How Barnard Castle became the surprise tourist attraction of 2020

Despite it being the inspiration for Charles Dickens’s third novel and a place where Oliver Cromwell once held council and dined, you would be forgiven for never having heard of Barnard Castle in Teesdale.

Until the summer of 2020, that is, when the historic cobbled town (pop 5,000) found itself at the centre of a media storm after it emerged Dominic Cummings took a 60-mile round trip there during the height of the coronavirus lockdown to “test his eyesight”.  

As the prime minister’s chief adviser found himself in hot water, with sources crawling out of the woodwork claiming to have seen him around the town, the inhabitants of “Barney” also found themselves thrust into the spotlight as their home was put on the map overnight.  

While not everyone welcomed the publicity, tourism chiefs and businesses embraced their newfound notoriety.  

TV antiques celebrity David Harper, who has owned a shop in the town for 20 years and lives just a few miles away, said the first he knew of the scandal was when someone mistook him for the man himself.  

“I think I was moving stuff in and out of the shop one day and somebody said to me, ‘Morning Dominic’,” the Bargain Hunt star told The Independent.  

“The way I see it is it’s just fantastic for Barnard Castle no matter what your thoughts are on it,” he said.  

“The fact we got all that publicity and people making jokes about Barnard Castle and having their eyes tested, honestly it would cost the town tens of millions of pounds in a marketing budget to get the advertising.”  

Back in May, it emerged Mr Cummings had driven his wife and young son more than 260 miles from their home in north London to his parents’ farm on the outskirts of Durham at the end of March, just a few days after the government ordered the country into a strict lockdown.  

At that time, Brits could only leave their homes if they had a “reasonable excuse”, such as to shop for essentials, travel for work or exercise once a day, while household mixing was banned.  

The Vote Leave mastermind, who once worked on the door of his uncle’s Durham nightclub, said he travelled to the family homestead after his wife Mary Wakefield, deputy editor of The Spectator magazine, fell ill with Covid symptoms and, fearing he would too, his sister agreed to help care for their son.  

But in April, on his wife’s birthday, witnesses claimed to have spotted the political strategist in Barnard Castle, about 30 miles from the family farm, where he claimed to have driven in order to test his eyesight before the journey back to London.  

The excursion – as well as Mr Cummings’s point-blank refusal to apologise during an infamous statement broadcast from No 10’s rose garden – caused uproar and sparked a national debate over whether the couple should have self-isolated in London for 14 days.  

It led to what became known as the “Dominic Cummings effect” as a study in The Lancet medical journal found a clear drop in public confidence in the government after the story broke.  

And as the furore played out in London, not a day went by without a journalist reporting live from the streets of Barnard Castle.  

Beer maker BrewDog trolled Mr Cummings by launching a Barnard Castle Eye Test IPA, shopkeepers proudly hung framed eye test charts on their walls, and tourists flocked to the town to have their photo taken beside the “Welcome to Barnard Castle” sign and local Specsavers branch.

TripAdvisor was even forced to suspend Barnard Castle’s page on the travel website after it was flooded with fake reviewers posing as Dominic Cummings.  

Nicola Stephenson, who owns The Stables cafe in the town, said she did not agree with Mr Cummings’s trip on a personal level, but that his actions may well have saved her business, which has been in the family for 80 years.  

She said her father was on the brink of shutting down the cafe during the first lockdown as it was struggling from a lack of footfall, partly because it was in a building off the beaten track.  

But thanks to a new premises on the main street and an influx of new visitors flooding into the town over the summer to retrace Mr Cummings’s footsteps the business is now thriving.  

“The trade we got in that two and a half months before we went into the second lockdown has saved us,” said Ms Stephenson.  

“From a business point of view he has done us a massive favour... we even thought about putting Cummings and Goings burgers on the menu.”  

But the cafe owner admitted not all of the townspeople were bowled over as hordes of tourists and journalists descended on their home.  

“The vast majority of people in Barnard Castle are quite elderly and they know what they like, so seeing a lot of new faces coming in to the town puts their nose out of joint,” she said.  

Claire Moore, a retired pharmacist who moved to Barnard Castle 32 years ago, said locals saw the media frenzy as a source of entertainment at a time when they couldn’t do much else.  

“There was a lot of excitement,” she said. “There was one time I was in the hardware store waiting to be served and the guy said, ‘Just a minute, I'm just tidying up in case the camera crews come to interview me’. ”

But the sudden attention also brought about mixed feelings among locals, who have continuously been under the strictest Covid rules while London was enjoying tier 2 freedoms.  

“There were a lot of people around so you were kind of thinking, it’s great these people are here but are they bringing Covid?” Ms Moore said. “I did find myself getting a bit disgruntled when I couldn’t get down the pavement but I really want Barnard Castle to thrive.”  

John Blissett, mayor of Barnard Castle, said Mr Cummings did in one day what the town has been working towards for years.  

“We’ve got a group called Making Barney Brighter Together and I’ve been working for two years trying to get people in … and then he comes and people are coming in their droves,” he said.  

The mayor, who has lived in Barnard Castle for 40 years, said Mr Cummings’s trip was still a hot topic around town. “We are thinking about offering him a job as a tourist guide,” he joked.  

When the story first broke, the Barnard Castle section of the Visit County Durham website saw a 155 per cent increase in web traffic and was the most viewed page of the week, according to managing director Michelle Gorman.  

Catherine Greaves, who works at GSC Grays estate agents in the town, said she had seen a surge in the number of people wanting to relocate to the area.  

Ms Greaves said many properties were selling for more than the asking price, which is uncommon for the area, while both viewings and agreed sales between 1 June and 31 August were almost double compared to the same period last year.  

Although she could not be certain about the exact cause of the uptick, she believed the media attention surrounding Mr Cummings’s visit and people wanting to move to the north for more space in the wake of the pandemic could be reasons.  

Will Barney become the next Cornwall for the beloved staycation? Only time will tell.