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To the southwest of Newcastle, one of the finest landscaped gardens in the North is a quick, six-mile hop from the city centre (bus #745 from Central Station, then a half-mile signposted walk from the village of Rowlands Gill). The grounds of Gibside (Tues-Sun: April-Oct 10am-6pm; Nov-March 10am-4pm; GBP3; NT) represent a very rare survival of mid-eighteenth-century park design, combining striking formal vistas with naturalistic woodland. Created by coal baron George Bowes between 1729 and 1760, the estate went into decline as early as 1885 after the death of his great-grandson John Bowes (founder of the Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle), and for the last twenty years the National Trust have been slowly attempting to restore the original design. A series of hour-long trails will take you past the atmospheric shell of the earlier Jacobean mansion, an orangery and walled garden, the 130-foot Column to Liberty, erected to reaffirm Bowes' loyalty to George II after the Jacobite uprising of 1745, and along the east bank of the River Derwent near its confluence with the Tyne (though not past the neo-Gothic Banqueting House, now administered as self-catering accommodation by the Landmark Trust. Back towards the entrance and tearoom stands the most striking and complete architectural remnant, the chapel (April-Oct Tues-Sun 11am-4.30pm). Inspired by Palladio's Villa Rotonda in the Veneto in northeastern Italy, this elegantly symmetrical building features an array of delicate carvings under its portico, but is dominated by one of the grandest pulpits you're ever likely to see - a triple-decker mahogany affair decked out in velvet with a grand inlaid sounding board.
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