The kingdom of Northumbria

Northumberland for centuries was bandit country having been rejected by the Romans due to local hostilities, when they abandoned their first attempt to build a wall between the Firth and Clyde Estuaries.

They withdrew back to the Tyne where Hadrian built his fortified wall from Wallsend upon Tyne on the East coast to Carlisle on the Solway Firth.

Northumberland was later to become part of Northumbria, one of the seven English Kingdoms which were established following centuries of fighting after the Romans departed. 

Northumbria stretched from Berwick on Tweed in the North down to York in the South and the Pennine Hills acting as a natural boundary from Cumbria, later being divided up into three areas of Northumberland, Durham and Cleveland, the capital being Bamburgh under King Ethelfrith.

The Northumbrian coast has miles of sandy beaches divided by the Tweed, Aln, Coquet, Wansbeck, Blyth and Tyne Rivers each with its own castle and fortified towns as they wander down from the hills and peat moors in the Border Country to the Sea.

The North Country of Britain has numerous ruins of castles and monasteries which are a standing testament to the regions turbulent past.

Few are more majestic than those on the Northumberland Coast at Holy Island, Bamburgh, Dunstanburgh and Warkworth and many fortified Peel Towers, which were used as refuge from the Vikings across the sea and raiders over the Border.

The roots of British Christianity are here in Northumberland with Paulinus from Rome and St Cuthbert being the first in the seventh century followed by St. Aiden who founded a monastery on Lindisfarne in the thirteenth century not forgetting the work of the Venerable Bede on Tyneside at Jarrow.  

They left nearly four hundred years leaving behind them an organized prosperous country with law and order established, following over 300 years of peace. This left Britain unprotected from the Scots to the North beyond the Wall and the Angles and Saxons across the channel to the South.