The North East in Twelve Favourite Places 11: The Farne Islands

As I write this, all the talk is about offshore business deals and tax havens. So let’s go out to sea this month. But not (this time) to Northumberland’s most famous offshore island, Holy Island. It’s at its best when the tide is in and the causeway covered, and the day trippers have gone home and it’s truly an island again for a few hours. There isn’t a Christian site in England that I love more than Lindisfarne, unless it’s Durham Cathedral.

But how many have taken one of Billy Shiel’s boats from Seahouses and made the crossing over to the Farne Islands? Even the outermost islands are barely five miles from the mainland, yet the waters around them can be decidedly choppy. Don’t be surprised if there are no sailings, or if there are, landing on the Inner Farne or Staple Island (the two where public access is permitted) isn’t possible.

There are about twenty-eight islands all told (I say “about” – it depends whether you are counting at high tide or low). They are formed of the same dolerite rock that we know so well in Tynedale through the Whin Sill on which the Roman Wall was built. The Farnes are now owned by the National Trust, though until 1844, the freehold belonged to Durham Cathedral which leased them to a succession of adventurous people. (When I was Dean of Durham, I was relieved not to have to manage an extensive North Sea archipelago on top of everything else that crowds into a Dean’s in-tray.)

Three things make the Farnes a must-see for Northumberland people: their rich wildlife, their close connection with Saxon Northumbria and the northern saints, and the story of Grace Darling.

Let’s take nature first as she has been around on the Farne Islands the longest. The amazing variety of bird and marine life you can see and enjoy is what draws most visitors. Everything depends on when you decide to sail there. May, June and July are good months because you can land on both the islands that can be visited. Grey seals are a big attraction, either in the water or stretched out on the rocks. The bird life is extraordinarily prolific.

Arctic terns pose a hazard during the breeding season (from late May to July they will dive-bomb humans to protect their young, so make sure you take a hat). The puffins are justly famed for their beauty while the throngs of eider ducks, kittiwakes, fulmars, guillemots, razorbills and shags crowding the cliffs are a real education in bird life. Outside the high season, the islands revert to the brooding loneliness that somehow captures the essence of this bleak and windswept North Sea coast. A boat trip in winter can be a bracing and thought-provoking experience.

For all who admire the saints of the North, especially Aidan and Cuthbert, the Inner Farne is a place of pilgrimage. When Aidan founded his monastery on Holy Island in the seventh century, he began to seek retreat and solitude there, a habit that was famously followed by St Cuthbert. Bede tells us a great deal about his longing to live the life of a hermit, his frequent visits to the Inner Farne, the cell he built there, his habits of daily prayer and his cultivation of the island.  

He died in his hermitage on 10 March 687, for ever after kept as St Cuthbert’s Day. He hoped to be buried on his beloved island. But he correctly anticipated that his brothers would want his body returned to Lindisfarne. There it was interred, soon to become a shrine for pilgrims until the Viking invasions forced his community to leave in search of a safer resting place. The little chapel on the Farne dates from the fourteenth century and was built for the tiny monastic cell (usually just two monks) established there by Durham Cathedral Priory after the Norman Conquest. The furnishings date from the seventeenth century and once belonged in the Cathedral, hence their unusually rich decoration. The medieval pele tower was also built by the Cathedral Priory and is now home to the National Trust rangers who live on the island for much of the year.

Grace Darling is one of the North East’s best-known women. She was born at Bamburgh in 1815. The Darlings had lived on Brownsman Island since the end of the eighteenth century. In 1826 they moved on to Longstone Island where Grace’s father William Darling was the keeper a newly built lighthouse. On 7 September 1838, Grace looked out of a window and realised that a ship had foundered and broken in two in rough seas on a nearby rocky island, Big Harcar. The Forfarshire had been carrying 62 people.

William and Grace, realising that the sea was too turbulent to allow the Seahouses lifeboat to reach them, took their Northumberland coble and at great personal risk rowed out to them in the lee of the rocks. They were able to rescue seven survivors (nine others had managed to float a lifeboat and were picked up by a passing ship). Grace died at Bamburgh in October 1842, having become the archetypal Victorian heroine and a household name. She is commemorated in Bamburgh Church where St Aidan had died in 651. There is a museum in the village that tells her story. It’s worth noting that although the Forfarshire is by far the best-known ship to have sunk off the Farners, there are in fact scores of wrecks around the islands that demonstrate how treacherous these waters have been – and still are – to shipping.

While you are in north Northumberland, you’ll want to visit Bamburgh with its beautiful church, its grand castle, its museum and its marvellous beach. And after an invigorating sea voyage, what could beat fish and chips at Seahouses before you set off for home?