Best Historic Places in North East, England - Map and Reviews

Corbridge Roman Town is one of the most significant and best-preserved Roman sites in Britain, located just south of Hadrian's Wall in the small Northumbrian market town of Corbridge. Managed by English Heritage, the site was once a major Roman garrison town and supply base known as Coria or Coriosopitum, and it served as the principal logistics hub for the entire Roman northern frontier. Unlike many Roman forts which were primarily military in character, Corbridge evolved over centuries into a thriving town with temples, granaries, workshops, and civilian quarters, making it uniquely rich for archaeologists and visitors alike. The sheer density of Roman stonework still visible above ground sets it apart from most comparable sites in northern England, and its collections — housed in the excellent on-site museum — are among the finest Roman artefacts found anywhere in Britain. The history of Corbridge stretches back to around AD 85, when the Romans first established a fort here during the Flavian advance into northern Britain under the governor Gnaeus Julius Agricola. The site was chosen strategically: it sits on a natural terrace above the River Tyne at the point where Dere Street, the great Roman road running north from York into Scotland, crosses the river. Over the following decades the fort was rebuilt several times in different configurations, reflecting the changing military situation on the frontier. When Hadrian ordered the construction of his famous Wall beginning around AD 122, Corbridge became the main supply depot feeding the construction effort and later the garrison of the Wall. It continued to be occupied and rebuilt throughout the second and third centuries, including under the Severan dynasty when major construction projects created the large stone compounds whose remains are so impressive today. The town was apparently abandoned sometime in the late fourth or early fifth century as Roman administration in Britain collapsed. The most dramatic physical feature of the site is the pair of enormous stone granaries, or horrea, which stand to several courses of height and are remarkably well preserved. Their raised floors, designed to keep grain dry and ventilated, are clearly visible, as are the buttressed walls and the loading bays. Walking among them gives a visceral sense of the logistical scale of the Roman military enterprise. Beyond the granaries lies an unfinished courtyard compound, a legionary base never completed but still impressive in its ambition, with massive stone walls standing in the open Northumbrian air. The site covers a large open area of grass and stone, with pathways threading between exposed foundations, wall stubs, and reconstructed elements. On a clear day the views across the Tyne valley and toward the low ridge of Hadrian's Wall country to the north are quietly beautiful. The museum at Corbridge is genuinely exceptional and should not be rushed. It houses the Corbridge Hoard, a remarkable collection of Roman armour, tools, and personal items found in an abandoned strongbox, discovered during excavations in 1964. Among the most famous individual finds is the Corbridge Lion, a magnificent stone sculpture of a lion devouring a stag that originally served as a fountain head. There are inscribed altars, pottery, coins, weapons, and everyday objects that together paint a vivid picture of life on the Roman frontier. The quality and quantity of inscribed stones found here is particularly high, and many bear dedications to gods — Roman, Celtic, and Eastern mystery cults alike — that reflect the cosmopolitan character of a frontier garrison drawing soldiers from across the empire. The surrounding landscape is deeply layered with history. The modern town of Corbridge itself, a short walk away, is a charming small town with stone-built Georgian and earlier architecture, good pubs, and independent shops. The River Tyne runs nearby, and the wider Tyne Valley is one of the most historically dense landscapes in northern Britain, with Hadrian's Wall World Heritage Site stretching east and west just a couple of miles to the north. Chesters Roman Fort and the famous Sycamore Gap section of the Wall (near Housesteads) are both accessible within a short drive. The village of Corbridge also contains the medieval St Andrew's Church, which is built in part from Roman stones robbed from the ancient town, and contains the remarkable Vicar's Pele, a medieval fortified tower. Visiting Corbridge Roman Town is a genuinely pleasurable experience. The site is open seasonally, typically from spring through autumn, with English Heritage membership granting free entry. There is a car park adjacent to the site reached via a minor road from the village. The terrain is relatively flat and largely accessible, making it manageable for most visitors, though some uneven ground should be expected on the archaeological surface. The best times to visit are on weekday mornings in late spring or early autumn, when crowds are light and the low northern light gives the stonework a particularly atmospheric quality. Summer weekends can be busier, especially during school holidays, and English Heritage occasionally stages living history events and family activities on site during peak season. One of the more fascinating dimensions of Corbridge is the evidence it provides for cultural and religious syncretism on the Roman frontier. Inscriptions found here record dedications not only to Jupiter and Mars but to the Celtic deity Maponus, to the eastern goddess Astarte, and to the soldiers' favourite Mithras. The garrison at various times included cohorts from Spain, the Rhineland, and the Balkans, and the material culture reflects this extraordinary diversity. There is also a striking inscription recording the presence of a guild of Jupiter Dolichenus, an eastern deity particularly popular among Syrian soldiers. This layering of cultures, religions, and identities at the edge of the known Roman world makes Corbridge not just a site of military history but a window into the complex, globalised character of the Roman empire at its greatest extent.

