Bamburgh

Bamburgh Castle is one of the most dramatic sights on the British coastline. Perched on a volcanic outcrop of the Whin Sill, it rises above miles of golden sand and looks out across the North Sea towards the Farne Islands and Holy Island.

The site has been fortified since at least the Iron Age, but Bamburgh's golden era began in the sixth century when it became the royal seat of the Kingdom of Northumbria. King Ida established his stronghold here around AD 547, and for the next two centuries Bamburgh was the power centre of one of the most important Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in Britain.

The castle was besieged by Vikings, attacked by the Scots, and battered by the Wars of the Roses — becoming the first castle in England to be defeated by cannon fire during the siege of 1464. By the eighteenth century it had fallen into ruin, before being magnificently restored by the Armstrong family in the Victorian era.

Bamburgh is also the birthplace of Grace Darling, the lighthouse keeper's daughter who became a national heroine in 1838 after rowing out in a storm to rescue survivors of the wrecked SS Forfarshire. Her story is told in the RNLI Grace Darling Museum in the village.