Attraction in North East

The Alnwick Garden is one of the most ambitious and most innovative garden projects of the early twenty-first century, a new garden created from scratch adjacent to Alnwick Castle in Northumberland from 1997 onward by the Duchess of Northumberland whose combination of the Grand Cascade, the Poison Garden, the Treehouse restaurant, the Labyrinth and the Rose Garden has created a destination attracting several hundred thousand visitors annually and widely credited with transforming the economic fortunes of this section of the Northumberland coast. The Grand Cascade, the central architectural feature of the garden, consists of twenty-one weirs descending a formal axis of considerable scale in a display of moving water that is one of the most impressive formal water features in any garden in Britain. The cascade is activated several times daily and the combination of the sound, movement and visual drama of the water feature creates an immediate and impressive introduction to the garden's ambitions. The Poison Garden is the most unusual and most talked-about section, a walled garden planted exclusively with toxic, narcotic and dangerous plants, from giant hogweed and deadly nightshade through cannabis and coca to the belladonna and henbane of the medieval herbalist tradition. The guided tours of the Poison Garden are among the most popular activities at Alnwick and the combination of horticultural knowledge, danger and dark history creates an experience quite unlike anything available in any other garden in Britain.

Housesteads Roman Fort on Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland is the finest and most completely preserved Roman fort in Britain, a cavalry fort of the second century AD that has been comprehensively excavated to reveal the complete layout of a Roman garrison including the headquarters building, the granaries, the barracks, the hospital and the remarkably complete latrine block in a state of preservation unequalled at any other fort on the Wall. English Heritage manages the fort and the combination of the site quality and the dramatic Wall scenery on the Whin Sill escarpment creates the most complete Roman military heritage experience available in Britain. The fort's layout, clearly legible from the surviving foundations and partial wall remains, provides one of the most instructive plans of a Roman military installation available anywhere in the Empire. The granaries with their underfloor ventilation systems, the headquarters building with its strongroom beneath the floor, the hospital with its wards and operating facilities and the latrine block with its continuous bench seating over a constant water flush create a picture of organised, hygienic and efficiently managed military life that challenges assumptions about Roman civilisation in the British provinces. The Wall section immediately adjacent to Housesteads, including the well-preserved section toward Cuddy's Crags to the east and the dramatic approach from Steel Rigg to the west, provides some of the finest walking on the entire Wall route and the combination of the fort visit with the Wall walking creates one of the most completely satisfying half-day heritage experiences in northern England.

Cragside near Rothbury in Northumberland was the first house in the world to be lit by hydroelectric power, a remarkable Victorian country house built by the engineer and arms manufacturer William Armstrong from 1863 onward in which the application of the most advanced technology of the age to every aspect of domestic comfort created a house of extraordinary innovation. The National Trust manages Cragside, whose combination of the pioneering technology, the extraordinary Victorian garden landscape of rock garden and exotic planting and the Armstrong collections makes it one of the most interesting and most distinctively characterful National Trust properties in the north of England. Armstrong built Cragside in the wooded gorge of the Debdon Burn, exploiting the natural water resources of the stream system to power the hydraulic and electrical systems that made the house famous. By 1880 the house had electric arc lighting powered by a hydroelectric system on the adjacent lakes, predating any other domestic electrical installation in the world. The range of hydraulic machinery installed at Cragside, from the kitchen spit to the hydraulic passenger lift, created a domestic environment of technological sophistication that astonished visitors in its day. The rock garden, one of the largest Victorian rock gardens in the world covering several hectares of the gorge slope, was planted by Armstrong with rhododendrons, azaleas and other acid-loving plants in a display that at its June peak is one of the most spectacular garden experiences in Northumberland.

Vindolanda near Bardon Mill in Northumberland is the most important Roman site in Britain after Hadrian's Wall itself, a pre-Wall and Wall-period Roman fort and civilian settlement whose extraordinary waterlogged archaeology has preserved organic materials including wooden writing tablets whose content provides the most direct and most personal insight into daily life on the Roman frontier available anywhere in the Roman Empire. The Vindolanda Trust manages an active archaeological excavation open to visitors and a museum of international importance. The Vindolanda writing tablets, discovered from 1973 onward in the waterlogged deposits below the fort floor, are thin wooden leaves inscribed in ink with letters, records, orders and lists from the garrison and the civilian community of the late first and early second centuries AD. The tablets include a birthday party invitation from the fort commander's wife to the wife of a neighbouring commander, a list of supplies ordered for the fort kitchen and a letter requesting socks and underpants from home, the humanity of these documents providing an immediacy of connection to the Roman frontier experience quite different from the inscribed stonework that represents most Roman military archaeology. The museum contains the original tablets alongside arms, armour, shoes and other personal belongings preserved by the waterlogging in a collection of extraordinary intimacy and quality. The active excavation, where professional and volunteer archaeologists work within sight of visitors during the season, provides the additional dimension of archaeology as a living process rather than a completed achievement.

The Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast near Seahouses are one of the most important seabird and grey seal sanctuaries in Britain and one of the most visited wildlife destinations in the country, an archipelago of approximately fifteen to twenty islands depending on the state of the tide that supports enormous numbers of breeding seabirds and one of the largest grey seal colonies in England. The National Trust manages the principal islands and access is by boat from Seahouses harbour, with landings permitted on Inner Farne and Staple Island during the breeding season. The seabird colonies of the Farnes are exceptional by any standard. Puffins are the most iconic species, approximately 100,000 pairs breeding in burrows across the islands, and the birds' complete indifference to human presence allows visitors on the landing islands to observe them at distances of a few feet, a wildlife experience of remarkable intimacy. Arctic terns breeding on the inner islands defend their nests with extraordinary ferocity, diving at visitors' heads with their sharp bills, and the visitor experience of running the tern gauntlet while wearing a hat to ward off the attacks is one of the most memorable and most repeated stories of a Farne Islands visit. The grey seal colony, which pups in autumn and can be observed from the boats throughout the year, numbers approximately six thousand individuals and is one of the most accessible large marine mammal groups in Britain. The seals haul out on the low-lying Brownsman and other islands in large numbers and the boat trips pass close enough for detailed observation. St Cuthbert, the most venerated saint of Northumbria, lived as a hermit on Inner Farne in the seventh century and the remains of a medieval chapel mark the site of his cell.

Holy Island, or Lindisfarne, lies off the Northumberland coast connected to the mainland by a tidal causeway that is covered by the sea twice daily, its isolation defining both the practical experience of visiting and the spiritual character that has made it one of the most significant sacred sites in the whole of Britain. The island was the cradle of Celtic Christianity in England, the home of St Cuthbert and the place where the Lindisfarne Gospels were created in the late seventh century, and the combination of the priory ruins, the castle, the wildlife and the tidal causeway gives it a quality of concentrated significance rare even among the great heritage destinations of Northumbria. The monastery on Lindisfarne was founded by St Aidan from Iona in 635 at the invitation of the Northumbrian king Oswald, establishing it as the primary mission station from which Christianity spread across the north and east of England. The island became a centre of learning, manuscript production and religious life of international importance, and it was here that the Lindisfarne Gospels were produced around 715, an illuminated manuscript of supreme quality and beauty that is now in the British Library and is considered one of the greatest works of art of the early medieval period. The ruins of the Benedictine priory, built in the twelfth century on the site of the earlier monastery that had been destroyed in Viking raids, are among the most evocative in Northumberland, their red sandstone arches and walls standing against the wide Northumberland sky in a setting that preserves the island's quality of separation from the mainland. Lindisfarne Castle, perched on a rocky outcrop above the harbour and converted by Edwin Lutyens in the early twentieth century from a Tudor fort into a small country house, provides an architectural counterpoint to the priory ruins.

Beamish, the Living Museum of the North, in County Durham is one of the most ambitious and successful open-air museums in Britain, a vast interpretive site covering over three hundred acres of the Durham countryside in which reconstructed and relocated historic buildings create a series of time-specific environments that bring the history of the northeast of England to life through genuine artefacts, costumed staff and working recreations. The museum focuses principally on two periods: the early 1820s, representing the emergence of the coal and railway industries, and the Edwardian era of around 1913, and the quality of the interpretation and the authenticity of the settings make it one of the most compelling heritage experiences in the north of England. The Edwardian town is the museum's centrepiece, a complete recreation of a northeast market town of the early twentieth century with a working tramway carrying visitors between the street of shops, the pub, the dentist, the cooperative store, the photographer's studio and the newspaper office. Everything in the shops is genuine period stock, the staff are costumed and knowledgeable, and the effect of walking through an Edwardian street in which every detail is correct is genuinely transporting. The tramway itself uses restored historic trams and provides both transport and an attraction in its own right. The colliery village, the farm, the Georgian manor house and the reconstructed 1940s wartime facilities added in more recent phases of the museum's development extend the chronological and thematic range considerably. The 1820s section has been substantially expanded with new buildings and exhibits reflecting the period of early industrialisation and railway development that made the northeast one of the birthplaces of the modern world. The working Pockerley Waggonway, a reconstruction of an early colliery wagonway, operates with period locomotives. The scale of Beamish means that a full visit requires at least a full day, and the museum's programme of seasonal events and activities adds additional interest throughout the year.

Wallington House in the Northumberland countryside near Cambo is one of the most interesting and most intellectually stimulating National Trust houses in northern England, a seventeenth and eighteenth-century house of considerable quality whose interior is remarkable for the Pre-Raphaelite paintings in the Central Hall commissioned by the Trevelyan family and for the connection to some of the most significant intellectual and artistic figures of the Victorian period. The house and its estate provide a combination of architectural quality, art history and the Northumberland landscape of considerable richness. The Central Hall of the house was roofed over in the 1850s and decorated with eight large paintings depicting the history of Northumberland from Roman times to the nineteenth century by William Bell Scott, an artist closely connected with the Pre-Raphaelite circle. The paintings, with their narrative ambition, their historical subject matter and their quality of observation, are among the most important examples of Victorian history painting outside the national collections. Ruskin, Millais, Rossetti and other major figures of the Victorian art world visited Wallington and the house was a significant cultural hub of the northern Pre-Raphaelite circle. The Northumberland walled garden is one of the finest in the National Trust's portfolio, its restored beds and the central ornamental pond providing an excellent horticultural complement to the house interior. The wider estate of farmland, woodland and the valley of the River Wansbeck provides excellent walking in the characteristic Northumberland countryside.