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?

The North East in Twelve Favourite Places 5: Wallington

Hexham-Wall-Chollerton-Thockrington-Kirkharle-Rothbury-Alnwick-Alnmouth. It sounds like a list of stations on some sleepy Northumberland branch line before Dr Beeching’s axe fell. In fact, these places all sit on a historic road that linked Tynedale to the coast. It was called the Corn Road because in the eighteenth century, maybe before, the harvest of Tynedale was carried along it to the port of Alnmouth from where it could be transported up, down or across the North Sea. It was also known as the Alemouth Road, a street name that still exists in Hexham.

If you want to avoid the main roads, it’s a pleasant scenic way to drive to the north of the county. And among many points of interest along the route is Wallington Hall. It’s one of my favourite places in Northumberland, famous on no fewer than three counts: the house itself, its marvellous garden, and the family who lived there.

Let’s start with the family or more accurately, families. There were two big Northumbrian names associated with the estate’s early history: the Fenwicks, and then the Blacketts who acquired it in the late seventeenth century. It was they who created the house as we now know it. But the name that is indelibly linked with Wallington is not theirs but that of Trevelyan. Originally from Cornwall, the Trevelyans came into ownership as a result of a marriage into the Blackett family. The nineteenth century saw them rise to a position of remarkable political and intellectual dominance in the nation. Many will know the name of G. M. Trevelyan (George Macaulay T who died in 1962) through his writings on history and biography. I remember the four volumes of his English Social History in their colourful dust jackets lining my parents’ bookshelves in my childhood. I still have them.

And what is so enjoyable at Wallington is the sense that this is still essentially a family home. The Trevelyans bequeathed it to the National Trust during the war, and it was opened to the public in 1968. It is undeniably a grand house, but it is modest with it, genuine, humane. It feels lived in, hospitable and for me anyway, the kind place you not only admire but love. This may be to do with the Trevelyans’ politics. They were a forward-looking family who believed that inherited wealth and privilege should not be used selfishly but should benefit wider society. Which they did in support of a number of important social and political causes such as the universal franchise.
They also had a strong sense of their place in history, not least in North East England. One of the best of the many splendid rooms at Wallington is the arcaded sitting room created by the Tyneside Victorian architect John Dobson by roofing over the central courtyard. To decorate the walls, the Trevelyans commissioned a series of eight murals by the Pre-Raphaelite painter William Bell Scott. They depict scenes from Northumbrian history including the Roman Wall, St Cuthbert being offered his bishopric, the death of Bede, Grace Darling’s heroic sea-rescue, and heavy industry (“iron and coal”) on Tyneside. The colours are as fresh and vivid as when they were painted.  The saloon, dining room and library are splendid too, as is the famous collection of dolls’ houses upstairs.

But for many visitors, best of all is the park that surrounds the house. A good way of getting a sense of it is to follow the waymarked path that takes you right round it. It includes extensive woodland (with snowdrops and bluebells in profusion if you time it right), a stretch of the infant River Wansbeck complete with James Paine’s beautiful little hump-bridge that you will have crossed if you approached from the south (“sound your horn” warns the sign: this elegant bridge is steep-sided and narrow by any standards). Not far from the house is a hide, popular with bird-watchers. And if you are lucky, you may glimpse red squirrels too (though I haven’t yet).

Even if you don’t visit the house, or do the long-ish walk, on no account must you miss the much-loved walled garden. It is the star of the show, possibly (Alnwick notwithstanding) the best garden in Northumberland if you treasure naturalness and a sense of intimacy. You reach it by walking back from the house under the beautiful cupola gateway to the courtyard, crossing the road (carefully) and following the signs through the wood. What makes this walled garden so beautiful is not simply the array of colour that adorns it throughout the year, but how it has been cleverly landscaped to follow the contours of the land as it drops away from the house. A stream flows from west to east down the centre of the garden. This provides south-facing slopes that in this sheltered environment support a marvellous variety of plant life.

The terrace above is overlooked by an owl perched on top of a pavilion. Inside the conservatory is a marble fountain with an inscription drawn from a Roman sarcophagus: “When wearied or overwrought by study and affairs of business, repair to these haunts and refresh your mind by a stroll amidst the flowers”. It’s good advice for anyone looking for physical and spiritual renewal amid the stresses and strains of twenty-first century life. We are fortunate here in Tynedale to have it so close at hand. And our very own Corn Road to get us there.
 
Wallington is a National Trust property. For opening times, consult the NT website.