in the North East, you'll need to be selective—many major stores will be closed due to UK trading laws. But there are still some options if you need a top-up shop, a quick bite, or a home DIY fix. Here's what's open and closed this Easter Sunday across Newcastle, Sunderland, Durham, Middlesbrough, and surrounding areas. Most Co-op stores in the North East (England) will be open but with reduced hours. Great for grabbing milk, bread, or last-minute essentials. Check your local store at: Open 9am to 4pm across the UK, including the North East. Perfect for DIYers tackling an Easter weekend project. Find your local store: Most stores will operate bank holiday hours. Some branches (especially in petrol stations and transport hubs) should be open. Check your local store here: While larger Primark stores like Newcastle and Middlesbrough are likely CLOSED, some smaller city centre branches might open on reduced hours Easter Monday—not Sunday. Best to check store details: Larger stores will be closed, but some Little Waitrose shops in service stations may open. Use the store finder to confirm: READ MORE: Bird's nest arena approved for Kynren theme park in Bishop Auckland Santoro's in Yarm hits market months after shock closure Royal Visit Durham: Hundreds turn out for King and Queen These major retailers are closed in the North East on Easter Sunday: Sainsbury's Tesco Extra & Superstores (Tesco Express may be open) Aldi Asda Superstores Morrisons Iceland (England stores) Marks & Spencer Home Bargains Superdrug (some branches may open, check first) John Lewis (closed nationwide except Edinburgh & Glasgow) Corner shops and petrol stations are your best bet for essentials. Check opening hours online—many retailers have store-specific Easter hours. Scotland has fewer trading restrictions, so if you're near the border, you may find more shops open.
Telegraph
12-04-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
A wealthy Christian spent £200m reviving this northern town – but not everyone is happy
An African tawny eagle, nearly 3ft tall, recently enjoyed a taste of freedom in the skies above the small northeastern town of Bishop Auckland. Finally, it was hungry enough – there not being any elephant carcasses in County Durham – to be tempted down from a tree with a dead rat. The eagle, known as Billy, is one of more than 200 species from around the world being reared for a conservation-focused bird show, due to commence performances in 2026. Bishop Auckland, once the hunting retreat of the Prince Bishops of Durham, who had power to raise armies and mint coins, is now a small, run-down town where the once bustling market has dwindled to one man and a van. Many shops in the high street are boarded up. But things are changing. Today, instead of clergy in their finery, there is a growing trickle of tourists from around the world. The town is home to an ambitious regeneration charity, The Auckland Project, centred around art, culture, history, and – soon – birds. Since 2016, it has been staging Kynren, an annual pageant of English history with a cast of nearly 1,000. In one scene, a Viking ship rises from a lake, with men on deck, swords aloft. They breathe underwater with the assistance of scuba divers. For a quieter experience, there's the Faith Museum, which opened in October 2023 in a sleek stone building beside the Bishop's Palace. Artefacts trace 6,000 years of British history through the lens of religion and philosophy. The finance for much of this regeneration has mostly come from one man: City investor, art collector and committed Christian, Jonathan Ruffer, who has given at least £200 million of his own wealth to the project. He bought the Bishop's Palace 13 years ago for £11 million, opening it to the public seven years later. The hope is that tourism will also resurrect the mile-long high street, and the seeds of change are sprouting. Shops and cafes are opening in buildings that have been empty for years. Grade II-listed McIntyre is one. Once famed for bespoke leather goods, it reopened in December as a café and gift shop selling local arts and crafts. Bars of £6 artisan chocolate 'are flying out the door', said Fiona MacAlpine, hospitality coordinator, who thinks the difference the Auckland Project has made is 'fab'. 'Bishop [Auckland] was dying,' she added. 'Things had to change.' The café provides work experience for catering students from Bishop Auckland College, which, in partnership with The Auckland Project, is training up a workforce to cater for a planned one million visitors a year. Not bad for a former mining town of fewer than 20,000 residents. A few doors down is Inspiral Cycles. 'We could have rented a unit at the out-of-town shopping centre, with more footfall and easy parking, but we chose to buy in the high street,' says co-owner Gary Ewing. 'My wife and I both volunteer in the Kynren show and she could see the improvements that all this regeneration would bring, so we opted to establish ourselves in the town centre. It's been tough, but we've no regrets.' The wider area is a hotspot for cycling, with miles of car-free routes and quiet roads. I cycled to Durham, 12 miles away, on a former railway line through fields and moorland. This is the birthplace of commercial passenger trains. Two hundred years ago, in 1825, the steam locomotive, Locomotion No. 1, was the first to haul a passenger train on public railway lines. It travelled 26 miles from a station three miles away, Shildon, now home to a small railway museum, to Stockton. On a restored 16-mile stretch of track between Bishop Auckland and Stanhope is the Weardale Railway, where diesel trains take day-trippers through spectacular dales landscapes. There are plenty of walks too. I hiked part of the Auckland Way to the town of Spennymoor, diverting through bluebell woods and to Binchester Roman Fort. Another day, I followed a muddy, arduous path beside the River Wear for four miles to Escomb, with its sweet little Saxon church, one of the most complete in England. Back in Bishop, as the locals call it, I went to the palace's large private chapel, my first port of call on a self-guided tour. Fellow visitors Joe and Joanna Barclay were excited to find the crest of a bishop who was one of Joe's ancestors. They were on a short break from their home in Berkshire, they said. 