Mild-mannered Grace Darling persuaded her father to let her help him rescue the survivors of a shipwreck.
Grace Darling was just 22 when she helped her father rescue the survivors of a shipwreck on the Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast. It was a moment of instinctive heroism that would change her life forever.
When Penda tried to burn down Bamburgh Castle, St Aidan turned the pagan King’s own weapons against him.
St Aidan (?590-651) came from the island of Iona to Northumbria during the reign of King Oswald, and remained there under Oswald’s successors until his death in 651. He settled himself on the island of Lindisfarne.
At Bamburgh, John Sharp organised free healthcare and education, bargain groceries, and the world’s first coastguard service.
John Sharp’s 18th-century charitable trust at Bamburgh Castle is often dubbed a ‘welfare state’ today, but that is misleading. There were no laws or taxes, no inflated public sector salaries or party politics, just spontaneous generosity and the freedom to get the job done.