The Man Who Gave His Horse to a Beggar

25/05/2023

The Venerable St Bede who died on this day (25th May) in the year 735AD is among the greatest Englishmen who ever lived. His 'death song' (translated from the Old English below), purports to be a record of his last words:

"Before setting forth on that inevitable journey, none is wiser than the man who considers—before his soul departs hence—what good or evil he has done, and what judgement his soul will receive after its passing."

Born on lands belonging to the twin monastery of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow in what is now Tyne and Wear, his most famous work is his ‘Ecclesiastical History of the English People’ which earned him the title ‘the Father of English History’.

It is sobering to contemplate how little we would know of British history without this work. My biography of Aidan of Lindisfarne would have been impossible without it. Bede’s fondness for the Irishman shines through the pages of the 'Ecclesiastical History' (though he is clear that he could not condone elements of his doctrine around the controversial dating of Easter).

Bede’s literary output was prodigious: he also wrote Biblical commentaries and other important theological works of phenomenal erudition. He has been sent to Monkwearmouth at the age of seven and later joined Abbot Ceolfrith at Jarrow, both of whom survived a plague that struck in 686, an outbreak that killed a majority of the population there.

Bede's tomb (pictured) is at Durham Cathedral and his life is celebrated at Jarrow Hall – Anglo-Saxon Farm, Village and Bede Museum (formerly Bede's World) also pictured.

As featured in The Man Who Gave His Horse to a Beggar

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Man-Who-Gave-Horse-Beggar/dp/1527251071

24/05/2023

Amazing find in Carlisle:

https://www.facebook.com/207291075951288/posts/6970890966257898/

IT'S the kind of find that archaologists dream of...

09/05/2023

This week (11th May) is the feast day of St Lua who
gave his name to Killaloe ('Lua's Church') in County Clare, Ireland.

Pictuted is his Oratory, also known as St Molua's Church, which stands next to the Catholic Church in the town that bears his name.

The small church originally stood on Friar's Island, County Tipperary, around a mile downstream of Ballina. But a hydroelectric power dam raised the level of the Shannon in 1929 and swallowed the island. Lua's chapel was removed, its stones numbered, and then reassembled on the former site of Brian Boru's palace overlooking the Shannon (source: https://celticsaints.org/).

The roofless nave boasts a cyclopean doorway and is the oldest surviving part of the church. It dates to the tenth/eleventh century and may once have had a wooden roof. The Chancel with it high-pitched stone roof was added in the twelfth century.

St Lua (also known as Molua, Lughaidh, Luanus, Lugid) is one of a number of Irish Saints named Molua (there are around 40). This one founded a church in Killaloe and was very popular in the area. Molua comes from the Irish word Mo meaning ‘My’. He was so popular people called him 'my Lua' which became Molua.

He was a priest of the sixth century trained in the monastery at Bangor, County Down (not far from Belfast). Columba and Gall also received instruction here. Claims that he had fathered many children to the daughter of a local chieftain in County Clare tarnished his reputation for sanctity. A kindly and hospitable chap, it was said that all living things wept when he died.

He is said to have been born of noble parents in Limerick, and educated at Bangor and Clonard. He founded a church and school on the River Shannon, where one of his pupils was the future Bishop Flannan, who succeeded Lua as abbot.

Images Phil Cope as featured in John Connell’s The Man Who Gave His Horse to a Beggar

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Man-Who-Gave-Horse-Beggar/dp/1527251071

08/05/2023

"So great was then the fervour of the faith, as is reported, and the desire for the laver of salvation among the nation of the Northumbrians, that Paulinus at a certain time coming with the king and queen to the royal township, which is called Adgefrin [Edwin's palace of Yeavering], stayed there with them thirty-six days, fully occupied in catechizing and baptizing; during which days, from morning till night, he did nothing else but instruct the people resorting from all villages and places, in Christ's saving Word; and when they were instructed, he washed them with the water of absolution in the river Glen, which is close by. This township, under the following kings, was abandoned, and another was built instead of it, at the place called Maelmin [Milfield]."

Book II, Chapter 14 of Bede’s 'Ecclesiastical History', ed. by A.M. Sellar, [1907], at sacred-texts.com

Illustration as featured in the museum of Ad Gefrin, Wooler.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Man-Who-Gave-Horse-Beggar/dp/1527251071

08/05/2023

This is said to be the second tomb of Lazarus, the saint who died twice. His cracked marble sarcophagus lies in a cool and dimly-lit crypt under a ninth-century basilica in Cyprus.

