At Seahouses is an extensive fish-curing establishment, a fact which proclaims itself unmistakably as you near the village, especially if the day chance to be at all warm.  A little distance from the shore is another fishing village, North Sunderland, and northward from Seahouses is the inn called The Monkshouse, from the fact that it once belonged to the community on Lindisfarne.

Bamburgh Castle, magnificently placed on a lofty crag rising perpendicularly from the greensward on the west or landward side, and almost as steeply from the sea which washes the north and east sides, lies like a majestic lion on its mighty rock “brooding on ancient fame.”  The voices of children at play on the sands below sound faint and far in the still air; the sea birds, with the summer sunshine flashing on their outspread wings, sweep round and round; in the far distance a trail of smoke low down on the horizon marks the track of a passing steamer; and near at hand, southward a little way from the castle cliff, the rocky islets of the Farne group lie drowsily asleep on the gently-heaving swell of the grey-blue waters.  Behind the castle lies the pretty old-fashioned village with its quaint hostelries and grove of trees; and from the higher parts of the new golf-links the player may look round on a view which would be difficult to match, comprising as it does, the Farne Islands and Dunstanborough to the south, and northward, Holy Island, with its castle and abbey and the bluish haze of smoke lying over Berwick; while, on the western skyline, on a clear day, may be seen the rounded caps of the Cheviots.

The beginnings of Bamburgh take us back more than a thousand years, to that long-ago summer of 547, when the cyuls (keels) of the marauding Bernician chieftain Ida and his followers grounded on the shore of our Northland, and the work of conquest began.  Ida was not slow to grasp the importance of such a commanding site as this isolated mass of basaltic crag, and the rude stronghold which crowned it.  It became in time a formidable fortress, and remained for centuries the headquarters of the kings of the North.

Here reigned Ida and his sons—­six of them—­for more or less short and stormy periods, and Ethelric of Bernicia, who vanquished the neighbouring prince of Deira, and thus reigned as the first king of Northumbria as Northumbria.  The Celtic name of the fortress was Dinguardi, or Dinguvardy; and tradition has it that this was Sir Lancelot’s castle of Joyeuse Garde, where he had often feasted the Knights of the Round Table, and where he, at last, came home to die.  The fact that Bamburgh is the only pre-Conquest castle in Northumberland disposes of the claim of Alnwick.

“My fair lords,” said sir Launcelot, “wit ye well, my careful body will into the earth; I have warning more than I will now say; therefore, I pray you, give me my rights.”  So when he was houseled and eneled, and had all that a Christian man ought to have, he prayed the bishop that his fellows might bear his body unto Joyous Gard.