Aidan's monastery ........

Aidan's monastery at Lindisfarne was huddled under a ridge known as the Heugh [pronounced 'hoff' from the Scottish and Northumbrian for a
'steep ravine or cliff': from Late Middle English from Old English from the Germanic hōh meaning 'high'].

It would have afforded some shelter from the winds blowing in across Ross Back Sands and Budle Bay. Known in Anglo-Saxon times as ‘The Precipice’, it was the site of one of Britain’s oldest churches. Standing on a twenty-foot-high cliff face and built of gleaming white sandstone, it may have replaced an original timber church.

Evidence including the position of the altar suggests that this could have been the site of one of Holy Island’s original churches, perhaps built by Aidan himself. It stood close to the cliff face, aligned with and visible from the royal stronghold of Bamburgh, five miles as the crow flies across the sea to the south.

Perched on an exposed rocky bluff overlooking the waves, it was a nod to the Desert Fathers who built their cells in dangerous and difficult-to-reach places, at the mercy of the elements.

Its positioning was also a reminder that Lindisfarne and Bamburgh enjoyed a close reciprocal relationship. The stronghold depended on Lindisfarne for the powerful favours its monks could call down from Columba and the battle god of Iona. And in its turn, Lindisfarne depended on Bamburgh for financial patronage and the protection afforded by the military muscle of its anointed kings. They were two poles on the same axis.

Archaeologists have also found the massive foundations of what appears to have been a large signalling tower on the same promontory, presumably to allow messages to be relayed directly to Bamburgh. It could also have been used to communicate with monks living on the Farne Islands. This could well be the tower mentioned by Bede in 'The Life of Saint Cuthbert', used to receive a beacon signal after the latter died on Inner Farne in 687AD.