Of course, Lazarus was famously buried the first time around in Bethany in the Holy Land only for Christ to raise him from the dead after a four-day entombment, a miracle recounted only in the Gospel of St John (11:1–44).

How did Lazarus spend the rest of his post-resurrection life? Well, according to Eastern Orthodox Church tradition, the supernaturally-revived Lazarus fled Judea because of rumoured plots on his life and found refuge from his enemies on this sun-baked island in the Middle East.

There he was appointed by Barnabas and Paul the Apostle as the first bishop of Kition (present-day Larnaka). Here it is said he lived there for *thirty* more years, before he died and was buried for a second time.

According to legend, the late ninth-century Church of Agios Lazaros in Larnaka (pictured) was built over his resting place. Tradition says that the location of Lazarus' tomb was lost during the period of Arab rule which began in 649.

But in 890, a sepulchre was found in Larnaca bearing the inscription "Lazarus, four days dead, friend of Christ". Emperor Leo VI of Byzantium had Lazarus' remains transferred to Constantinople eight years later. The transfer was apostrophized by Arethas, Bishop of Caesarea, and is commemorated by the Orthodox Church each year on October 17th.

The relics were later looted during the Fourth Crusade in the early thirteenth century and were brought to Marseille but subsequently lost.

In recompense to Larnaca for the translation, Emperor Leo had the Church of St Lazarus erected over Lazarus' tomb in the late ninth to early tenth centuries.

A fire in 1970 damaged much of the interior of the church including the iconostasis (now partially restored). During later renovations of the church, human remains were discovered in a marble sarcophagus under the altar, which would seem to suggest that not all of the saint's corporeal relics were taken to Constantinople after all.

Returning to the more familiar and northerly latitudes of Britain, the raising of Lazarus is depicted in reliefs in Chichester Cathedral. In Arthur Mee’s guide book of 1937 they are called “The Saxon Panels from Selsey’s Lost Cathedral”. But other scholars have argued that the panels are later and cannot be properly described as Anglo-Saxon. But the story of Lazarus was certainly known in early medieval Britain. And the shroud appears to have become more popular from the first quarter of the eighth century onwards among the Anglo-Saxons. We may assume that this was because it was the burial garment not only of Lazarus but also of Christ Himself. As such, it was closely linked to the Resurrection.

Photographs John Connell, author of The Man Who Gave His Horse to a Beggar

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Man-Who-Gave-Horse-Beggar/dp/1527251071

06/05/2023

God save the King!

Pictured is the Stone of Scone (Scottish Gaelic: An Lia Fàil), also known as the Stone of Destiny. It sits under the over 700-year-old wooden Coronation Chair - the seat upon which most subsequent English and then British sovereigns have been crowned.

The 336-pound sandstone slab has been brought (temporarily) from Edinburgh to London for King Charles III's coronation. Its present home is with the Scottish crown jewels at Edinburgh Castle.

However, the stone was held in London – under the throne at Westminster – from its capture in 1296 until it was returned seven hundred years later in 1996. It was King Edward I of England (also known as Edward Longshanks', 'Hammer of the Scots') who took the stone as spoils of war and removed it to Westminster Abbey.

The stone is also known as Jacob's Pillow Stone and the Tanist Stone, and as clach-na-cinneamhain in Scottish Gaelic.

Many legends exist about the stone's history. One account concerns Fergus, son of Erc, the first King of the Scots (reigned c. 498 – 501) in Scotland. A fifteenth-century chronicle records that Fergus transported of the Stone from Ireland to Argyll, where he was crowned upon it. Some versions identify the stone brought by Fergus with *the* Lia Fáil (Irish for "stone of destiny") used at Tara for inaugurating the High Kings of Ireland. Other traditions contend that the Lia Fáil remains at Tara.

Other legends identify it as the Stone of Jacob, taken by Jacob from Bethel while on the way to Haran (Genesis 28:10–22). It is said the Stone of Jacob was then taken to ancient Ireland by the prophet Jeremiah.

05/05/2023

The Anglo-Saxon palace complex of Ad Gefrin (Yeavering) was twice destroyed by fire - quite probably deliberately in both cases.

