On Easter Sunday we had our yummy breakfast and checked out of our small cottage before starting our 2-1/2 hour drive home. We timed it so that we arrived at Bamburgh Castle (just south of Holy Island, still in Northumberland) at 10:00 when the castle opened.
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| Bamburgh Castle |
Bamburgh (pronounced Bam-burr-ah) is set high on a rocky cliff overlooking the English channel. It's quite an imposing site when you turn the corner and high up on a hill, overlooking the wee village is this massive fortress of a castle. There is archeological evidence of a human activity of one sort or another at Bamburgh all the way back to the Mesolithic period (10,000 - 4,000 BC) on up to 43AD when the Romans arrived on Britain. There is little written information of Bamburgh during the Roman occupation, so it's hard to know what if any impact they had. Given that Hadrian's Wall is south of Bamburgh, I would guess if the Romans had any interaction, it wasn't of much success as they pulled back and built the wall.
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| Sand dunes in front of Bambugh castle |
From Bede (a historian who lived during and wrote about the Anglo-Saxon period), we know this site became a castle/fortress in 547 when King Ida built a fortress with wood fences, that later became stone walls. This location was the home of the Anglo-Saxon King of Northumberland for close to 300 years. During this time and on through the next 300 years of Viking rule, the kingdom of Northumberland stretched (plus or minus) from Edinburgh to Leeds and the capitol shifted between Bamburgh and York.
I had a question at the Minster the other day that I thought I would answer here in case anyone was wondering.
Who were the Angles and the Saxons? Mostly people from northern Germany, Denmark, and Northern Holland. You're welcome :-)
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| Anglo-Saxon Migration (Source: Wikipedia) |
Okay, enough with the history nerd stuff. Here's a selfie of us in the car park as we awaited the portcullis (fancy castle gate door) to open for the day.
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| Bamburgh selfie |
Upon entering the castle grounds, we learned that the grounds opened at 10:00, but that the state rooms (the public rooms inside the castle) wouldn't open until 11:00. No big deal, as there was lots to look at outside… but it was flippin' freezing and the wind was whipping us around like crazy! I accidentally took the photo below as I tried to put my gloves on. By the end of the day, I seriously felt like I had dreadlocks from the wind!
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| Accidental happy feet picture |
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| Canons that have defended the castle |
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| Cannons at the defense |
The existing castle was re-built in the 18th century and the oldest remains that can still be seen is the foundation of a 12th century chapel (not pictured, it's just a handful of stones in a grassy field just north of this photo).
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| Look! The French (or whomever) are coming! |
Because Bamburg (and all of Northumberland) is a 'border town,' it had to defend itself from continental invaders from Romans on up through William the Conquerer in 1066, during Scottish/British border skirmishes, the War of the Roses, the English Civil War, and so on. Therefore, there was a need for so many cannons!
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| Backlit view of the castle |
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| 18th century windmill |
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| 18th Century Windmill |
Near the windmill was the medieval kitchen that has more recently been used as a charity school for the poor (in the 18th and 19th centuries) and is now a museum to the scientific endeavors of the 1st Lord Armstrong in the early 1900s.
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| Bamburgh village |
I was allowed to take photos inside for once! Most of the rooms were so large, it was hard to get a good photo. I loved the exposed beams of the long hall's ceiling.
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| The long hall |
The rooms in castles are always so large and grand, but none of them look too cosy, do they? I suppose comfy wasn't something that people really sought after back in the day. You know, when food, water, and safety were constantly at the forefront of thought.
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| Sitting room |
A few rooms were filled with armor and weaponry. I tried to get some photos of the weapons, but they didn't photograph very well. All of the armor had been used at one time or another and testing had been done on the weapons and almost all of them had 'seen battle.' Which I take to mean they all had evidence of blood on them, and that gave me a shudder. When you're in a room full of hundreds of weapons that had been used to cause physical violence, you don't really want to stick around a gawk. Well, I didn't, anyway.
One other note: the middle helmet (below) I get, but the other two? I mean, who could see out of either of those helmets well enough to defend himself and know who the enemy was and where they were located? They also don't look light or particularly easy to maneuver!
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| Old helmets |
I always like taking a photo out of windows and wonder how many people have looked out this window over the last several hundred years; what they were wearing, what they were thinking… Anyone else, or is that just me?
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| View from a castle window |
I read about one Bamburgh castle employee who lived and worked in the castle in the late 18th/ early 19th century. He was a joiner (woodworker) whose main job was to build caskets for all of the shipwreck victims who washed up on shore in and around Bamburgh. (Apparently, that happened a lot.) He was also tasked with installing a bathroom in the castle keep with hot and cold running water. While working on the project, he located a long-forgotten well - a must for any castle under siege! The well (pictured below), once refurbished, was a reliable source off clean water… the engineering of the well and water draw (through 145 feet of sold rock) dates back to the Anglo-Saxon days. An amazing feet of engineering for the time!
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| Pretty stonework & old water well |
After we exited through the gift shop (as always), we drove the rest of the way home and made it home in time to miss driving through a massive hail storm. And then our friends invited us over to theirs for a surprise Easter Sunday dinner of roast lamb.
Lamb: they are cute *and* delicious! :-)
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