Lindisfarne

A tidal island with a recorded history from the sixth century, and an important centre of Celtic Christianity under Aidan, Cuthbert, Eadfrith and Eadberht. The monastery was destroyed in the Viking invasions and re-established as a priory after the Norman Conquest. St Mary the Virgin was first built in 635 and restored in 1860; the castle, several lighthouses and a complex network of lime kilns also stand on the island. In the ninth-century Historia Brittonum it appears under the Old Welsh name Medcaut, perhaps from the Latin for healing island, after its medicinal herbs.