Bamburgh Research Project
The pre-eminent role that the Castle site has played in the history of the region can be explained by a number of factors, the most obvious of which is its readily defensible position dominating the sea and land. Beyond the dolerite rock itself, the site’s wider importance seems to derive from the land itself. According to surviving medieval records the lands of north-Northumberland and Lower Tweeddale produced greater estate revenues than comparable estates in the south of the county. This would appear to be due to the better drained soils that allowed for more intensive agriculture. This was significant in the pre-modern age before the advent of large-scale land drainage schemes and chemical fertilizer. Given that in the prehistoric and early medieval periods agricultural wealth meant power, this must have given north Northumberland in general and Bamburgh in particular a great advantage over many other power-centres. Top of page
Although no reference to Bamburgh appears in any written history before the 6th century AD, we know from archaeological evidence that the site was occupied long before this time. In the earliest modern archaeological investigation of the Castle, Dr Brian Hope-Taylor excavated a number of trenches sufficiently deep enough to recover evidence of prehistoric occupation. The evidence included post-holes from buildings, probably roundhouses, animal bone and pottery shards.Top of page
The occupation of the site, almost certainly continued during the Roman period, which is of great interest given Bamburgh’s location between Hadrian’s Wall to the south and the Antonine Frontier to the north. This means that for periods of the Roman occupation of Britain, Bamburgh lay at times both within the Roman province and beyond its northern frontier. This changing border must have had a profound influence on the rulers of Bamburgh and must have influenced the political leadership of the region. In a brief report on his excavations at Bamburgh published in 1960, Brian Hope-Taylor identified early- and late- Roman layers and the Bamburgh Research Project has identified Roman period material from Trenches 1, 3 and 7, indicating that a site of some importance waits to be discovered. Top of page
In the period following the end of Roman administration, even the most important buildings were constructed from timber that would rapidly decay to leave little trace of their having ever existed. The general absence of structural remains and the rarity of textual information means that in the past the period was often referred to as the Dark Ages. Modern archaeology has in many ways redressed this imbalance by identifying the post-holes of timber buildings, the distribution of which, in many cases, allows the ground plan of buildings that long ago decayed to be reconstructed.
Apart from archaeological evidence, this period marks the gradual appearance of written history. Although the Romans left a great volume of written history, very little of it addressed itself to the far flung northern frontier. It is not until the 6th century AD, with the work of a monk called Nennius, that Bamburgh finally makes an appearance in the written record. When it does so it is with the British name of “Din Guyardi”. It seems that at this time Bamburgh, like Edinburgh and Dumbarton, was an important regional centre and very probably the chief stronghold of a local king.Top of page
Pottery made from fired clay can be made in an almost infinite variety of styles and displays different levels of sophistication in its manufacture, from the simplest crudely fired vessels heated by a camp fire to mass manufactured porcelain ceramics. The technological advances and variations in styles can be mapped into a sequence that changes over time. This is called a typology and is a principle form of dating for archaeologist since the material, although easily broken, is very hardy over time.
The Arrival of the Anglo-Saxons:
The 6th century was a critical time in the history of Northumberland because it saw the transition from a British land to one dominated by the Anglo-Saxon English. Bamburgh passed into the hands of an Anglo-Saxon dynasty in the middle of this century, but it was not the first part of the region to do so. Anglo-Saxon burials dated decades earlier have been excavated in Cleveland and there is some indication of an Anglian presence in the Tyne valley at Corbridge circa AD 500. From this archaeological evidence we now know that the arrival of King Ida at Bamburgh noted in AD 547 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was not the advent of an Anglian kingdom north of the Tees, but part of a long process that had been ongoing for generations. Though not the first to arrive, Ida and his followers proved to be the most important because by the end of the century his successors had founded the pre-eminent royal line of Anglian Northumbria.Top of page
An Aristocratic Burial Ground:
During a great storm in 1817, a mass of sand was blown out from the dunes to the south of the Castle, thereby exposing a number of human burials contained in cists. Cists come in a number of types and from many different dates but some of those at Bamburgh are Christian and without grave goods, identical in form to a type known from south-east Scotland dating from this very period. The Bamburgh Research Project successfully re-located this burial ground in 1998, and its excavation featured in 2001 on the BBC’s Meet the Ancestors. The result of tests done on the bones and finds in the Bowl Hole suggest that the bodies are perhaps those of the aristocratic Anglo-Saxon court at Bamburgh.
