Early History

After Lindisfarne priory was closed on the orders of the commissioners of Henry VIII, the buildings were not dismantled at the Reformation, probably because they were useful to the Crown’s defence strategy in the north.

Following England’s break with Rome and increasing tensions with Scotland and France, a wider programme of coastal defences was needed. And so Lindisfarne Castle was built as an artillery fort to defend the strategically important harbour at Holy Island. The north-east coast was vulnerable because Scotland was allied with France through the Auld Alliance, and French-backed Scottish attacks were a continuing concern.

The fort was built on Beblowe Crag, overlooking the harbour, and used stone from the recently dissolved Lindisfarne Priory. Its design reflected the changing nature of warfare: thick walls, gun platforms and defensive positions for artillery rather than the towers and battlements associated with earlier castles.

The castle remained a military site for several centuries. During the Jacobite Rising of 1715, it was briefly seized by a small group of Jacobite supporters, including Lancelot Errington and Thomas Forster and their followers, who took control of the fort. Their occupation lasted only a few days before government forces from Berwick retook it.

By the 19th century, the castle was no longer considered strategically important. The garrison had gone, and the buildings were used largely for practical purposes connected with the island, including storage and as a lookout. Walter White visited Lindisfarne in 1856. He wrote: ‘The castle occupies the entire summit of a singular conical hill; seems indeed, to grow naturally out of it. The approach is by a road winding round the steep slope, whence a stair brings you to the lower platform.’

Reimagining Lindisfarne Castle

In 1901, Edward Hudson of Country Life magazine took on the lease of the castle. He decided to make an offer after spending his holiday in Northumberland. Hudson was not universally liked. Lytton Strachey described him as: ‘a pathetically dreary figure – so curiously repulsive, too, and so, somehow lost. He seemed like a fish, gliding underwater, and starstruck – looking up with his adoring eyes through his own dreadful element to Suggia in her inaccessible heaven.’ Madame Suggia was a Portuguese cellist. The couple never married.

The architect, Edwin ‘Ned’ Lutyens was in Northumberland when he received a telewire from Hudson on 2nd January, 1902. He visited Hudson and was greatly excited at the prospect of restoring the castle.

By the summer of 1906, the first phase of the restoration had been completed with the final phase beginning in 1912.

In 1911, Lutyens’s friend Gertrude Jekyll visited Lindisfarne and made plans for the garden and the castle surrounds.

In 1916, Billy Congreve VC, the young friend of Hudson’s who was to inherit the castle, was killed on the Somme.

Hudson sold the castle in 1921 to a London stockbroker, Oswald Falk. Falk only owned the castle briefly before selling it to the merchant banker, Sir Edward de Stein. The castle was given to the National Trust in 1944.

The Castle’s Interior

Throughout the house, Lutyens experimented with space and proportion by placing oversized furniture in small rooms, adding twisting passageways, and using unexpected changes in floor levels and doorway heights to create a unique architectural experience. Most of the furniture was chosen by Lutyens from Hudson’s earlier homes, although some pieces were specially commissioned and some were designed by Lutyens himself.

The Garden

Edwin Lutyens redesigned the walls around the enclosed garden, while Gertrude Jekyll planned the planting inside. Her first idea was a vegetable garden but her second design, for a summer flower garden, was the one that was chosen. This plan of the garden is still followed by the National Trust today.

Jekyll wanted the garden to be full of colour in summer, especially in August, with flowers including eight varieties of sweet peas such as the delicate ‘Miss Wilmott’ and the deep crimson ‘Queen Alexander’.