Finchale Priory (pronounced ‘finkle’) owes its origin to St Godric, a colourful figure born about 1070 who, after years of travel as a sailor, merchant and pilgrim, felt called to the solitary life. He eventually settled at Finchale, where he lived to the ripe old age of about 100. Some 25 years after his death, his hermitage became a priory. By the mid 14th century this was serving as a holiday home for monks from Finchale’s parent monastery, Durham. Finchale’s story can be read in its surviving remains, from St Godric’s original church and tomb to the Durham monks’ rural retreat. In late 1112 or 1113, while he was living in Durham, Godric heard of Finchale, a few miles downstream on the river Wear, and with the approval of the landowner, the Bishop of Durham, he settled there. His first hermitage was probably a mile or so upriver from Finchale – a spot now known as St Godric’s Garth – but he soon moved to the site where the ruins of Finchale Priory now stand. He was to remain there for the last 60 years of his life. Here he built himself a hut with a turf roof, and a chapel in which he had a crucifix, an image of the Virgin Mary, and a bell. His life as a hermit was severe. He often prayed immersed in cold water, either in the river or in a barrel set in the floor of his chapel. He fasted frequently, wore a hair shirt and chain mail, and slept with a stone as a pillow. As well as these self-imposed hardships, Godric was robbed and beaten by marauding Scots in about 1138, and narrowly survived a flood in about 1150 when the Wear burst its banks. In thanksgiving for this escape he built a new church dedicated to St John the Baptist, which he linked to his earlier chapel with a thatched walk or cloister. His life was not totally solitary, as his mother, brother and sister all came to live nearby within a few years of his arrival. Several notable individuals are said to have consulted him, including Thomas Becket, Aelred of Rievaulx and Pope Alexander III, and King William the Lion of Scotland visited him in person. Later in life Godric submitted to the authority of Durham Cathedral Priory, and as he grew more and more infirm, one or more of the Durham monks came to live with him. After eight years confined to bed in his little church, living on milk, and frequently depressed and irritable, Godric died, aged around 100, on 21 May 1170. He was buried against the north wall of his church, where his burial place is marked by a cross in the grass.

Cragside House in Northumberland is one of the most remarkable country houses in Britain, a Victorian Gothic mansion built between 1864 and 1895 by the industrialist and inventor William Armstrong on a rocky hillside above the Debdon Burn that was the first house in the world to be lit by hydroelectric power. Armstrong, who made his fortune from hydraulic machinery and armaments manufacture and became one of the wealthiest industrialists of Victorian England, brought the same inventive and systematic intelligence to his country house that he applied to engineering, creating a building of extraordinary technological ambition set within one of the most ambitious Victorian woodland gardens in the country. The house was designed primarily by Richard Norman Shaw in the Old English style, developed in stages across thirty years of building that added wings, towers and gables in a picturesque accumulation suggesting organic growth over centuries rather than a single patron's sustained building programme. The result is a building of considerable visual complexity that grows convincingly from its rocky hillside setting, its various rooflines and projections catching the light in ways that make it look different from every angle and in every season. The interior is among the finest surviving Victorian domestic settings in Britain. The library, the Owl Drawing Room with its extraordinary inglenook fireplace of marble and tile, and the dining room represent the Arts and Crafts aesthetic at its most complete and considered, every surface and fitting contributing to a total domestic environment of great richness. The hydroelectric system installed by Armstrong from 1878 onward, using the streams on the estate to power arc lamps and later incandescent bulbs, was a pioneering achievement in electrical engineering that anticipated the domestic electricity supply by decades. The estate includes one of the largest rock gardens in Europe, extensive Victorian plantings of rhododendrons and conifers and five purpose-built lakes feeding the hydroelectric system.

The crowns of England and Scotland were united in 1605 but full political union between their parliaments only occurred in 1706 and 1707, by two Acts of Union. From that time, the two countries were governed as one and, together with Ireland, formed Great Britain. English and Scots voted for the union, but it was not universally popular in Scotland, despite the potential economic benefits. Jacobite sympathies in Scotland and England resulted in the rising of 1715, which aimed to place James II’s son, also James Stuart (later known as the Old Pretender), on the throne. Although the Jacobite army took over a large part of Scotland, they achieved only stalemate at the Battle of Sheriffmuir (8 miles north of Stirling, in Scotland) on 13 November. The following day another Jacobite force surrendered to British government troops at Preston in England. The bloodshed and near success of the 1715 rising, the presence of Jacobite sympathisers in England, and the easy penetration of hostile forces as far as Preston, stirred the British government to prepare for more trouble. In the Scottish Highlands, though several barracks already existed, more were built as part of a wider counter-insurgency strategy. It also resulted in the new barracks at Berwick. Berwick’s strategic position, near the England–Scotland border and close to the main eastern road linking the two countries, meant that it had always been an important garrison town.

Set in the valley of the river Tyne, Chesters is the best-preserved Roman cavalry fort in Britain. Around 500 cavalry troops – the elite of the Roman auxiliary forces – were based here. Today, imaginative interpretation, including a fun family trail, helps you explore the fort’s many clearly marked features. Children can hunt for the ‘rubbing stones’ concealed among the buildings, collecting tips to help them on the trail. Between the fort and the river, you’ll find the finest example of a military bath house anywhere in Britain. All this was rediscovered by John Clayton, a wealthy Victorian landowner whose mansion stands near the fort. His single-minded vision is celebrated in the fort’s Clayton Museum, which is an absolute must-see for all visitors to Chesters.