'Yesterday we went to Raby Castle. That's worth a visit,' said Joe. 'But we've mainly come to County Durham because we've heard a lot about the Zurbarán paintings,' said Joanna. Ruffer bought the palace to save this collection by the 17th-century artist, bought by Richard Trevor, Bishop of Durham in 1756. Ruffer feared the works – 13 life-size portraits of Jacob and his 12 sons – would end up overseas, and had to buy the palace too if they were to remain in place. Today, they still hang in Bishop Trevor's dining room. Each figure is a clothes horse for rich textiles. 'Zurbarán's father was a haberdasher,' explained a volunteer. The other rooms in the palace are furnished in the style of bishops through the centuries, including a bedroom in spartan 1980s decor as might have been enjoyed by then Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins, complete with a television showing Spitting Image. The palace looks out onto a walled garden where the Ruffers have spent nearly a third of a million on topsoil alone. The total spend on the gardens has reached £10 million. The Paradise Garden features an original heated wall where melons would have grown. The furnaces that once heated the brickwork have recently been excavated. A new water feature, designed by Pip Morrison, known for his work at Kensington Palace, is in the shape of a cross. You can have a bird's eye view of all this from a 15m-high viewing platform, Auckland Tower, in the market square. The structure opened in 2018, but caused controversy – with critics describing it as a 'sore thumb'. It symbolises a division in town, with some residents opposing Ruffer's interventions. As well as the tower, the market place is home to other ventures of The Auckland Project: two art galleries, one devoted to the Spanish golden age and one to local mining art, a new community centre, and some carefully restored holiday cottages by the palace gates, once the homes of palace chauffeurs, butlers and gardeners. By 2027, there will also be a 60-room hotel. In the Spanish Gallery, occupying a former bank, there's one painting of which the staff are especially proud. It is of Spain's patron saint, Saint James of Compostela with Saint Teresa of Avila. For geo-political reasons, Philip IV was campaigning to have this Carmelite nun adopted as a co-patron saint. It was an audacious suggestion. Finally, Pope Urban VIII decreed against and the Spanish Inquisition set about destroying any reference to the two saints together. This early 17th-century painting by Juan Bautista Maíno escaped. Ruffer snapped it up in 2018. Across the road, in the gallery of mining art, there are paintings by miners, some of whom were able to turn their hobby into a profession, such as Norman Cornish. There are achingly nostalgic scenes and others of gritty determination. I learnt about the Bevin Boys (conscripts for the mines) and ' marras ' (a Durham miners' term for a trusted friend or workmate who can be relied on in times of need), terms I had never come across before. Men toiling deep below ground in hot coal mines seems a world away from the opulent art of Spain's golden age, but Bishop has always been a town of two halves, according to residents. In splendid tapas restaurant, El Castillo, the man at the next table told of a huge Art Deco property, 'built like a Miami drug lord's mansion', on the market for £1.4 million, while in the neighbouring street, two-bedroom houses go for under £100,000. Bishop Auckland really is that travel writing cliché: a place of contrasts. The grit and the pearl sit side by side. Faithful or not, it's well worth a pilgrimage. The essentials Paul Miles stayed as a guest of The Auckland Project. Holiday cottages sleeping four cost from £139 per night. A pass to visit all attractions – Bishop's Palace and gardens, both art galleries and the Faith Museum – costs £30 per person, valid for one year. Cross Country Trains travel to Darlington from where there are connections to Bishop Auckland.
BBC News
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Cornwall's Flambards Victorian village sold, auctioneer confirms
An entire Victorian village display at a theme park in Cornwall has been sold to a historical tourist attraction for an undisclosed fee, an auctioneers theme park in Helston announced in November it was closing its doors with immediate effect due to "rising costs and a steady decline in visitor numbers".The park said items from its Victorian village attraction, developed in the 1970s by Audrey Hale, were to go on sale at Lay's Auctioneers. Kynren, in Bishop Auckland, Durham, confirmed it purchased the village which would form part of its storied lands attraction as part of the UK's first live-action historical theme park. Kynren said the village featured more than 50 sets and scenes with authentic shopfronts and interiors. It said it would "reimagine" the Victorian village as the backdrop to a dynamic and interactive visitor experience which would open in Warnecke, CEO of Kynren, said: "The detail and authenticity of the Flambards Victorian village make it an incredible foundation for a truly immersive experience at the storied lands. "We are not simply relocating it; we are transforming it into a vibrant, theatrical journey where visitors will feel as if they have stepped back into the heart of Victorian England. "We cannot wait to unveil this spectacular experience as part of our new park." 'Excited for the future' Lay's Auctioneers said it welcomed the acquisition, along with Livingstone Leisure the owner of Flambards. "While we are thrilled that the Victorian village has found such a fitting new home, we understand that some collectors and enthusiasts had hoped to purchase individual elements of the collection," David Lay added. "We regret any disappointment this may cause, but we remain excited for the future of this extraordinary display."The auctioneers said the remainder of the Flambards auction, some 840 lots, would proceed as planned and takes place on 26 and 27 March. This would include "Britain in the Blitz", the war galleries, Concorde, the shackleton cockpit and other displays, it said.
