Bisected by Hadrian’s Wall, the North East is a place of high moors and long sandy beaches. You’ll uncover the history of a region where raiders could come from the sea or over the border without notice. Here was also the centre of industrial power for the burgeoning British empire built on coal and shipbuilding but also chemicals and engineering.
Get a feel for the power of the medieval church in the vast spaces of the Norman nave of Durham Cathedral or the range of culture on offer at Auckland Castle. Great fortresses like Raby Castle, Bamburgh and Chillingham remind you that war was never far away in the borderlands. The troubled past is all around you but there is magic too. Ask a boatman to pole you across to the rock-cut Hermitage at Warkworth Castle, admire the murals pained by Lady Waterford at her village school in 1860, mount a broomstick at Alnwick Castle or climb the Great Cascade at the Duchess of Northumberland’s inventive Alnwick Garden.
Top spots: Where History Happened
1. HADRIAN’S WALL
Built in AD122, 73 miles (80 Roman miles) of wall stretch across England marking the Northern Boundary of the Roman Empire, the largest surviving Roman artefact anywhere in the world. It was garrisoned by around 9,000 soldiers from all over the Empire: Gaul, Belgium, Spain, Romania, Syria and North Africa. Regular milecastles were supported by larger forts at Housesteads, Chesters, Vindolanda, Birdoswald and Segedunum.
2. ALNWICK CASTLE
One of England’s great heroes, Harry ‘Hotspur’ Percy was born at Alnwick Castle in 1364. Made famous by Shakespeare, he was already a legend, fighting in his first battle at 12. Hotspur held the North against the Scots for Richard II before switching sides to support the rebellion of Henry IV. By 1402 he’d fallen out with Henry and met a dramatic end at the Battle of Shrewsbury when he raised his visor to take a look and an arrow pierced his brain. Henry IV is said to have wept at his death.
3. CHILLINGHAM CASTLE
Chillingham Castle was the base for Edward 1’s campaign against William Wallace in Scotland’s Wars of Independence in 1298. A year earlier, Wallace had beaten the English at Stirling Bridge and launched a series of brutal raids into Northumberland. He burned around 700 villlages before retreating North. Edward invaded on 3 July and, on the 22 July, defeated Wallace at Falkirk. Wallace was not captured until 1305 at which point he was condemned, hung, drawn and quartered. The Edward I Room at Chillingham is where the English campaign was planned.
4. RABY CASTLE
In 1569, no less than 700 Catholic knights gathered in the Barons’ Hall at Raby Castle to launch The Rising of the North against their Protestant Queen Elizabeth I. When the rebellion failed, Charles Neville, Earl of Westmorland forfeited Raby Castle and most of the knights were exiled or executed.
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