Bamburgh Castle is a site with a long, frequently dramatic history. A wooden Saxon fortress built by Ida the Flame-bearer, a place frequented by saints such as Oswald and Aidan, a seemingly impregnable fortress attacked by William Rufus with his siege castle ‘Evil Neighbour’, and the first English castle to fall to cannon-fire, when Warwick ‘the Kingmaker’ brought up his guns Newcastle, London and Dysyon during the Wars of the Roses.

Now excavations have discovered an even earlier feature at Bamburgh–a Romano-British roundhouse nearly 2000 years old

With the site’s history now stretching far into the past, maybe there is indeed a glimmer of truth in the old legend that it was once an important Brittonic hillfort (also said in legend to be the home of Sir Lancelot!)

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