‘Leave your weapons at the door,’ came the advice – part warning, part welcome – as I stepped from the modern world into the domain of the Northumbrian royal court. Immediately I found myself in a high-ceilinged hall, overlooked by ornately carved thrones set on a dais. At the time of my visit the king and queen were not in attendance, but the music of a lyre struck by their bard filled the air, vividly evoking the atmosphere of an early medieval feasting hall. All around me, the walls were hung with finely embroidered cloths and colourful shields, testifying to the kingdom’s cultural achievements and martial might. This was, after all, the time of the Golden Age of Northumbria: a time when lands that had been remote frontier territories during the Roman period flourished into a mighty kingdom encompassing much of northern England and southern Scotland.
It was a time when, between the mid-7th and mid-8th centuries, Northumbria witnessed an astonishing cultural flowering that produced such celebrated creations as the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Franks Casket, and the Ruthwell Cross, as well as individuals like Bede and Alcuin, whose writings shed so much light on the period in which they lived. And it was a time of great religious change, driven by the courts of two 7th-century kings, Edwin – whose Kentish-Frankish wife, Æthelburh, and her bishop, Paulinus, did much to help reintroduce Christianity to the post-Roman north – and Oswald, who established Lindisfarne’s internationally influential monastery.
This story of secular power and sacred legacy is told by a new attraction, Ad Gefrin, which opened in Wooler earlier this year. Its name comes from Bede’s description of a place today known as Yeavering, which lies about five miles to the east. This was, Bede tells us, a vicus regius, or seasonal royal settlement, which was periodically visited by the rulers of Northumbria, together with sites like Bamburgh (see CA 237 and CA 360). Although ultimately abandoned in favour of another royal seat at Maelmin (probably modern Milfield), its remains were rediscovered after tell-tale cropmarks were spotted in aerial photographs in 1949 – and, between 1953 and 1962, Brian Hope-Taylor uncovered traces of mighty timber halls, an imposing wooden grandstand, and other buildings that would have been used by the transient court. Over half a century later, ongoing investigations by Durham University and the Gefrin Trust are further illuminating the site’s layout and chronology (see box on p.36), but, while the structural remains are impressive, they have yielded few traces of the people who frequented them.