Pictures of the Bowl Hole during excavation.
Bede and the Northumbrian Golden Age:
The History of Northumbria in the 7th and early 8th centuries was extensively recorded by a monk at the Jarrow monastery called Bede, whose Ecclesiastical History of the English People became the equivalent of an early medieval best-seller. In Bede's history, Bamburgh was accorded the dual status of “urbs” and “civitas”, terms that indicate an extensive site of foremost importance. Further indication of this high status can be gleaned from the finds evidence that has already come to light from the excavations within the Castle, including small gold objects, including the famous Bamburgh Beast, strap ends, and fragment of a carved stone seat or even throne, recovered from beneath foliage within the grounds, all of which are on display in the Castle’s archaeology museum. The recovery of such material would support the textual evidence for the high status of the site during this period.Top of page
A cist is a stone box formed by lining the sides of a grave cut with stone slabs set on edge, into which the body can be placed. Some have a capping slab placed over the top like the lid on a coffin
From this time until the Viking attacks of the 9th century, the Castle site was the ‘capital’ of the royal dynasty of Northumbria and an important cult centre where the hand of St Oswald was preserved in the Basilica of St Peter. The take-over of York by Viking Danish kings 866 did not mark the end of Bamburgh’s importance for the region. By the early 10th century a dynasty of earls based at Bamburgh were ruling an Anglo-Saxon Northumberland, which at that time extended from the Tees to the Forth. This extraordinary family, who were very likely responsible for the fall of Eric Bloodaxe in 954 and who fought as equals with the kings of the Scots, remained in power in the region until after the Norman Conquest.Top of page
The Anglo-Saxon earls lost their grip on power in the region following blood feud and rebellion and were subsequently replaced by Normans. The history of the Norman earldom was cut short when, in 1095, Earl Robert de Mowbray joined a conspiracy against King William II (Rufus); however after a siege at Bamburgh he was captured, deposed, and imprisoned. The earldom was suppressed and the county of Northumberland administered by the sheriff. The earldom was revived for a short time in the 12th century and given to Henry the son of David I of Scotland, during a brief period when Northumberland lay within the orbit of the Kingdom of the Scots. Bamburgh remained a royal Castle, the administrative centre for the sheriff in the north of Northumberland. When Henry Percy was made earl of Northumberland by Edward III (ruled 1327-77) the relationship between the earldom and Bamburgh was severed and the new political centre moved to the Percy’s Castle at Alnwick. The immense strength of Bamburgh Castle prevented it from ever falling into obscurity and it appears again and again as a place of defence and refuge and, at times, imprisonment.Top of page
The Castle was badly damaged by gunfire during a siege by the Yorkists in 1464 and left in a ruinous state. After the Union of the Crowns in 1603, having lost its military usefulness, the Castle was granted into the hands of the Forster family. The Foresters were bankrupt by the 18th century after which the estate passed into the ownership of Nathaniel Lord Crewe, Bishop of York on whose death it formed part of a charitable trust, administered in the later 18th century by Dr John Sharp. It was Sharp who began the restoration process creating a school for girls and hostel for shipwrecked mariners. At the end of the 19th century, the William 1st Lord Armstrong purchased the Castle and rebuilt the living quarters of the Castle on a lavish scale. Today, as it has always done, the Castle rock and the structures on it have an impressive brooding presence over the surrounding landscape, perhaps the most recognisable structure in the Northumbrian landscape.
See more pictures of the castle as it is today.