Christian Heritage

After the Romans left Britain, there began a series of invasions from Northern Europe. The middle and east of Britain was settled by a Germanic tribe known as the Angles whilst south Britain was conquered by the Saxons.

The merging of two Angle kingdoms in the early 7th century (Bernicia and Deira) led to the creation of a new Kingdom with its capital at Bamburgh. It stretched from Hull to Edinburgh and was named 'Northumbria' - the land north of the River Humber. The kingdom was soon acknowledged as the most important of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, (the 7 English kingdom's of that time).

After King Oswald of Northumbria won the battle of Heavenfield, he invited the Christian monks of Iona to establish a Priory on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, which they did in 635 AD.

The Priory became one of the most important seats of Christian learning in Western Europe, its greatest bishop being St Cuthbert. After Cuthbert's death in 696AD, the Priory produced possibly the 7th century's greatest work of art, the beautiful Lindisfarne Gospels, now housed in the British Library. A 'Turning the Pages' computer-based version of the Gospels can be seen at the Lindisfarne Heritage Centre and at the Woodhorn Colliery Museum in Ashington.

Some of the Christian Heritage sites and places of information within the AONB include:

Lindisfarne Priory

Lindisfarne Heritage Centre

Warkworth Hermitage

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