Bamburgh Castle (pronounced "Bam'brah", as we do not say Edinburgh, but "Edim'brah") is located in the county of Northumberland, England, on the North Sea coast. It is erected on a long rocky ridge (extremely hard magmatic rock) parallel to the coast and which emerges from the dune cordon along the shore. This rocky ridge is about 180 meters long and dominates the strike of about thirty meters high. The face of this rocky bar is almost sheer on the land side while its slopes on the shore side are less steep but nevertheless very pronounced. It is therefore a naturally very fortified site which was favorable to the establishment of a castle. From this, the view goes far along the coast, towards the S.E. to the small port of Seahouses and, towards the N.W., to the island of Holy Island also called Lindisfarne. Bamburgh Castle is therefore a veritable sentinel posted on the shore which controlled a stretch of coast some twelve kilometers long. Opposite the castle, three kilometers offshore, stretches the small rocky archipelago of the Farne Islands, which is nowadays a protected nature reserve for seabirds and gray seals.
In the 5th century, the site of the present castle was occupied by a Breton fort named Din Guarie, which may have been the capital of the kingdom of Brynaich.
The semi-legendary Angle King Ida is said to have captured the fort in 547 and became the first king of Anglo-Saxon Bernicia. According to the Historia Brittonum, Ida's grandson Æthelfrith gave the castle to his wife Bebba, whose name is believed to be the origin of today's Bamburgh.
The original fortifications were destroyed by the Vikings in 993. The current castle is built around an early Norman reconstruction, the heart of which is undeniably the large square Romanesque keep flanked by four corner turrets and buttresses on its faces and which dominates all the buildings.
William II of England unsuccessfully besieged it in 1095 during a revolt supported by its owner, Robert de Montbray, Earl of Northumbria. After Robert was captured, his wife continued to defend the place until she was forced to surrender it under threat from the king to put out her husband's eyes.
Bamburgh then became the property of the English monarchs. It was probably Henry who erected the large square keep with buttresses. As an important English outpost, the castle was the target of occasional Scots raids. In 1464, during the Wars of the Roses, it became the first castle in England to be defeated by artillery, at the end of a nine-month siege by Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick.
The Forster family of Northumberland provided the Crown with twelve successive governors of the castle for around 400 years until the Crown gave full ownership to Sir John Forster. The family kept the castle until Sir William Forster died in 1700 and was declared bankrupt posthumously. His estates, including the castle, were then sold to Nathaniel Crew, Bishop of Durham (his sister Dorothy's husband) pursuant to an Act of Parliament to settle the debts.
The castle was then deteriorated under several owners and then restored during the 18th and 19th centuries. It was finally bought by the industrialist William George Armstrong who undertook costly restoration and reconstruction at the end of the 19th century. It still belongs to the family that opened it to the public, it also hosts occasional events.
Many films have been shot there, such as Ivanhoé, Le Cid, Marie Stuart, Queen of Scotland, Elizabeth and Robin Hood.
Archeology at the castle
Since 1996, the "Bamburgh Research Project" has undertaken archaeological and historical research on the castle and its surroundings. Early research took place in the 1960s under the direction of Brian Hope-Taylor. During these excavations, he unearthed various remarkable objects dating from the 7th century:in 1960 a sword, the Bamburgh Sword (en), and in 1971, a decorative gold plate, the Bamburgh Beast. The project welcomes students for ten weeks each summer to teach them excavation techniques while deepening their knowledge of the castle.