The Gallery at Gilling was stripped in 1929: the interior was first sold to the American
magnate Hearst, and then after his death bought by the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle.
It could not be restored to the Castle (as the Great Chamber was) because the ceiling
was lowered in 1930 to make a chapel in the roof-space above.
This photograph was among the negatives left by Abbot Smith and other monastic photographers
of the years between 1898 and 1925, but the condition of the gallery in this view
suggests an earlier date in that period.▪