Mount Oswald

Entrance to the Mount Oswald estate

The manor house was built for John Richardby, a London merchant, in 1800.[2] 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.[2] The Rev Percival Spearman Wilkinson commissioned Phillip Wyatt to expand the house in the Georgian style in 1830.[3][4]

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.[2] The house was acquired by North of England Estates (a business owned by the McKeag family) in 1934:[5] 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.[6] The property was then acquired by the property developers, Banks Group, for residential development in January 2014.[3]

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.[7][8] The project was procured by Durham University under a private finance initiative contract in August 2018.[9] The construction works, which were undertaken by Interserve at a cost of £105 million, saw John Snow College relocating from Rushford Court, and South College, a completely new college, being created on the Mount Oswald site in September 2020.[10]

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.[11] The project, which envisaged Banks Group transferring the manor house to the council for a nominal sum, was granted planning consent in September 2020.[12] In March 2020 Banks Group also applied for planning permission to convert the gatehouses into residential properties.[13]