From the island's main car park, a short walk brings you into the village centre. Nowadays it caters mainly for visitors, but its heyday was in the 19th century when fishing and quarrying were the main occupations: herring were cured and donkeys were used to carry panniers of fish across the sands to be sold by fishwives. Life was hard and rough for much of the time, but there were at least ten inns to provide some solace.
The museum, church, and priory are at the south end of the village beyond the square. In the priory grounds stands an impressive statue of St Aidan: in 635 AD, the Northumbrian King Oswald asked monks of the Irish monastery on Iona to send missionaries to bring Christianity to his kingdom, and they sent Aidan, who founded a simple wooden monastery on Holy Island (then called by its Celtic name, Lindisfarne — which the castle and priory are still referred to by). Aidan and his companions spent much time travelling through the north visiting people in their huts among the hills, and in Aidan's lifetime the Christian faith was firmly established in Northumbria.
Aidan's sixth successor was Cuthbert, a warm-hearted and practical person according to accounts given to the father of English history, the Venerable Bede. Cuthbert became an early folk hero revered by everyone, and it was in honour of God and Saint Cuthbert that the Lindisfarne Gospels were produced by the monks (exquisite illustrated manuscripts now in the British Museum).
The wooden monastery was burnt down in Viking raids and monks were forced to flee taking the Gospels, but the monastery was rebuilt in red sandstone by Benedictine monks from Durham who dedicated it to Saint Cuthbert. The ruins of the monastery church remain, and the island's history is described in a small museum featuring a reconstruction of a monk's cell, next to St Mary's Church which began in Norman times.
The path from the west gate of the church leads to a grassy shelf and a view of St Cuthbert's Island, which is joined to the mainland at low tide. Cuthbert spent whole days in prayer there, but eventually chose an even more remote location on the Farne Islands further out at sea.
A stony path leads on to the Heugh, a hill created by an intrusion of hard volcanic rock offering fine views. The route comes down the Heugh to the Ouse — a harbour sheltering fishing boats where lobster pots line the jetty and upturned herring boats serve as fishermen's stores.
There is a path leading from the harbour to Lindisfarne Castle. By Northumbrian standards the castle is modern (16th-century) and small, having only twelve rooms, and its original purpose was to guard the harbour from its site on the volcanic outcrop called Beblowe Hill. Its history is entirely peaceful, with the sole exception of two Jacobites taking the castle after discovering only two people were left in charge out of a garrison of seven (they attempted to flee the next day but were captured).
In later times the castle was restored by Sir Edwin Lutyens to provide a desirable residence for Edward Hudson (proprietor of Country Life magazine). Now open to the public under the National Trust, inland from the castle there is a delightful walled garden among bare fields created by Gertrude Jekyll. Beyond the castle are well-preserved lime kilns around which swallows and swifts fly in summer, extending northwards to the Lough (a small pond) and west before turning south back to the car park.
Acknowledgment: Text derived from the Out and Out Series; Discovering the Countryside on Foot. Pictures courtesy of Wikipedia.
