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Themes Explorers and Adventurers Nobel Prize Winners
Actors/Actresses and Directors Famous People Places of Interest
Anglo-Saxons and Danes Historic Events Prime Ministers
Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty Inventors and Scientists Royal Consorts and Heirs
Artists and Architects Monarchs World Heritage Sites
Composers National Parks Writers and Poets

Northumberland
Northumberland lies in north-eastern England and borders Scotland to the north. In 1974 the new county of Tyne and Wear was formed from parts of Northumberland and Durham. Tyne and Wear has since been broken up into smaller authorities.



 Towns include the county seat of Morpeth.



 Holy Island (Lindisfarne) and the Farne Islands lie off its coastline.

Anglo-Saxons and Danes
Formed part of the kingdom of Northumbria which itself had been formed from the smaller kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira. Deira reached from the Humber in the south to the river Tees in the north. North of the Tees reaching as far as the Forth of Firth lay the kingdom of Bernicia of which Bamburgh was the capital.

Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty

Designated an AONB in 1958, the Northumberland Coast is a strip of coastal land running from Berwick-upon-Tweed south to Amble. The AONB includes some of England's most remote beaches and includes the Farne Islands and the island of Lindisfarne. The coastline's abundance of rocky reefs, sand and mud flats, sea caves and bays provide an important home to many colonies of seals and rare and migrating birds.



 The North Pennines AONB is the second largest in England and Wales (after the Cotswolds) and was designated in 1988. The protected area spreads over the three counties of Northumberland, Cumbria and Durham and was once the location of intensive lead mining, the decline of which has left its mark on the local landscape. The area marks the northern end of the mountain range which runs down the centre of the country to Derbyshire, "the backbone of Britain".

Artists and Architects
The landscape gardener Capability Brown was born as Lancelot Brown in Kirkharle in 1716.

 Capability Brown

Famous People
It was from Longstone Lighthouse on the Farne Islands that Grace Darling rowed with her father through a storm to rescue nine men from the shipwrecked Forfarshire in 1838. She died in 1842 and was buried at Bamburgh.

 Grace Darling

Historic Events

Major Battles
Near Branxton in 1513 the Battle of Flodden took place. The English army under the Earl of Surrey inflicted one of the heaviest defeats on an invading Scottish army. When the battle was over nearly 10,000 of the Scots lay dead, among them King James IV himself together with 12 earls and 14 lords.

Important Events
It was at the monastery on Holy Island, also known as Lindisfarne, that the Lindisfarne Gospels were written in the early 8th century.


Inventors and Scientists
The engineer George Stephenson, inventor of the first steam locomotive, was born in 1781 at Wylam.

 George Stephenson

Monarchs

Scottish House of Atholl
House of Atholl
The Scottish King Malcolm III was killed with his eldest son in battle near Alnwick Castle during an invasion of England in 1093. His body was taken back to Scotland and buried at Dunfermline Abbey in Fife.

It was during a siege of Alnwick Castle in 1174 that another Scottish King, William the Lion, was captured by the English. He was released later the same year.

Scottish House of Stewart
House of Stewart
In 1513 James IV was killed in the during the Battle of Flodden near Branxton.

National Parks
The Northumberland National Park was created in 1956.

Nobel Prize Winners

Physics
The physicist Peter Higgs was born in Newcastle in 1929. In 2013 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics together with Francois Englert for their research into the origin of mass subatomic particles.


Places of Interest

Castles
Alnwick Castle

Bamburgh Castle

Cathedrals and Abbeys
Lindisfarne Priory

Stately Homes and Palaces
Howick Hall


Prime Ministers
Prime Ministers
Earl Grey, Prime Minister from 1830-34, was born as Charles Grey in the hamlet of Fallodon in 1764. He died in 1845 at Howick Hall near Alnwick, the ancestral home of his family, and is buried in the church in the grounds.

 Earl Grey

World Heritage Sites
The 118 kilometre long Hadrian's Wall was built by the Romans in 122 A.D. and was designated a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO in 1987.

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Genealogy Links


Record Offices
and Archives
Tyne & Wear Archives
Societies
Association of Northumberland Local History Societies
Surtees Society
Websites
Northumberland Communities