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Incredibly passionate' Durham Tourism Superstar is shortlisted for national award
Kynren's head of volunteer casting and engagement has been shortlisted for a national tourism award. Wendy Wilshere is one of ten finalists in VisitEngland's national tourism superstar award, which celebrates the dedication of employees and volunteers in the industry. She is the only finalist from the North East of England, having won the Durham Tourism Superstar accolade in 2024. Wendy Wilshere (Image: Sarah Caldecott) The award recognised her dedication to Kynren and its volunteers. The winner will be decided by public vote, and Kynren is encouraging people to support Ms Wilshere and cast their vote. Ms Wilshere said: "It is a wonderful privilege to represent the North East in such an important national competition, and I hope I do our region proud. (Image: Sarah Caldecott) "Every day I think how lucky I am to do my role at Kynren. "I get to work alongside so many wonderful people, providing support to the volunteers whilst spreading the word about the phenomenal production at different events too. "I'm incredibly passionate about the show – not only to create unforgettable performances that wow our audiences throughout the summer, but also the integral role it plays to support our region and the tourism economy." Wendy Wilshere, who has been shortlisted (Image: Sarah Caldecott) As part of her role at the live action outdoor theatre spectacular in Bishop Auckland, Ms Wilshere looks after and organises all the volunteers. This includes setting up open calls to recruit new volunteers, helping to write schedules and timetables, and circulating clear communications and updates with team leaders and the volunteers themselves. Ms Wilshere also ensures she is present at as many local events and county shows as possible to reach new audiences, as well as national travel trade events to spread awareness about Kynren and County Durham. (Image: Sarah Caldecott) Anna Warnecke, CEO at Kynren, said: "Wendy is without doubt one of the most hardworking and caring people I have ever had the pleasure of working with. "Her role as head of volunteer casting and engagement is absolutely integral to the success of Kynren. "Without Wendy to organise, look after and communicate with the volunteers, we simply wouldn't be able to perform this show, which in turn is vital to bring tourism and visitors to the area. "Her passion for Kynren is infectious, and it's clear to see Wendy's pride and the passion for not just the show, but the local area too, alongside her drive to make it a better place for generations to come." Ms Wilshere has been a volunteer with Kynren since the show's first season, and her experience as a volunteer is essential – it means she knows what volunteers need to make their journey as rewarding and meaningful as possible. She then became an employed team member in 2024 to help drive forward the success of Kynren. Michelle Gorman, managing director at Visit County Durham, said: "We are incredibly proud of Wendy's achievement in making the final ten in the tourism superstar award and she is a shining beacon at Kynren. "It is fantastic that our Durham Tourism Superstar winner has been shortlisted for the national award. "She is immensely dedicated and is a huge advocate for the role Kynren plays in the region as a visitor attraction and I encourage everyone in County Durham to support and vote for Wendy as their tourism superstar." To vote for Ms Wilshere Wilshere in VisitEngland's Tourism Superstar competition, visit the VisitEngland Awards website.
BBC News
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Bishop Auckland Kynren attraction plans to open new theme park
Plans are being drawn up to create a historical theme park with the aim of transporting guests back in time with its - The Storied Lands will be a new daytime attraction set within the wider Kynren attraction in Bishop Auckland, County will use live action shows to educate visitors about Britain's history and CEO Anna Warnecke said it was working with Durham County Council's planning team on phased submissions for the park. She said some of the plans had "already been approved and constructed" while others were under consideration or due to be submitted in the coming months."For the past decade, we have poured passion and expertise into delivering Kynren – An Epic Tale of England, and now we are bringing that same level of scale, innovation, and magic into this new daytime attraction," she said. "You won't just witness history – you'll live it, feel it, and be moved by it." The focus of The Storied Lands will not be rides but multiple live action shows with storytelling stunts and one of the park will feature five shows and immersive experiences, with themes including Neolithic Britain, Viking battles, and the gas-lit streets of Victorian England. The Legend of the Wear performance will use water stunts to retell the Lambton Worm myth. Councillor Amanda Hopgood said the council welcomed the development plans as a new attraction for the region."As Durham County establishes itself as one of the great UK visitor destinations, this extravaganza will sit at the heart of the county's offering," she said millions of pounds would be invested in the project, which it hopes to open next year. Follow BBC North East on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram. Send your story ideas here.