Archaeologist Brian Hope-Taylor certainly thought so. He argued that a fire that destroyed the Great Hall, the auditorium and other buildings was the result of an attack following the death of King Edwin in 633. This was possibly carried out by the Mercian king Penda, a notorious fire-starter, and his north Welsh ally Cadwallon. Bede reports that the Cadwallon lorded it ovèr the Northumbrian kingdoms 'like a savage tyrant, tearing them to pieces with fearful bloodshed'.

A later fire is attributed to an attack by Penda in the 650s during the reign of Oswiu (Cadwallon fell in the battle of Heavenfield against Oswald, Oswiu's brother and predecessor, in 633 or 634)

We know Penda started fires as a siege tactic. He did so at the stronghold of Bamburgh, a Northumbrian capital contemporaneous with Ad Gefrin. Aidan of Lindisfarne, the subject of The Man Who Gave His Horse to a Beggar, famously witnessed the fire from Farne Island. Bede reports that he summoned a divine wind which blew the flames back on the attackers.

All these incidents are featured in The Man Who Gave His Horse to a Beggar:

https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Gave-Horse-Beggar/dp/1527251071

The dramatic artist's impression below of a fire at Ad Gefrin Northumberland can be found in the new museum/distillery of the same name in Wooler. It does not show the attack itself but shows the citizens scrambling to put the fire out.

04/05/2023

Today (4th May) marks the translation* of the relics of St Chad of Lichfield.

Chad (died 2nd March 672) was a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon monk who became abbot of several monasteries, Bishop of the Northumbrians and subsequently Bishop of the Mercians and Lindsey People.

In Bede's day, the tomb of St Chad was in the form of a small wooden house, with an aperture at the side, through which the faithful might put their hands and obtain dust, which, mixed with water, was used as a cure for the sick (similar shrines were found in Ireland).

In 700 AD a church was built in Lichfield to contain the tomb. Because of the continuing popularity of the shrine, a church was constructed in the twelfth century. This second church lasted only about a hundred years before it was replaced by the present Gothic Cathedral.

His later cult had a dual focus: his tomb, in the apse, behind the high altar of the cathedral; and his skull, kept in a special Head Chapel, above the south aisle.

Many miracles were associated with St Chad's relics. The earliest is recorded by Bede, who recounts that a mad vagrant took shelter in the church and left it the next morning restored to his senses.

Regrettably, his shrine was despoiled during the Reformation at the orders of wife-killing heathen Henry VIII. The holy bones of St Chad were either destroyed or buried.

One of the priests at the Cathedral, Prebendary Arthur Dudley, rescued a box containing some of St Chad’s bones. He asked two female relatives to look after them. They in turn passed them on to two brothers, Henry and William Hodgetts, who lived at Woodsetton Farm at Sedgley. They divided the bones between them. William died in 1649 and his widow gave his share of the bones to Henry who reputedly kept them hidden on the top of his four-poster bed.

When Henry was dying in 1651 he received the Last Rites from a Jesuit priest, Fr Turner. During the Litany of the Saints Henry began adding ‘St Chad, pray for me’. Fr Turner enquired why he was so devoted to St Chad. He explained that he had some of St Chad’s bones in his possession. He handed them over to Fr Turner who wrote down all that Henry had told him about the relics and how they had come to him through the Dudley family. Fr Turner had his statement witnessed by two other Jesuits and they had a new reliquary made, covered in red velvet and with silver hinges and locks.

The bones were handed over to Basil Fitzherbert of Swynnerton Hall, near Stoke-on-Trent, for safe-keeping. Basil died in 1797 and his widow and eight-year-old son moved to a smaller house at Aston by Stone. Here a chapel was built and served as Mass centre for the surrounding district. The family eventually moved back to Swynnerton, and Aston Hall and its chapel was closed up.

In 1839 the chapel was reopened by Fr Benjamin Hulme and he discovered a chest underneath the altar in which was a velvet-covered box containing a collection of relics, including six bones wrapped in silk with Fr Turner’s document.

A report was sent to Rome and Pope Gregory XVI confirmed that these were the bones of St Chad and instructed that they be enshrined in the new cathedral in Birmingham which was being built. They were placed in a shrine designed by Pugin above the High Altar on the day of its consecration on 21 June 1841.

