Barnard Castle Rural District

Teesdale was, from 1974 to 2009, a local government district in County Durham, England. Its council was based in Barnard Castle and it was named after the valley of the River Tees. That part of the district south of the River Tees is historically part of the North Riding of Yorkshire, and made up Startforth Rural District before the Local Government Act 1972 came into effect in 1974. The other predecessors to the district were Barnard Castle Urban District and Barnard Castle Rural District. Much of the area had before 1894 constituted a single Teesdale rural sanitary district. The district was the least-populous ordinary district in England (with a population of 24,457 in 2001), with only the City of London and the Isles of Scilly being smaller. It also had the third-lowest population density in England, after the former districts of Eden in Cumbria and Tynedale in Northumberland. The district was abolished as part of the 2009 structural changes to local government in England.

National Cycle Route 14 forms part of the National Cycle Network in North East England. It connects Darlington in County Durham with South Shields on the River Tyne. The route has currently (2016) a length of 86 miles (138 km). Much of it uses paths along disused railway lines and is thus free from motor traffic.

Barnard Castle is a ruined medieval castle situated in the town of the same name in County Durham, England.

Barnard Castle Market Cross (also known as the Butter Market or Break's Folley) is an octagonal construction in the market town of Barnard Castle, County Durham, England. It was built in 1747 by Thomas Breaks and is a Grade I listed building. It has had multiple uses including a courtroom, fire station, a gaol, a dairy market, a toll booth and a town hall. The weather vane bears two holes, seemingly the result of musket shots being fired. A local legend tells of a match in 1804 between a soldier and gamekeeper to decide who was the better marksman. The soldier, named as Taylor of the Teesdale Volunteer Legion, and Cruddas, a gamekeeper from the Earl of Strathmore's estate at Streatlam, reputedly took aim at the weather vane from the doorway of the Turk's Head pub. Both men hit the mark.

Barnard Castle (, BAR-nəd) is a market town on the north bank of the River Tees, in County Durham, England. The town is named after and built around a ruined medieval castle. The town's Bowes Museum has an 18th-century Silver Swan automaton exhibit and paintings by Goya and El Greco. Barnard Castle is on the left bank of the River Tees, opposite to Startforth, and is 21 miles (34 km) south-west of the county town of Durham. Nearby towns include Bishop Auckland to the north-east, Darlington to the east and Richmond to the south-east. The largest employer is GlaxoSmithKline, with a manufacturing facility on the town's outskirts.

Radio Teesdale was a community radio station in Barnard Castle, County Durham, serving the Teesdale area of England and owned and operated by Teesdale Community Broadcasting Limited, a not-for-profit community group. Radio Teesdale could be heard on FM radio on the frequencies 102.1 and 105.5 MHz in the Teesdale area.

Barnard Castle railway station was situated on the South Durham & Lancashire Union Railway (Stainmore Line) between Bishop Auckland and Kirkby Stephen East. The railway station served the town of Barnard Castle. The first station (at grid reference NZ053169) was opened on the Darlington and Barnard Castle Railway on 9 July 1856, and was closed to passengers on 1 May 1862 when services were diverted to the second station on the South Durham & Lancashire Railway which had opened in 1861. Freight traffic continued to use the first station until 1965. Despite being a junction station for three lines, Barnard Castle only had one through platform and two bay platforms. Regular passenger services to Tebay ceased in 1952, with the remainder of the Stainmore Line to Bishop Auckland and Kirkby Stephen East shutting in 1962. The station remained in use for the lines to Darlington and Middleton-in-Teesdale until 1964 when it was shut as the result of the Beeching Axe. Today the site of the second station is a car park for the nearby GlaxoSmithKline factory. The first station has been converted into private houses and the first station's portico now resides in Valley Gardens in Saltburn.

HM Prison Deerbolt is a male Category C Training Prison in Barnard Castle, County Durham, England. The prison is operated by His Majesty's Prison Service.

Startforth is a village on the Pennines end of south Teesdale, England. The population of Startforth taken at the 2011 Census was 1,361. It was in the historic North Riding of Yorkshire. Along with the rest of the former Startforth Rural District, it was transferred to County Durham for administrative and ceremonial purposes on 1 April 1974, under the provisions of the Local Government Act 1972. It is situated south-west of Barnard Castle, north of the River Tees. Located in the village is Deerbolt Prison, a male juveniles' prison and Young Offenders Institution.

The Bowes Museum is an art gallery in the town of Barnard Castle, in County Durham in northern England. It was built to designs by Jules Pellechet and John Edward Watson to house the art collection of John Bowes and his wife Joséphine Benoîte Coffin-Chevallier, and opened in 1892. It contains paintings by El Greco, Francisco Goya, Canaletto, Jean-Honoré Fragonard and François Boucher, together with several collections of decorative art, especially porcelain, textiles, tapestries, clocks and costumes, and objects of local historical interest. Some early works of Émile Gallé were commissioned by Coffin-Chevallier. A popular showpiece is a life-size eighteenth-century Silver Swan automaton, which periodically preens itself, looks round and appears to catch and swallow a fish.

The Silver Swan is an automaton dating from the 18th century and now housed in the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, Teesdale, County Durham, England. It was acquired by John Bowes, the museum's founder, from a Parisian jeweller in 1872. The swan, which is life-sized, is a clockwork-driven device that includes a music box. The swan sits in a "stream" made of glass rods and surrounded by silver leaves. Small silver fish can be seen "swimming" in the stream. When the clockwork is wound, the music box plays and the glass rods rotate giving the illusion of flowing water. The swan turns its head from side to side and also preens itself. After a few moments the swan notices the swimming fish and bends down to catch and eat one. The swan's head then returns to the upright position and the performance, which lasts about 32 seconds, is over. The mechanism was designed and built by the Low Countries inventor John Joseph Merlin (1735–1803) in conjunction with the London inventor James Cox (1723–1800) in 1773. The swan was described in the Cox's Museum Act 1772 (13 Geo. 3. c. 41) as being 3 feet (0.91 m) in diameter and 18 feet (5.49 m) high. This would seem to indicate that at one time there was more to the swan than remains today as it is no longer that high. It is said that there was originally a waterfall behind the swan, which was stolen while it was on tour – this could possibly explain the height which is now 'missing'. It is known that the swan was sold several times and was shown at the Exposition Universelle held in Paris in 1867. The American novelist Mark Twain observed the swan and recorded his observation in a chapter of the Innocents Abroad, writing that the swan "had a living grace about his movement and a living intelligence in his eyes." In 2017 starting in February the swan spent 6 weeks at the Science Museum as part of an exhibition on robots. To help preserve the mechanism, the swan is only operated once each day (twice on holidays). The museum was closed during 2020 and 2021 so the daily display did not take place; when the exhibit was being prepared for reopening in May 2021 the clockwork mechanism was found to have seized up and it was withdrawn from display for further conservation. In October 2021, the Bowes Museum hosted a 'Silver Swan Study Week', led by clockmaker-conservator Matthew Read. During the week, visitors were able to watch a group of specialist conservators and curators dismantle the swan as they explored the mechanical condition of the object, ahead of creating a conservation plan for its preservation. The swan was returned to a functional state by March 2024. The Bowes Museum believes that the Swan is their best-known artefact, and it is the basis of the museum's logo.

Teesdale School is a secondary school and sixth form with academy status located in Barnard Castle, County Durham, England. It offers subjects from GCSE to Advanced Subsidiary Level and Advanced Level.