St Aidan, Bamburgh
St Aidan, Bamburgh
St Aidan’s is a Grade I parish church on Church Street, Bamburgh, Northumberland, in the Diocese of Newcastle, below Bamburgh Castle.
- Location
- Bamburgh, Northumberland
- Country
- England
- County
- Northumberland
- City / town
- Bamburgh
- Address
- Church Street, Bamburgh, Northumberland, NE69 7BN
- Postcode
- NE69 7BN
- Built
- 12th–14th centuries on the site of Aidan’s 7th-century church; restored 1830 and later 19th century
- Denomination
- Church of England
- Dedication
- Aidan
- Diocese
- Newcastle
- Parish
- Bamburgh
- Grade
- I
- Style
- Romanesque and Early English, with Decorated aisles
- Materials
- Squared stone and ashlar; stone-slate roofs to chancel and north transept
- Grid reference
- NU 178 349
- Opening hours
- Open all year round 8.30am to dusk.
- Access
- Level access to the main areas
Overview
Bede records that Aidan built a wooden church outside the castle wall in 635 and died here in 652; a timber beam in the tower is traditionally associated with his death. Historic England lists the present church as twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth century, restored in 1830 and later in the nineteenth century, in squared stone and ashlar. The plan is west tower, nave, aisles, transepts and a long thirteenth-century five-bay chancel with crypt and paired lancets. Aisles embrace the tower. The listing notes Romanesque indications including the round rere-arch of the north-transept east window. The late-twelfth- to early-thirteenth-century north arcade has round piers; the south arcade is similar but slightly later. Wikipedia records a Caen-stone reredos of 1895 by W. S. Hicks depicting northern saints, a fourteenth-century knight’s effigy, and the 1844 Grace Darling effigy by Charles Raymond Smith; the churchyard monument to Darling is by Anthony Salvin and Smith. From 2016 the crypt has housed seventh- and eighth-century burials moved from the castle’s Bowl Hole graveyard. The church is open all year from 8.30am to dusk.