Bamburgh Castle

Built on top of a black crag of volcanic dolerite, and part of the Whin Sill, the location was previously home to a fort of the indigenous Celtic Britons known as Din Guarie. It may have been the capital of the kingdom of Bernicia, the realm of the Gododdin people, from the realm's foundation c. 420 until 547, the year of the first written reference to the castle. In that year the citadel was captured by the Anglo-Saxon ruler Ida of Bernicia (Beornice) and became Ida's seat. The castle was briefly retaken by the Britons from his son Hussa during the war of 590 before being retaken later the same year.

The Normans built a new castle on the site, which forms the core of the present one. William II unsuccessfully besieged it in 1095 during a revolt supported by its owner, Robert de Mowbray, Earl of Northumbria. After Robert was captured, his wife continued the defence until coerced to surrender by the king's threat to blind her husband. Bamburgh then became the property of the reigning English monarch. Henry II probably built the keep as it was complete by 1164. Following the Siege of Acre in 1191, and as a reward for his service, King Richard I appointed Sir John Forster the first Governor of Bamburgh Castle.

The Forster family of Northumberland continued to provide the Crown with successive governors of the castle until the Crown granted ownership (or a lease according to some sources) of the church and the castle to another Sir John Forster in the mid-1500s, after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The family retained ownership until William Forster (died 1700) was posthumously declared bankrupt, and his estates, including the castle, were sold to Lord Crew, Bishop of Durham (husband of Sir William's sister, Dorothy) under an Act of Parliament to settle the debts in 1704.