"THIS mustn't become the
Jonathan Ruffer show." The warning came because I had asked
Jonathan Ruffer about the money he has committed to putting into
Auckland Castle, in County Durham, to turn it from a grand,
slightly down-at-heel bishop's residence into a place that will
bring 100,000 visitors a year to a depressed town in the
north-east.
City investor becomes
country magnate - from a distance it looks like a vanity project,
except that there's one thing missing. I see no trace of vanity in
Mr Ruffer.
For one thing, he didn't
want the castle. Growing up in the 1960s, he had friends whose
lives were "torn apart" by the burden of financing ancient piles
that they could no longer afford. "I have had to overcome a phobia
of castles."
Even now, he has no
interest in architectural heritage. What he was really after were
some paintings, and, even then, not to possess them, but to
preserve them in the room that was built for them.
The story of the
Zurbaráns is well known to readers of this paper, thanks, in
particular, to the moment in December 2011 when the story
threatened to descend into farce (News, 16
December). It began in 2010, when the Church Commissioners'
review of see houses came round to Durham.
How could the Church
justify holding on to such a large and potentially expensive
property, especially in a region where the economy, and thus parish
funding, was in a bad way? In particular, there were the paintings
of Joseph and his 12 sons, all but one of them by the Spanish
master Francisco de Zurbarán. (The original Benjamin is in
Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire; what hangs in Auckland Castle
is a decent 18th-century copy.)
The Commissioners valued
the paintings at £15 million and announced in 2010 that they would
put them up for sale.
When Mr Ruffer heard
about them, his first thought was that it was a pity, but
inevitable. He was working full-time running Ruffer, a successful
investment house (he now works there half the week). How it became
successful is a mystery to himself, since his first ten years after
university were spent failing at things, leaving him with what he
describes as a "self-image of incompetence".
Subsequently, however, he
and his colleagues have been able to predict the grand movements of
the market, including the cataclysm of the 2008 credit crunch. They
currently manage £16 billion of assets.
While the Commissioners
were considering the fate of the Zurbaráns, Mr Ruffer was going
through his own self-examination. He describes himself as a
conservative Evangelical, having come to faith at the end of his
time at Cambridge, and attending St Helen's, Bishopsgate, in the
City of London, but he doesn't appear to be a typical one. "I'm a
very ambivalent person. I see both sides of an argument. In the
battle between truth and love, I always come down on the side of
love."
He finds Evangelicalism
occasionally exasperating, but says that being "pummelled by the
truth" keeps him "humble" though not necessarily acquiescent: "Some
of my most valuable experiences have been encounters with
heavy-duty Evangelicals, where we both end up silent."
The desire for silence in
a less exhausting context led him to an eight-day Ignatian retreat
in Wales, in 2010. While there, he heard God telling him to stop
working in the City. He decide to give most of his money away, as
an act of self-preservation. "If a great deal of money comes to
you, and you hang on to it, it shackles you. I compare it with
food: it's supposed to pass through you. If it doesn't, it can kill
you."
This is not virtuous:
"There's been absolutely no sacrifice at all. The small percentage
that I've kept enables me to live far more comfortably than most
other people."
His mentor in this has
been the Revd Peter Watherston, who, in the mid-1970s, financed the
Mayflower Centre in the East End of London. Mr Ruffer thought that
he, too, would become involved in urban regeneration. So where do
the Zurbaráns come in?
First, he is a collector
of 18th- century Spanish art, and recognises the Zurbaráns as the
high- watermark of the Baroque period. Second, there was the price.
He had scraped together £15 million to give away. The Commissioners
were asking £15 million.
A key part of his vision
was to preserve the paintings for the north-east. He saw their sale
as yet another example of the asset-stripping of a region brought
low by the closing of the mines, and the collapse of heavy
industry.
"I was the merchant who
sells all that he has to buy the pearl of great price: £15 million
was literally all that I had. It's hard to see 13 pictures as a
pearl, but that's what 'Baroque' actually means: 'a deformed
pearl'." He put in his bid.
The Commissioners turned
him down.
"I thought: bloody hell:
they've told the people of Bishop Auckland that they can keep the
pictures if they can raise £15 million."
In late December 2010, a
meeting with Jacob Rothschild, the banker and philanthropist,
helped Mr Ruffer realise that, in fact, his offer to buy the
Zurbaráns and keep them in situ had put the Commissioners
in a quandary. It meant that the Commissioners could not get vacant
possession of the castle in order to dispose of it. He would have
to take responsibility for the castle as well.
In February 2011, the
Commissioners agreed. Just before they went public with the deal,
on 28 March Mr Ruffer received a short email from Andrew Brown, the
Commissioners' chief executive. He paid it little heed at the time,
but, as negotiations over the deal stretched into the autumn, he
realised that the email had added a number of conditions - this,
despite assurances given in the House of Commons that there were no
strings attached to the deal. In frustration, Mr Ruffer
contemplated withdrawing. That was when he spoke to the Church
Times.
The crisis galvanised the
new Bishop of Durham, the Rt Revd Justin Welby, into action. He
brokered a meeting, which took place in February 2012 in the peace
yurt attached to St Ethelburga's, Bishopsgate. Before the meeting,
the Commissioners were asking £15 million for the Zurbaráns and
£1.7 million for the castle, without the outbuildings.
