A former mining community is in the throes of regeneration - and a collection of Baroque Catholic art is at its heart. Laura Gascoigne went to visit

In 1997, the attention of the Church Commissioners for England was drawn to a valuable but anomalous asset: a series of paintings by Francisco de Zurbarán hanging in Auckland Castle, historical palace of the Bishops of Durham. The 12 life-size paintings of Jacob and 11 of his sons – minus Benjamin – had been acquired in 1756 by Bishop Richard Trevor, a passionate campaigner for the naturalisation of British Jews who had hoped, by installing them in the castle dining room, to convert his dinner guests to the cause.

The Zurbaráns had long outlived their ­original purpose and were now worth an awful lot of money. Besides, thought the commissioners, of what possible interest could a bunch of Spanish Baroque paintings be to Bishop Auckland, a deprived former mining community in the north east of England? The local civic society and incumbent bishops thought differently, but their campaign to save the paintings for the area seemed doomed to failure until a millionaire fund manager rode to the rescue.