In 1995 Archbishop Maurice Couve de Murville arranged for a fresh examination of the bones by the University of Oxford. The report concluded that one of the bones is eighth century (and so cannot have belonged to St Chad). The remaining five are all of the mid-seventh century. Two of the bones are left femurs and so are of different individuals. It is almost certain that at least one and possibly three of the bones are those of St Chad.

Last year a relic St Chad came 'home' when it was placed in a new altar shrine at Lichfield Cathedral, the gift of the RC archdiocese of Birmingham and St Chad’s Cathedral.

https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Gave-Horse-Beggar/dp/1527251071

*In Christianity, the term 'translation' refers to the removal of holy objects from one place to another (usually a higher-status location).

01/05/2023

Bealtaine - Beltine - Beltane ?

Bealtaine is the festival day that marks the beginning of summer and the movement of livestock from winter lowlands to summer pastures. Traditionally celebrated at the beginning of May, Bealtaine is one of four main seasonal festivals and falls halfway between the spring equinox and summer solstice - which is the 5th of May this year.

In the *modern* Irish language it is called Bealtaine - derived from a number of Old & Middle Irish variations such as: Beltane, Belltaine, Beltine, Beil Tene & Tene Bil.

The modern word Bealtaine and its early variations, are generally thought to derive from the proto-celtic '*belo-tanos' meaning ‘bright/ fire’, which itself derives from the Proto Indo-European word, *bhel-, meaning ‘white, bright or shining’.

However, the earliest reference to Beltine is found in the ‘Sanas Cormaic’ - a 9th Century glossary, said to have been written by King Cormac of Cashel…

“Belltaine, that is Bel’s fire, that is the lucky fire of Bel, that is two fires which Druids used to make with great incantations and each year they drove the cattle between them to guard against pestilence.”

Cormac then goes on to give us his own etymology of the word… “Bil, that is Bial, that is an idol god/deity, Beltine, that is, the fire of Bil”

This explanation is usually dismissed as Christian pseudo-history by both, Irish Academics and Irish Neopagans, who prefer to look at the etymology of the Old-Irish ‘Bil/Bel’ - a fairly obscure word that has been given various translations over the centuries.

Directly translated, Bealtaine means "mouth of fire" coming from the modern Irish 'Béal' (Old-Irish ‘Bil/Bel’ (mouth)?) and tine (fire). The word 'Béal' is often found in Irish placenames to depict an opening or entry, (i.e. the ‘mouth of a river) giving us the related word 'belach' (gap, passage, way, path).

Therefore, Bealtaine may also be translated as the ‘Pass/Pathway of Fire' which would tie-in with the tradition that cattle would be led between fires for purification and protection, before being put out to their summer pastures.

However, the Sanas Cormaic also has a separate entry for ‘Bel’ (Mouth), so its not like Cormac didn’t know the word - and he doesn’t relate it to Bealtaine

Another explanation is that ‘Bil/Bel’ can mean good-fortune, prosperity or luck, giving us a translation as ‘The Lucky Fire’ or ‘Fire of good fortune’ - (remember they were hoping for a Summer… In Ireland!)

However, according to eDIL, ’Bil/Bel’ is usually translated as ‘rim, border, edge’, which could also perhaps signify a demarcation between winter & summer - darkness & light…

… or perhaps, Cormac was right.

It is entirely possible, given the lack of an agreed Irish/Gaelic etymology for the word Bel/Bil, that Bealtaine is a corruption of an imported word/term or perhaps even an imported deity?

The Middle Irish text, Tochmarc Emire (8th-11th C) contains a similar etymology/explanation of the term - “they assigned the young of all the cattle as the property of Bel. Bel’s cattle then, that is, Beltaine”

We know from inscriptions that a deity named Belenos/Belenus (likely from the proto-celtic *bélĭnos meaning ‘powerful/brilliant’) was worshipped in south east gaul before and after the roman conquest. Some later inscriptions bear the double name ‘APPOLINI BELENO’ indicating that the Romans equated the Celtic god Belinos with the god Apollo.

This is likely the same (unnamed) deity that Ceasar refers to when he tells us that the Gauls worshipped Apollo. The Gaulish term ‘belenuntia’, designating the henbane, a hallucinogenic plant also known in Latin as apollinaris, may be a derivative form of Belenos.

