Bebbanburgh Description

Brief History
Originally known as Din Guyardi, Bebbanburgh was a stronghold of the local celtic tribe, the Votadini, long before the Angle King Ida the Flamebearer captured it in 547.

Bamburgh's recorded history begins in 547 A.D when King Ida the Flamebearer established the royal city and capital of Bernicia at Bamburgh after defeating and ousting the native Celtic tribe of the Votadini from their stronghold. Ida immediately set about building extra defences in the form of a palisade and wall. Bernicia was an expanding kingdom centred upon the Rivers Tyne and Wear. King Ida's people were Angles, a fierce piratical race originating from a region now in southern Denmark near the border with Germany. As Bernicia expanded it conquered the ancient Celtic speaking tribes of the region including the kingdom of Catraeth (centred on the River Tees) and the kingdom of Rheged, in what is now Cumbria.

The rise of Bernicia reached a climax in A.D 603 when King Aethelfrith of Bernicia (Grandson of Ida), seized control of the neighbouring Angle kingdom of Deira (now the Yorkshire wolds). This resulted in the formation of a new powerful kingdom called Northumbria, stretching from the River Humber northwards. Northumbria, occupying almost a third of the whole British mainland became, at the height of its influence, one of the strongest Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Britain and was ruled from two capitals at York and Bamburgh. Although for a time the supremacy of the Northumbrian kings, was challenged by the great midland kingdom of Mercia, and the later Viking kingdom of York, Northumbria remained a fiercely independent Anglo-Saxon province, right up until the time of the Norman Conquest.

The name Bamburgh originates from the time of Aethelfrith, the first King of Northumbria, who named the fortress or `burgh' after his wife and queen called Bebba. Over the years the name Bebba's Burgh was simplified to Bamburgh. Before Aethelfrith's time Bamburgh had continued to be known by its Celtic-British name Din Guyardi.