Sea Kayaking Northumberland - Castles In The Mist

Music: All Licensed via Epidemic Sound

'Not Yet The End' by August Wilhelmsson https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/B...

'Astral Roar' by Lama House https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/0...

'The Rain Has Just Begun' by Cora Zea https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/m...

Bamburgh Castle has stood guard above the spectacular Northumberland coastline for over 1,400 years. Spanning nine acres of land on its rocky plateau, Bamburgh Castle is one of the largest inhabited castles in the country.

Lindisfarne is intimately connected with the history of Christianity in Britain. In 635 the Northumbrian king, Oswald (reigned 634–42), summoned an Irish monk named Aidan from Iona – the island-monastery off the south-west coast of what is now Scotland – to be bishop of his kingdom. Oswald granted Aidan and his companions the small tidal island of Lindisfarne on which to found a monastery.

Sometime in the 670s a monk named Cuthbert joined the monastery at Lindisfarne. He eventually became Lindisfarne’s greatest monk-bishop, and the most important saint in northern England in the Middle Ages.

As prior of Lindisfarne, Cuthbert reformed the monks’ way of life to conform to the religious practices of Rome rather than Ireland. This caused bitterness, and he decided to retire and live as a hermit. He lived at first on an island (now called St Cuthbert’s Isle) just offshore, but later moved across the sea to the more remote island of Inner Farne.

On 8 June 793 Lindisfarne suffered a devastating raid by Viking pirates – their first significant attack in western Europe. The raid caused horror across the continent. Alcuin, a York scholar working at the court of King Charlemagne in Francia, wrote to the Northumbrian king and the bishop of Lindisfarne:

'Pagans have desecrated God’s sanctuary, shed the blood of saints around the altar, laid waste the house of our hope and trampled the bodies of saints like dung in the streets … What assurance can the churches of Britain have, if St Cuthbert and so great a company of saints do not defend their own?'

The raid was physically and psychologically devastating: one of England’s holiest shrines had been attacked by pagans, and St Cuthbert had not intervened to stop them.

Lindisfarne's position in the North Sea made it vulnerable to attack from Scots and Norsemen, and by Tudor times it was clear there was a need for a stronger fortification, although by this time the Norsemen were no longer a danger. This resulted in the creation of the fort on Beblowe Crag between 1570 and 1572 which forms the basis of the present castle.