Northumbria - Hotels - Property - Holidays - England
Christian
heritage? Sounds a bit dusty? Not Northumbria's! It's
all 'bests and firsts'. The first Christians in the
North came to Holy Island. English history was first
written by Bede, at Jarrow. Or best of all there's Durham, "the finest Norman Cathedral in the world".
It's got a zillion steps to the top of the tower… nothing
dusty up there, eh?
What did the Romans ever
do for us? Well something quite remarkable actually…
they built one of the best bits of the Roman Empire,
right here! Hadrian's Wall was one man's vision for
protecting his territory, and it was high, long and
just plain mean enough to work! It's still here! Along
with roman forts like Arbeia and Segedunum!
When the French conquered
us, they thought we needed to know just who was in charge.
So in came a little made-to-measure kingdom of Prince
Bishops, charged not only with running Durham Cathedral
but, troublesome Northumbria too! Imagine that, if you
can! Bishops minting coins, creating laws and building
castles!
Our medieval history
is all storybook stuff! Take, for example, the 'Border
Reivers' - noisy tribal families who barged into Northumbria
and burnt everything! Then, of course, there were the
Vikings who gave us some of England's most breathtaking
fortresses - true fairytale-like castles such as Bamburgh
and Dunstanburgh.
Northumbria has two World Heritage Sites of year-round, world-wide interest. Hadrian's Wall and Durham Cathedral are some of the most important landmarks in world history.
Hadrian's Wall marks the edge of the Roman Empire, the furthest and most feared posting in the Roman Army! Emperor Hadrian ordered the building of a wall from the Tyne to the Solway to separate the land of the Britons from the land of the Picts in 122 AD. Visit Corstopitum near Corbridge where you can see the remains of a garrison town, see the foundations of an entire Roman camp at Housesteads along with granaries, guard houses, and communal toilets! The temple at Vindolanda, the fort of Arbeia at South Shields and a working bath house, an interactive exhibition and a piece of wall rebuilt to its scary full height at Segedunum in Wallsend are not to be missed! In 2011, a Sunday Times panel voted Segedunum Number Two in the top ten museums in the world.
Durham Cathedral perches high above the city, visible for miles and widely acclaimed as the finest example of Norman religious architecture in the world. High, smooth walls make it castle-like from the outside and triumphantly austere on the inside. And it has so many tales to tell - the story of St Cuthbert, buried beneath it; its time as jail under Cromwell; its crypt full of cloth-of-gold, jewels and holy caskets. No wonder it was voted Britain's best-loved building, by Radio 4 listeners!
The castle, one of the county's grandest surviving Romanesque palaces, was the principal seat of Durham's Prince Bishops for nearly 800 years. Carved into the rock beneath the Castle is an atmospheric chapel with strange Celtic-and-Christian carvings of mermaids and monsters that show just how extraordinarily early this church is. The Normans gave us the middle of the Castle and the next generations extended it, adding a great hall and kitchens in the fourteenth century. The Tudor architects added a magnificent oak staircase, now sloping drunkenly. Quite unbelievably, it's still used daily and those kitchens are still.
Other principal cities/towns include Darlington, Stockton-on-Tees, Hartlepool, Washington and Gateshead.
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Sunderland
by www.visitnorthumbria.com |
