Mount Oswald is a manor house in Durham, County Durham, England. The house, which is now Durham County Council's The Story museum, is a Grade II listed building.[1] The surviving parkland associated with the house is including in Durham County Council's Local List of Historic Parks, Gardens and Designed Landscapes.[2]
Entrance to the Mount Oswald estate
The manor house was built for John Richardby, a London merchant, in 1800.[3] It was bought by Thomas Wilkinson (1752-1825), a former mayor of Durham, in 1806 and it then passed to the Rev Percival Spearman Wilkinson (1792-1875), in 1828.[3] The Rev Percival Spearman Wilkinson commissioned Phillip Wyatt to expand the house in the Georgian style in 1830.[4][5]
Mount Oswald then passed to the Rev Percival Spearman Wilkinson's son, Percival Spearman Wilkinson JP (1820-1898), before being acquired by the North Brancepeth Colliery Company in the 1890s.[3] The house was acquired by North of England Estates (a business owned by the McKeag family) in 1934:[6] North of England Estates operated the Mount Oswald estate as the Durham City Golf Club until 1967, when the golf club moved to Littleburn, and then operated it as a commercial golf course.[7] The property was then acquired by the property developers, Banks Group, for residential development in January 2014.[4]
In August 2014 Banks Group sold part of the site to Durham University who had ambitions to use it for accommodation for 1,000 students.[8][9] The project was procured by Durham University under a private finance initiative contract in August 2018.[10] The construction works, which were undertaken by Interserve at a cost of £105 million, saw John Snow College (relocated from Rushford Court) and South College (a completely new college) created on the Mount Oswald site in September 2020.[11]
In June 2019 Durham County Council revealed plans to move the county archives from County Hall to a new history centre, which was also intended to accommodate the Durham Light Infantry Collection, in the manor house at Mount Oswald.[12] The project, which envisaged Banks Group transferring the manor house to the council for a nominal sum, was granted planning consent in September 2020.[13] In March 2020 Banks Group also applied for planning permission to convert the gatehouses into residential properties.[14]
The Story museum opened to the public in June 2024,[15] incorporating the County Durham Archives, the Historical Environment Record for the county, the Durham Light Infantry collection, the Local Studies collection and the Historic Registration collection.[16] It won the national Excellence in Heritage and Culture Award from the Royal Town Planning Institute in 2025.[17]
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