After the meeting, Mr
Ruffer had everything for £11 million. "My argument was that the
castle was clearly a cost, not an asset." And so it has proved. In
the end, the bill was broken down as: £9 million for the paintings,
and £2 million for the castle.
But the Commissioners'
assets committee had to be persuaded that they were getting good
value. Afterwards, Mr Ruffer agreed that - should his trust sell
the paintings in the future - the Commissioners would get half the
profits. Since the trust's purpose is to keep the paintings in
Auckland Castle for perpetuity, it seemed to him to be little more
than a courtesy.
Well, up to a point.
Because the Commissioners still have a stake in the paintings,
their permission has to be sought if they go out on loan.
On one occasion, this
meant that Mr Ruffer was asked for £25,000 in upfront legal fees
from Mishcon, the Commissioners' lawyers. He refused to pay.
None of this has dented
Mr Ruffer's conviction that future Bishops of Durham should
continue to work out of Auckland Castle. The last one to live there
was Dr Tom Wright, and now a new house has been bought a few miles
away.
Mr Ruffer has set aside
five of the six Georgian drawing rooms at the castle for the
Bishop's offices. At present, too, the diocesan offices are housed
in the castle, though the plan is that they move out next year.
Mr Ruffer shares the view
that the Bishop should resist being drawn into Durham City. By
contrast, he speaks of Bishop Auckland as a desert, and his mission
to "bring something lovely back to here".
Or, rather, to keep it.
Auckland Castle has been owned by the Bishops of Durham for 800
years. Not for nothing do the road signs into the county tell of
the land of Prince Bishops. Durham was a buffer zone when the Scots
came marauding over the border; the Bishop's coat of arms contains
a sword as well as a crozier.
The Prince Bishops,
dating from 1075, were virtually absolute monarchs, setting taxes,
minting coins, administering justice. Auckland Castle was
originally built as a manor house in 1182, and was used by the
bishops as a hunting lodge. An 11th-century Bishop, perhaps
preferring a herd of deer to his flock, moved from Durham Castle
and adopted Auckland as his main residence.
After the Civil War, Sir
Arthur Haselrig bought it, demolished most of the castle, including
the chapel, and built a more fitting 17th- century country house.
Come the Restoration, the learned Bishop Cosin reversed the trend,
turning Haselrig's banqueting hall into a chapel, the largest
private chapel in Europe. (Haselrig died in January 1661, after a
short and presumably unpleasant stay in the Tower of London.)
Nearly 100 years later,
Bishop Richard Trevor bought the Zurbaráns, designing the dining
hall for their hanging. Photographs don't do justice to these 13
huge canvases, a family of giants pacing round the room. They had
been painted in Spain, where, since the expulsion of 1492, no Jew
was allowed to live openly. Bishop Trevor bought them in 1756,
three years after the Jew Bill had been introduced into the Lords
to permit the naturalisation of British Jews, and two years after
its defeat by Tory objectors in the House of Commons. These are
paintings with a political history.
For the present, the
paintings are the centrepiece of a visit to Auckland Castle. The
castle opened to the public a couple of months ago. The potential
of the place has still to be realised, but that at least means
that, at present, having bought your £8 ticket, you are not
bothered by large crowds.
Outside, visitors have
the run of formal gardens and the slightly unkempt deer park, with
several Grade I listed buildings dotted about. Among them is the
1770s Deerhouse, built and maintained as a folly, and a walled,
terraced garden. Mr Ruffer hopes to restore the views that existed
when the "sensationally important" park was laid out by Jeremiah
Dixon in the 1760s.
At present, the indoor
experience doesn't match the outdoor one, especially with many of
the finer rooms leased to the Bishop for his official use. But this
will change. And there will be other visitor atteractions.
For one thing, there is
the rich history of the Prince Bishops to tell. For another, the
Revd Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch has been commissioned to produce
an exhibition of Christianity in the UK - which will be housed at
Auckland.
Professor MacCulloch
waxes enthusiastic about the site: "If you were to put it on a
scale of the great church buildings of Europe, I think you'd nearly
be up to the Vatican, or Avignon, the Pope's Palace there."
Mr Ruffer also sees the
castle as a place of future pilgrimage. He enthuses about the
14-mile walk from Durham, along the path of a disused railway line.
It's a glimpse of the spiritual motivation behind the project.
I don't know whether he
does this with his investment clients, but two or three times in
our conversation Mr Ruffer compares himself with St Peter, and not
in a good way.
"I'm like St Peter
walking on the water. That's not to give myself any credit - 'Look
at me, walking on the water' - but because I'm always on the point
of sinking in and drowning. What I'm doing here is completely
beyond my capabilities. My main sensation is fear.
"And that makes me pray.
Prayer is like medicine: it's not a pleasure, or a duty, but like
insulin. When I've spent time in prayer, I'm calmed for 12 hours."
When it wears off, he has to pray some more.
So, what about the
finances? Auckland Castle is, he reckons, a £50-million project.
His initial offer is almost back up to £15 million now, thanks to
work done on the castle. He has pledged another £10 million to
create an endowment fund; and the Heritage Lottery Fund will
potentially contribute £10 million, leaving £15 million or so to
find.
There is no doubt that he is in this for the long haul. He walks
me back towards the town, past the gatehouse that is now his home
for half the week. He gestures towards the area where he hopes to
site a restaurant, and tells me to look out for the Queen's Head
pub in town, which they've just bought. I wonder about having lunch
there, but it is boarded up, waiting, perhaps, for St Peter to
reach it across the waves.