Holy Island

Lindisfarne Castle on Holy Island is an iconic subject for the photographer, and while they may not all achieve the studied brilliance of this professional example, few are disappointed by their efforts. The island has many attractions and a long history that stirs the imagination.

Cut off by the tide twice a day, visiting the island needs a bit of planning – but is well worth the effort.

Among those who have been fascinated by its magnetic appeal are the film director Roman Polanski, who set two of his films here, and the one-time Poet Laureate and past President of CPRE, Sir Andrew Motion, who distilled his memories of the island in a poem which includes these words…

‘Guillemots whitening the cliff face..

Small orchids…still evolving in a downpour of Arctic sunlight..

Weather polishes the silver fields ahead; the ravens swoop down

               …and settle among the gorgeous pages of the gospels.’

Guillemots and ravens are not the most significant bird species associated with the island and its history, however. In 676, Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne, issued a decree protecting the island’s eider duck colony from depradation by locals (including his own monks). The birds have ever since been referred to in Northumberland as ‘Cuddy’s ducks’.

Another bird is featured in a recent work of art that pays homage to the appeal of this remarkable place. The painting ‘Curlews over Lindisfarne’ by Jim Moir is less of a landscape than an imaginative impression of recollections in which Holy Island ‘suffers a sea change into something rich and strange’. Images of a ruined castle on a hill and a small skein of curlew winging across the water float amidst delicate clouds of colour as an ethereal light falls from the heavens casting a benign glow onto the scene beneath.

IMAGE SOURCE, JIM MOIR