Bowes

MARY BOWES, COUNTESS OF STRATHMORE
(1749 - 1800)

The romantic shell of a great mansion on the banks of the Derwent, a beautiful Palladian chapel and a 140 foot column to British liberty (taller than Nelson's actual column) mark the site of Gibside. George Bowes (1701-60) the coal magnate was responsible for the park and its buildings, as well as the Great Walk stretching for over half a mile, along which he used to race his horses. In 1750, Lancelot 'Capability' Brown (born in Kirkharle, Northumberland), wrote to George Bowes proposing himself as the architect of the monumental column: 'I should have a double pleasure in [building] it, your situation being my native country.'

George Bowes' daughter, Mary Eleanor, is the present Queen's great- great-great-grandmother. She was a lady of learning, and her beautiful botanical cabinet, with its unusual drainage system in the lower part, is now in the Bowes Museum. Mary wrote and printed a play The Siege of Jerusalem, but is better known for her extraordinary Confessions. Though she had five children by her handsome husband John, the Earl of Strathmore (1737-76) she was not satisfied with one man. There was an affair with the brother of a local lord, followed by another with a certain George Grey. He is described in her Confessions as: 'A dishonest, lazy, amorous, greedy pussycat of a man.' She was already pregnant by him when her husband died aboard ship en route for Lisbon.

In 1776, the countess married a romantic Irish desperado, Captain Andrew Stoney, who ill-treated her in public and private. The affair became the talk of London society. Stoney abducted Mary in Oxford Street after she instituted divorce proceedings, but was eventually apprehended at Streatlam Castle. His efforts to cling on to Mary's fortune failed and he died in prison in 1810, where he had languished for twenty years. William Thackeray (q.v.) based his celebrated novel Barry Lyndon partly upon the scandal. The full story is told in Ralph Arnold's The Unhappy Countess.

Augustus Hare (q.v.) later described Gibside as a beautiful place, with 'exquisite woods feathering down to the Derwent.' There were two ghosts, he says, one being Lady Tyrconnel of the spirited Delaval family, who lived with John Bowes, Mary's son, the tenth Earl of Strathmore, on rather too intimate terms. A lover of the theatre, John Bowes had become attached to her during amateur theatricals at Seaton Delaval Hall. Lady Tyrconnel's funeral in 1800 almost bankrupted the estate; he had her lie in state, with painted face and decked in jewels and Brussels lace from head to toe, in every town on the way to London, before final burial in Westminster Abbey.

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
MARY BOWES, COUNTESS OF STRATHMORE (1749 - 1800) The romantic shell of a great mansion on the banks of the Derwent, a beautiful Palladian chapel and a 140 foot column to British liberty (taller than Nelson's actual column) mark the site of Gibside. George Bowes (1701-60) the coal magnate was responsible for the park and its buildings, as well as the Great Walk stretching for over half a mile, along which he used to race his horses. In 1750, Lancelot 'Capability' Brown (born in Kirkharle, Northumberland), wrote to George Bowes proposing himself as the architect of the monumental column: 'I should have a double pleasure in [building] it, your situation being my native country.' George Bowes' daughter, Mary Eleanor, is the present Queen's great- great-great-grandmother. She was a lady of learning, and her beautiful botanical cabinet, with its unusual drainage system in the lower part, is now in the Bowes Museum. Mary wrote and printed a play The Siege of Jerusalem, but is better known for her extraordinary Confessions. Though she had five children by her handsome husband John, the Earl of Strathmore (1737-76) she was not satisfied with one man. There was an affair with the brother of a local lord, followed by another with a certain George Grey. He is described in her Confessions as: 'A dishonest, lazy, amorous, greedy pussycat of a man.' She was already pregnant by him when her husband died aboard ship en route for Lisbon. In 1776, the countess married a romantic Irish desperado, Captain Andrew Stoney, who ill-treated her in public and private. The affair became the talk of London society. Stoney abducted Mary in Oxford Street after she instituted divorce proceedings, but was eventually apprehended at Streatlam Castle. His efforts to cling on to Mary's fortune failed and he died in prison in 1810, where he had languished for twenty years. William Thackeray (q.v.) based his celebrated novel Barry Lyndon partly upon the scandal. The full story is told in Ralph Arnold's The Unhappy Countess. Augustus Hare (q.v.) later described Gibside as a beautiful place, with 'exquisite woods feathering down to the Derwent.' There were two ghosts, he says, one being Lady Tyrconnel of the spirited Delaval family, who lived with John Bowes, Mary's son, the tenth Earl of Strathmore, on rather too intimate terms. A lover of the theatre, John Bowes had become attached to her during amateur theatricals at Seaton Delaval Hall. Lady Tyrconnel's funeral in 1800 almost bankrupted the estate; he had her lie in state, with painted face and decked in jewels and Brussels lace from head to toe, in every town on the way to London, before final burial in Westminster Abbey.
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