There has been a place of worship on this site since the Year 635.
St Oswald, the king of Northumbria, asked the monastic community on Iona to help him share the new religion of Christianity across his Kingdom. The monks sent St Aidan, who founded a church here in Bamburgh and a monastery on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne.
Visit www.bamburghbones.org to discover our Anglo-Saxon history.
The Monastic Stone Church
Work first began on the building you see here today at the end of the 12th century. King Henry I granted the church and its holdings to the Augustinian Priory at Nostell in Yorkshire in 1123. The canons took possession about 100 years later and built a new church in stone. It has been extended and restored many times since then.
The early church built for St Aidan and St Oswald in the 7th century was probably a simple wooden structure. Look for the forked beam in the roof above the font, which is said to have come from this first timber church.