{"id":11613,"date":"2010-04-12T09:47:35","date_gmt":"2010-04-12T13:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.5starweddingmagazine.com\/?p=11613"},"modified":"2024-06-11T12:47:10","modified_gmt":"2024-06-11T11:47:10","slug":"the-perfect-alternative-wedding-venue-a-beautiful-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/5starweddingdirectory.com\/blog\/the-perfect-alternative-wedding-venue-a-beautiful-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"Alternative wedding venue in a beautiful museum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>Alternative wedding venue in a beautiful museum<\/strong><\/em> &#8211; There\u2019s quite a romantic story behind the existence of the Bowes Museum, which lies in the beautiful Teesdale, near the market town of Barnard Castle and a short minute drive from the Scotch Corner junction of the A1 along the A66.\u00a0 It is situated in the heart of the Pennines in County Durham, North East England.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_11614\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11614\" style=\"width: 864px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/5starweddingdirectory.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/bowes_6830-1.jpg\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-11614\" title=\"Alternative wedding venue in a beautiful museum\" src=\"http:\/\/5starweddingdirectory.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/bowes_6830-1.jpg\" alt=\"Alternative wedding venue in a beautiful museum\" width=\"864\" height=\"609\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-11614\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11614\" title=\"Alternative wedding venue in a beautiful museum\" src=\"http:\/\/5starweddingdirectory.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/bowes_6830-1.jpg\" alt=\"Alternative wedding venue in a beautiful museum\" width=\"864\" height=\"609\" \/><\/noscript><\/a> Alternative wedding venue in a beautiful museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">John Bowes, born in 1811 was the son of the 10<sup>th<\/sup> Earl of Strathmore.\u00a0 Although they had lived together as man and wife for many years John\u2019s parents only married 16 hours prior to the death of the Earl of Strathmore.\u00a0 Following a long legal battle where John Bowes was awarded the Durham Estates John was never recognised as the legitimate heir to the Strathmore title.\u00a0 He was educated at Eton and went on to become a very successful businessman in his own right.\u00a0 From 1847 he divided his time between France and England.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">John Bowes had a passion for the arts.\u00a0 In 1847 he travelled to Paris where he bought a theatre and met the future Mrs Bowes \u2013 Parisian born actress Josephine Coffin-Chevallier.\u00a0 They married in 1852.\u00a0 Josephine, herself a talented amateur painter shared her husband&#8217;s passion for the arts and art forms, including paintings, ceramics, <a href=\"https:\/\/5starweddingdirectory.com\/blog\/luxury-weddings-europe-top-10-european-luxury-wedding\/\">furniture and textiles.\u00a0<\/a> With the idea of making the art they so loved accessible to \u201cthe people\u201d John and Josephine decided to build a museum very close to Barnard Castle.\u00a0 As Josephine laid the foundation stone in 1869 she said: \u201cI lay the bottom stone, and you, Mr Bowes, will lay the top-stone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Between them, John and Josephine purchased 15,000 objects for the museum during the years between 1862 and 1874.\u00a0 Sadly, Josephine passed away in 1874 and never saw the museum completed.\u00a0 John passed away in 1885 and did not fulfil Josephine\u2019s\u2019 wish of \u201claying the top-stone\u201d.\u00a0 Undeterred by their passing the museum was seen through to completion by the <a href=\"https:\/\/5starweddingdirectory.com\/blog\/\">museum<\/a> trustees and opened it\u2019s doors to the public for the first time on the 10<sup>th<\/sup> June 1892.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_11615\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11615\" style=\"width: 908px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/5starweddingdirectory.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/bowes_6801-1.jpg\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-11615\" title=\"The Bowes Museum\" src=\"http:\/\/5starweddingdirectory.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/bowes_6801-1.jpg\" alt=\"The Bowes Museum\" width=\"908\" height=\"690\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-11615\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11615\" title=\"The Bowes Museum\" src=\"http:\/\/5starweddingdirectory.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/bowes_6801-1.jpg\" alt=\"The Bowes Museum\" width=\"908\" height=\"690\" \/><\/noscript><\/a> The Bowes Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Although there are so many beautiful pieces of art to see in the museum one of the most famous and from which the museum takes its logo is the 230-year-old life-sized Silver Swan.\u00a0 The Swan is an English Silver automation which is still in working order and is operated daily at the museum.\u00a0 It is simply beautiful.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">One can see in the building architecture of the museum the French influence \u2013 it is very much along the lines of a French Chateau and took 23 years to build.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The museum gardens were designed by John and Josephine and comprise of formal gardens and parkland.\u00a0 The fountains are magnificent on the terrace at the front of the house.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">With its beautiful architecture, fabulous grounds and mouth-watering menus the Bowes Museum offers everything and more you could possibly wish for in a wedding venue, a special occasion or simply a brilliant day out with the family.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a title=\"fnsweddings\" href=\"http:\/\/www.fnsweddings.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">FNS Weddings<\/a> are delighted to be the only officially recommended photographers for the Bowes Museum.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The perfect alternative wedding venue in a beautiful Museum: here\u2019s quite a romantic story behind the existence of the Bowes Museum, which lies in the beautiful Teesdale, near the market town of Barnard Castle and a short minute drive from the Scotch Corner junction of the A1 along the A66.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":126159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-luxury-venues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/5starweddingdirectory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/5starweddingdirectory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/5starweddingdirectory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/5starweddingdirectory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/5starweddingdirectory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/5starweddingdirectory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/5starweddingdirectory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/5starweddingdirectory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/5starweddingdirectory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/5starweddingdirectory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}