Northumbrian Coast

Northumberland's coast faces the North Sea in a succession of sandy bays, rocky headlands and islands. Castles stand above the shore at Bamburgh and Dunstanburgh, reminders of the troubled frontier between England and Scotland. Offshore lies Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, joined to the mainland at low tide. Its monastery and the small religious community on nearby Farne supplied fish to their mother house at Durham in the later Middle Ages. Fishing remained important after the monasteries' dissolution; in 1626 Holy Island was said to have twenty-seven fishermen.