The term ‘Belinos’ is also attested as a prestige name (powerful-lord) in Roman and post-roman Britain.

Although it is highly unlikely that Medieval authors such as Cormac would have known of the Celtic/Gallic God, Belenos/Belenus, they obviously thought Bealtaine was related to some ancient deity. A number of candidates have been put forward over the years - The Irish ancestor, ‘Bile’, the Phoenician god, ‘Baal’, the Norse god ‘Baldr’, and even the Formorian Balor.

Though interestingly, the Hill of Uisneach, where Bealtaine is traditionally celebrated, was once known as ‘The Hill of Balor’ - ‘Balor’ and its cognate ‘Baldr’ both stem from the same Proto Indo-European root word as Bealtaine: *bhel

The only other early reference to the festival day is a gloss in the 10th Century, St. John’s Psalter, which mentions that ‘Beltane’ had fallen on a Wednesday that year. - Note that this is the earliest attested version of the word being used without trying to explain itself.

So the next time someone rolls their eyes and tells you: “Its NOT Beltane, its Bealtaine” - just tell them you are sticking with the earliest attested non-etymological use of the word 😉

P.S. Prior to it’s ‘re-naming’, Bealtaine was known in Ireland as Cétamain/Cétshamain and in Wales as ‘cyntefin’. from the Proto-Celtic *kentu-samīno- (“beginning of summer”). Its relation to the word ‘Samhain’ - Old Irish ‘Samfuin’ (Summer’s end/death) emphasises the dual/binary relationship of both festivals; with Cétamain/Cétshamain marking the beginning and Samhain/Samfuin marking the end of the summer.

So, Happy Beltane Bealtaine Beltine Belltaine Biltine... or Cétamain, to you all

01/05/2023

Today is May Day when sacrifices would have been carried out at Yeavering, now an empty-seeming field on the edge of the Cheviots in Northumberland.

Long ago, this was the site of a great palace complex boasting huge timber halls straight out of ‘Beowulf’, a unique twenty-foot-tall grandstand, a possible pagan temple, and a cattle corral with workshops, including a weaving shed, uncovered at nearby Lanton Quarry.

The seventh-century royal estate of Ad Gefrin (Yeavering) has now been brought back to life through the newly-opened Anglo-Saxon Museum and Whisky Distillery in nearby Wooler. The venue serves as a portal allowing the visitor to step back into those lost halls mentioned by Bede as the seat of Edwin and later kings.

An important centre from ancient times, the original Ad Gefrin probably served as a place of ritual assembly where disputes were resolved, petitions heard, news exchanged, cattle counted, and religious rites celebrated.

The royal settlement lay under the protective shadow of Yeavering Bell, site of the county’s largest Iron Age hillfort, and a major tribal base of the Old North. More than 80ft long and almost 40ft wide, the main hall would have been a piece of carpentry to rival Noah’s ark. The palace’s whereabouts was discovered by chance by an aerial photographer in 1949 after a drought picked out the cropmarks, heralding one of the greatest British finds of the twentieth century.

The grandstand, like the segment of a Roman amphitheatre, tapered down to a stage and could have accommodated more than three hundred people. Viewed from overhead, it looked like the wireless internet icon, and it may indeed have been the focal point of a social network in the pre-digital age. But its exact purpose is obscure. Was it an open-air parliament for the king to address the people and consult his counsellors on important matters of state? Was it an example of architectural grandstanding from a king who fancied himself as heir to the Roman emperors; or a lecture theatre used by missionaries to preach?

An ancient barrow was re-used as a burial ground in the seventh century and may have been surmounted with a goat-headed totem pole, and later perhaps by a high cross. Ad Gefrin is Brythonic for ‘Hill of Goats’. These animals were also sacred to the early English, with place names in the north such as Gateshead (‘goat’s head’) providing evidence of sites where rituals were celebrated around posts with animal heads.

A burial discovered here may be that of a seventh-century shaman or priest, though all that remained of him is a stain in the soil. He had been buried on the threshold of a hall with a goat’s skull placed over his legs and a seven-foot bronze-bound ceremonial staff, again possibly crested with the emblem of a goat.

