Description : Bamburgh is a village and civil parish on the coast of Northumberland, England. It had a population of 454 in 2001, decreasing to 414 at the 2011 census. The village is notable for the nearby Bamburgh Castle, a castle which was the seat of the former Kings of Northumbria, and for its association with the Victorian era heroine Grace Darling, who is buried there. The site now occupied by Bamburgh Castle was previously home to a fort of the Celtic Britons known as Din Guarie and may have been the capital of the kingdom of Bernicia, the realm of the Gododdin people, from the realm's foundation in 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 settlement was originally known as Bamburgh but became Bebbanburg (named after Saxon Queen Bebba) in 615 AD; later in the 7th century, it was renamed Bamburgh. Aidan of Lindisfarne came to this area from the monastery of Iona in 635 on behalf of King Oswald of Northumbria. Following the defeat of Northumbrian forces by the Viking Great Heathen Army, at York in 867, the united Kingdom of Northumbria disintegrated. The limited evidence available suggests that north-east Northumbria – centred on the future County Durham, Northumberland and Lothian – remained an independent Anglo-Saxon kingdom, with Bamburgh its de facto capital. (During the late 9th and early 10th centuries, southern Northumbria was controlled by vikings in the form of the Danelaw, while north-west Northumbria became part of the late British kingdom of Strathclyde.) The late medieval village began to develop near the castle. During the Dissolution of the Monasteries the property of the friars, including the castle, were seized on behalf of Henry VIII. Late medieval British author Thomas Malory identified Bamburgh Castle with Joyous Gard, the mythical castle home of Sir Lancelot in Arthurian legend.
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