Summary

A Grade I listed coastal castle at Bamburgh in Northumberland, occupying a basalt outcrop above the North Sea, with origins as the Celtic fort Din Guarie from around 420 and rebuilt as a Norman castle in the 11th century; the rectangular keep was completed by Henry II by 1164; substantially restored in the 19th century by Lord Armstrong; owned by the Armstrong family and open to the public; one of the most extensively filmed castle exteriors in England, with credits including Becket (1964), The Devils (1971), Macbeth (1971), Elizabeth (1998), Macbeth (2015), and The Last Kingdom (BBC, 2018).

About this location

Bamburgh Castle stands on a whinstone outcrop of the Whin Sill on the coast of Northumberland, overlooking the North Sea and Holy Island to the north. The site carries one of the longest histories of fortification in England. The Celtic Brittonic fort called Din Guarie occupied the rock from around 420 and may have served as the capital of the kingdom of Bernicia from its foundation. The fort passed between Britons and Anglo-Saxons across two centuries before coming under Anglo-Saxon control around 590.

The Normans built a new castle on the rock following the Conquest, which forms the core of the present structure. In 1095, William II unsuccessfully besieged the castle during a revolt by Robert de Mowbray, Earl of Northumbria; the castle subsequently became royal property. Henry II built the rectangular stone keep as it stood complete by 1164. The castle served as a key strategic point throughout the medieval period; in 1464 during the Wars of the Roses, it was subject to a nine-month siege by Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, which involved extensive use of artillery — among the earliest such uses in English siege warfare.

The castle had substantially deteriorated by the 17th century, and in 1704 Nathaniel Lord Crewe, Bishop of Durham, acquired it and placed it in the hands of a board of trustees. The trustees refurbished the keep and established a school, a hospital, and a granary in the buildings. In 1894, the industrialist William Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong, acquired the castle and completed its restoration, creating the extensive complex of buildings still occupied by the Armstrong family today.

The castle’s dramatic coastal silhouette and well-preserved medieval exteriors have made it one of the most frequently used castle locations in British film and television history. Productions at Bamburgh Castle include: Huntingtower (1927); A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949); Becket (Paramount/Wallis, 1964, directed by Peter Glenville, starring Richard Burton as Thomas Becket and Peter O’Toole as King Henry II); The Devils (Warner Bros., 1971, directed by Ken Russell, starring Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave); Macbeth (1971, directed by Roman Polanski, starring Jon Finch); Mary, Queen of Scots (Universal, 1971, directed by Charles Jarrott, starring Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson); Ivanhoe (BBC/Rosemont, 1982); Robin of Sherwood (HTV/Goldcrest, 1984 to 1986); Elizabeth (PolyGram/Working Title, 1998, directed by Shekhar Kapur, starring Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth I); Macbeth (StudioCanal/Film4, 2015, directed by Justin Kurzel, starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard); and The Last Kingdom (BBC Two/Netflix, based on Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Stories, in which Bamburgh is directly the inspiration for Uhtred’s fortress Bebbanburg, with the castle used for exterior filming in 2018).