Whether he was Christian or pagan is unclear, though such distinctions were probably less meaningful than we believe today. King Rædwald was said to have served both the gods of his ancestors and the God of the new religion, having in the same temple an altar for the Christian sacrifice, and another upon which he offered victims to “devils”. ['Ecclesiastical History' II.15] Pope Gregory had initially ordered the destruction of pagan shrines in Britain but, a month later, he appears to have changed his mind. Writing in a letter of 601, he cautioned his missionaries not to destroy heathen temples but to re-consecrate them (‘Ecclesiastical History’ I.30), deducing that people would be more amendable to persuasion if their holy places were not burned to the ground.

Cattle would have been driven to Yeavering from far and wide on May Day, with a portion of the region’s yield going to support the royal household. Some of the herd appears to have been sacrificed in the temple where piles of ox skulls were discovered in pits. Gregory describes similar practices in his letter to his missionaries, cited by Bede:

“And because they are in the habit of slaughtering much cattle as sacrifices to devils, some solemnity ought to be given in exchange for this. So on the day of the dedication or the festivals of the holy martyrs, whose relics are deposited there, let them make themselves huts from the branches of trees around the churches which have been converted out of shrines, and let them celebrate the solemnity with religious feasts. Do not let them sacrifice animals to the devil, but let them slaughter animals for their own food to the praise of God, and let them give thanks to the Giver of all things for His bountiful provision.” (‘Ecclesiastical History’ I.30)

There were also strong links between cattle, sacrifice and ritual used to reinforce the position of kings, with evidence for pole-axed skulls, and cattle also found at Irish royal sites such as Lagore and Moynagh Lough in County Meath. May Day or Beltane was the traditional date when cattle renders were collected across Britain and Ireland, and if Aidan did not personally preside over these slaughters (alongside the Eucharistic sacrifice), one can imagine him blessing the herds as the druids had before him.

Special bonfires, believed to have been protective, were kindled during Beltane, with 'druids' driving the cattle between them. ‘The Carmina Gadelica’, a compilation of Scottish Gaelic poems and prayers gathered between 1860 and 1909 by folklorist Alexander Carmichael, contains the The Beltane Blessing which mentions the pagan festival in the same breath as the Trinity. Adomnán recounts that Saint Columba blessed a poor man who had shown him hospitality, resulting in his five cows miraculously increasing to 105, a legacy perhaps of the idea that holy men had powers over the fertility of land and animals.

Certainly, Aidan of Lindisfarne, the first Bishop of Lindisfarne, eschewed fire and brimstone preaching, looking instead for common ground, and adopting a more pragmatic approach:

“… as he walked along, whenever he saw people whether rich or poor, he might at once approach them and, if they were unbelievers, invite them to accept the mystery of faith; or, if they were believers, that he might strengthen them in faith, urging them by word or deed to practise almsgiving and good works.” (‘Ecclesiastical History’ III.5)

He is thought to have had a church and cell here which he used as a base to preach to the more remote communities. But because Yeavering has a British name and lays inland from the coastal areas heavily settled by the English, it probably had a strong native population, many of whom may already have been Christian.

It has even been suggested that the semi-legendary warrior Arthur launched his military campaign against English from this area. The Glen, which flows through Yeavering, has a similar name to a river mentioned in the ‘Historia Brittonum’ (‘The History of the Britons’) as the setting for Arthur’s first battle with the “Saxons”. But this seven-mile tributary of the Till is more famous as the place where Edwin’s missionary Paulinus performed mass baptisms in 627AD.

However, Ray Simpson, writing in 'Aidan’s Way of Mission', has described the earlier evangelising project as a “firework display”, arguing that many had accepted only the outward forms of the faith. It would take Aidan to succeed where his predecessor had failed. He was better-placed culturally to engage with the people than members of the earlier mission, familiar as he would have been with places like Newgrange and Kilmartin Glen. Aidan would have experienced less discomfort with the concept of sacred continuity than the likes of Paulinus, an Italian missionary of the patrician stamp.

All images John Connell taken in the Ad Gefrin

The Man Who Gave His Horse to a Beggar

https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Gave-Horse-Beggar/dp/1527251071

30/04/2023

Lovely to meet and talk with Hugh Logan, museum guide at Ad Gefrin. He is standing next to a miniature copy of the Ruthwell Cross. Previously, he worked as a guide at Bamburgh Castle. It is not many folk who can put on their CV that they have served in two Anglo-Saxon royal palaces! Hugh knows his stuff: it is people like this who keep our stories and our history alive. Be like Hugh.