Northumbria — Land of Kings & Saints

Part 1 — Britons & Romans

1. Strategic Point

The headland at Tynemouth stands at a unique point in the geography of the region. It also represents the southeastern-most tip of the old county of Northumberland. It is where the River Tyne meets the North Sea. This point is the confluence of these two massively important waterways.

This has meant that thousands of years ago, people who controlled this headland, to an extent may have controlled the trade networks and the inland waterways around the place, with particular control over the food supply, as Iron Age people relied on fish and shellfish.

There are two peninsulas: the Spanish Battery, but also Penbal Crag. Its Celtic name gives us a massive clue to how long it’s been occupied and how important it’s been through the ages. So the ancient Britons who lived here must have been influential people.

They would have been influential people because the rivers were the highways of the ancient world. Roads are a fairly new conduit in the history of civilisation, but waterways are much older. So that means these people were at the head of the trade networks and they would’ve been connected to communities all the way up and down the coast: all the way up along the Tyne-Forth province into Lowland Scotland, and right down the east coast of Britain to the southern reaches of the country. And as well as this, their influence would’ve been felt all the way into the Tyne Valley towards Brittonic strongholds in Cumbria.

So you’ve got basically this prime position halfway up the island of Britain, equidistant between the two furthest points north and south. And that’s why it is a key area.

2. Brigantes

We have to understand one of the great mysteries of Tynemouth and that is, why didn’t Hadrian’s Wall end here? Why did it not go further east than Wallsend, which is 3 miles up the river? And with the enormous supply fort of Arbeia within view across the water at South Shields.

The answer to this is found through reassessing the power dynamics at the time of the Roman occupation. We need to consider the power dynamics of the North, and the biggest tribe around the north of England (what is today England) were the Brigantes. They held the largest area through various sub-tribes and vassals as well, but they were predominantly Yorkshire-based and their hard power didn’t really reach across the water here, into what is now Northumberland.

It appears that Corbridge may have been the most northerly point for them. So Corbridge was a key town before the Romans arrived. But the Romans fell out with the Brigantes in the 1st Century and they may have built the Wall, in a way, to keep the Brigantes in and control them. So we should probably reassess the power dynamics of why the Wall was built. It was built just as much, in my view, to stop the Brigantes building alliances and building networks with the people to the north.

Then you have to think about who the tribe was who likely controlled this integral piece of land at Tynemouth. And that was the Votadini, a southern sub-tribe of the Votadini perhaps, who may well have invited the Romans to come and protect them from the Brigantes and other northern and western tribes.

So there you see a glimpse into the power dynamics of the early Roman occupation of the 1st Century AD and the Iron Age tribes who existed here.

3. Hadrian’s Rebellion

In the foundations of the Anglo-Saxon church at Jarrow, St Paul’s, were found two fragments of a supposed plaque that formed part of an, again supposed, statue of the emperor Hadrian at the end of his Wall, just over the water and a mile to the west. This is what it is said to have read:

“SON OF ALL THE GODS
EMPEROR CAESAR TRAJAN HADRIAN AUGUSTUS
IMPOSED BY THE NECESSITY OF KEEPING THE EMPIRE
WITHIN THE LIMITS LAID UPON HIM BY DIVINE COMMANDMENT
THRICE CONSUL

SCATTERED THE BARBARIANS
AND RECOVERED THE PROVINCE
OF BRITAIN, ADDED A BOUNDARY BETWEEN
BOTH SHORES OF THE OCEAN FOR EIGHTY MILES
THE ARMY OF THE PROVINCE DID THE WORK OF THE WALL
UNDER THE CHARGE OF AULUS PLATORIUS NEPOS, LEGATE OF THE EMPEROR”

“Scattered the barbarians and recovered the province”… What this means is that Hadrian most likely built the Wall in 122 AD, in response to some sort of rebellion in the North. We don’t know much about this rebellion. It’s speculated that it was against the Brigantes in around 118 AD and it may well have been where the famous 9th Legion vanished, which has perplexed historians for centuries.

It is thought that the Brigantes may well have united in confederacy with violent tribes in the Scottish Lowlands, the Selgovae and the Novantae. The archaeologist and historian Sheppard Frere speculated this, and this view forms the academic consensus today. But note that the Votadini are left out of the equation. They occupied the flatter more fertile stretches of land along the seaboard of Northumberland, up into Berwickshire and as far north as Edinburgh. It seems to me that these people, on land under threat from external tribes, actually invited the Roman army to subdue the north and build the Wall.

4. The Devil’s Causeway & The Gododdin of Bamburgh

Bamburgh Crag was another centre of power for the Votadini tribe. And nearby out to sea you have the island of Inner Farne.

It is likely that the Votadini were friendly buffer state for Rome. That is why to the west of this area is the great road that the Romans built to divide the Votadini from their less civilised foes. That road is the Devil’s Causeway which terminates at Berwick, at the mouth of the Tweed just up the coast, and today it still forms a section of the A697.

The Devil’s Causeway started at the Roman stronghold of Corbridge at the southern end of the modern country of Northumberland, or Bryneich in those times. Corbridge was the main Roman town on the frontier before the Wall was built. And as mentioned earlier, it too has a Celtic origin.

The later Votadini people who ruled from Bamburgh as Rome’s power crumbled, called the crag here Din Guarie. It has in Arthurian legend been associated with the palace of Sir Lancelot.

The native Britons ruled here for 130 years, until the mid 6th century when it fell to a new foreign power, the Angles and their king, Ida. His grandson Aethelfrith gave it a new name, Queen Bebba’s Burgh, which evolved into ‘Bamburgh’. This stronghold and this area was absolutely vital to the Angles in this part of Britain and represents the seed of the Kingdom of Northumbria.

Part 2 — Angles & Christians

Part 3 — Cuthbert & Vikings

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Lindisfarne-and-Bamburgh-Twin-Points

Northumbria
Land of Kings & Saints

Penbal 1 – Lee Stoneman

No air-built castles, and no fairy bowers,
But thou, fair Tynemouth, and thy well-known towers,
Now bid th’ historic muse explore the maze
Of long past years, and tales of other days.
Pride of Northumbria!—from thy crowded port,
Where Europe’s brave commercial sons resort,
Her boasted mines send forth their sable stores,
To buy the varied wealth of distant shores.
Here the tall lighthouse, bold in spiral height,
Glads with its welcome beam the seaman’s sight.
Here, too, the firm redoubt, the rampart’s length,
The death-fraught cannon, and the bastion’s strength,
Hang frowning o’er the briny deep below,
To guard the coast against th’ invading foe.
Here health salubrious spreads her balmy wings,
And woos the sufferer to her saline springs;
And, here the antiquarian strays around
The ruin’d abbey, and its sacred ground.