Lindisfarne Priory

Lindisfarne Priory stands on Holy Island, a small tidal island off Northumberland’s north-east coast. The priory occupies the site of the first English monastery founded in 635 by Scottish monks under St Aidan. The community became famous for its scriptorium, where the Lindisfarne Gospels were produced between 715 and 721. After the Synod of Whitby in 664 the Irish monks left, but the monastery remained a centre of learning and pilgrimage. In 793 Viking raiders struck, an attack that marked the start of the Viking Age in England. The monks fled in 875, taking with them the relics of St Cuthbert and the Lindisfarne Book. The present ruins date mainly from the 12th-century Benedictine priory built beside the older site. William of St Calais briefly restored monastic life between 1069 and 1090. The priory church, now the parish church of St Mary, was erected at the same time as the new abbey church. By the 14th century the monks enjoyed prosperity despite the border fortress built around them. After the Dissolution in 1536 the buildings passed to the Crown and were later incorporated into a new castle. Visitors walk among grass-grown foundations and low stone walls that outline the cloister and church. The surviving chancel arch and nave piers show the scale of the medieval church. A single carved stone, the Lindisfarne Stone, recalls the 793 attack with figures of Viking warriors. Beyond the priory walls the island’s wide sands stretch to the North Sea, and at low tide the causeway offers a quiet path back to the mainland.