Bamburgh Castle, Northumberland

Bamburgh Castle one of the most imposing castles in England sits atop a volcanic crag on the very edge of the wild and magnificent coast of Northumberland. From its position high above the beach there are fantastic views of the Seal and Puffin inhabited Farne Islands, including The Holy Island Of Lindisfarne. The castle as it stands today has appeared in the films, “Becket”, and “The Tragedy Of MacBeth” and featured as the ancestral home of Uhtred in Bernard Cornwell’s, “The Last Kingdom”, “The Pale Horseman”, The Lords Of The North” and “Sword Song”. It is also thought to be the likely site of Lancelot’s castle “The Joyous Gard”.

Arthurian legends apart the castle has a long history and the site is said to have been occupied in the first century AD and probably for much longer than that. Up until 547AD it was Din Guardi the British fortress capital of King Morgan Bulc of the kingdom of Bryneich. But in that year 547AD the Anglo Saxon Ida and his twelve sons arrived with their men. They came in 40 ships and landed somewhere on the northeast coast of Briton above the river Humber. After setting up a base, Ida attacked the Britons, ousted king Morcant Bulc and took control of Bryneich, Morgan Bulc fled to the Kingdom of Gododdin. Ida took over the coastal stronghold known by the Britons as Din Guyardi. At first he built a hedge and palisade fence around the top of the promontory, later he replaced it with a wall of stone. His new kingdom was now known by the Angle name of Bernica.

By 550AD Ida had extended his kingdom by conquering huge areas of land. To the south, his area of control now reached beyond the river Tees and he had earned a reputation as ‘The Flame Bearer’ for the havoc he and his men had wrought. Ida died in 559AD, but his descendents by continued battle and force of arms defeated Britons, Scots and Welsh armies alike until they had built one of the largest and most powerful Kingdoms in the land. That Kingdom was Northumbria and it stretched from Sheffield in Yorkshire to the Firth of Forth in Scotland and across to the west coast of Cumbria.

In 615AD Æthelfrith, Ida’s grandson took a new wife, Bebba and Din Guyardi was renamed in her honour as Bebbanburgh (Fort of Bebba), this later corrupted into Bamburgh.

Ida’s successors were powerful men who built and held onto Northumbria by force of arms. They seemed to be continually at war. On their northern border they were attacked by the Picts and the Scots, in the west by the Welsh and Irish, while in the south they fought against the Saxons of Mercia. The kingdom that they built and fought for lasted until 667AD when the last two kings Osbeorht and Aelle II were killed trying to take back York from the Danish invaders led by the Ragnar brothers, Ivar the Boneless, Halfdan of the Wide Embrace and Ubbe. Osbeorht was killed in battle, but Aelle II was tortured to death.

The Danes placed a series of puppet kings on the throne before finally taking the throne themselves and Anglo Saxon Northumbria ceased to exist. Beyond the river Tyne however, the fortress of Bamburgh survived despite the destruction of the Danes and Bernicia continued to be ruled by the descendants of Ida. Only now they were called High-Reeves instead of Kings.