Lindisfarne, also known as Holy Island, is a tidal island off the northeast coast of England, which constitutes the civil parish of Holy Island in Northumberland. Holy Island has a recorded history from the 6th century AD; it was an important centre of Celtic Christianity under Saints Aidan, Cuthbert, Eadfrith, and Eadberht of Lindisfarne. The island was originally home to a monastery, which was destroyed during the Viking invasions but re-established as a priory following the Norman Conquest of England. Other notable sites built on the island are St Mary the Virgin parish church (originally built in AD 635 and restored in 1860), Lindisfarne Castle, several lighthouses and other navigational markers, and a complex network of lime kilns. The island is part of the Northumberland Coast National Landscape and a hotspot for historical tourism and bird watching.
Both the Parker and Peterborough versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 793 record the Old English name Lindisfarena.
In the 9th-century Historia Brittonum the island appears under its Old Welsh name Medcaut. The philologist Andrew Breeze, following up on a suggestion by Richard Coates, proposes that the name derived from Latin Medicata [Insula] (English: Healing [Island]), owing perhaps to the island's reputation for medicinal herbs.
The name Holy Island was in use by the 11th century when it appears in Latin as 'Insula Sacra'. The reference was to Saints Aidan and Cuthbert.
In the present day, Holy Island is the name of the civil parish and native inhabitants are known as Islanders. The Ordnance Survey uses Holy Island for both the island and the village, with Lindisfarne listed either as an alternative name for the island or as a name of 'non-Roman antiquity'. "Locally the island is rarely referred to by its Anglo-Saxon name of Lindisfarne" (according to the local community website). More widely, the two names are used somewhat interchangeably. Lindisfarne is invariably used when referring to the pre-conquest monastic settlement, the priory ruins and the castle. The combined phrase "the Holy Island of Lindisfarne" has begun to be used more frequently in recent times, particularly when promoting the island as a destination for tourists and pilgrims alike.
The name Lindisfarne has an uncertain origin. The -farne part of the name may be Old English fearena, genitive plural of fara, meaning traveller. The first part, Lindis-, may refer to people from the Kingdom of Lindsey in modern Lincolnshire, referring to either regular visitors or settlers. Another possibility is that Lindisfarne is Brittonic in origin, containing the element Lind- meaning stream or pool (Welsh llyn), with the nominal morpheme -as(t) and an unknown element identical to that in the Farne Islands. Further suggested is that the name may be a wholly Old Irish formation, from corresponding lind-is-, plus -fearann meaning 'land, territory.' Such an Irish formation, however, could have been based on a pre-existing Brittonic name.
There is also a supposition that the nearby Farne Islands are fern-like in shape and the name may have come from there.
The island of Lindisfarne is located along the northeast coast of England, close to the border with Scotland. It measures 3.0 miles (4.8 km) from east to west and 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from north to south, and comprises approximately 1,000 acres (400 hectares) at high tide. The nearest point to the mainland is about 0.8 miles (1.3 kilometres). It is accessible at low tide by a modern causeway and an ancient pilgrims' path that both run over sand and mudflats and which are covered with water at high tide. Lindisfarne is surrounded by the 8,750 acres (3,540 hectares) Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve, which protects the island's sand dunes and the adjacent intertidal habitats. At certain times of year, numerous migratory birds can be seen.
Warning signs urge visitors walking to the island to keep to the marked path, to check tide times and weather carefully, and to seek local advice if in doubt. For drivers, tide tables are prominently displayed at both ends of the causeway and also where the Holy Island road leaves the A1 Great North Road at Beal. The causeway is generally open from about three hours after high tide until two hours before the next high tide. Tide tables giving safe crossing periods are published by Northumberland County Council.
Despite these warnings, about one vehicle each month is stranded on the causeway, requiring rescue by HM Coastguard and / or the Seahouses RNLI lifeboat. A sea rescue costs approximately £1,900 (quoted in 2009, equivalent to £3,030 in 2025), while an air rescue costs more than £4,000 (also quoted in 2009, equivalent to £6,380 in 2025). Local people have opposed a causeway barrier, primarily on convenience grounds. One cause of issues is that the causeway may flood before the end of an officially "safe" period due to stormy weather.
The north-east of England was largely not settled by Roman civilians apart from the Tyne valley and Hadrian's Wall. The area had been little affected during the centuries of nominal Roman occupation. The countryside had been subject to raids from both Scots and Picts and was "not one to attract early Germanic settlement". The Anglian King Ida (reigned from 547) started the sea-borne settlement of the coast, establishing an urbis regia (meaning "royal settlement") at Bamburgh across the bay from Lindisfarne. The conquest was not straightforward, however. The Historia Brittonum recounts how, in the 6th century, Urien, prince of Rheged, with a coalition of North Brittonic kingdoms, besieged Angles led by Theodric of Bernicia on the island for three days and nights, until internal power struggles led to the Britons' defeat.
Lindisfarne Priory was first established in 634 AD by Irish monks. The island served as the site of a monastery for roughly 900 years. The site, most of which has fallen into a state of ruin, has since become a popular tourist destination and focus of pilgrimage journeys. The church of St Mary the Virgin is the only original building that has been more or less continually maintained and which remains standing within the original monastic compound. Remains from the pre-Norman/Anglo-Saxon era can be found in the chancel wall of this church. The monastery was described as an abbey by Bede but when it was rebuilt after the Norman Conquest it was described as a (relatively smaller) priory.
The monastery of Lindisfarne was founded around 634 by the Irish monk Aidan, who had been sent from Iona off the west coast of Scotland to Northumbria at the request of King Oswald. The abbey was founded before the end of 634 and Aidan remained there until his death in 651 and it acted as a centre of the Christianisation of Northumbria. The abbey and its church remained the only seat of a bishopric in Northumbria for nearly thirty years. Finan (bishop 651–661) built a timber church "suitable for a bishop's seat". Bede, however, was critical of the fact that the church was not built of stone but only of hewn oak thatched with reeds. A later bishop, Eadbert, removed the thatch and covered both walls and roof in lead. An abbot, who could be the bishop, was elected by the brethren and led the community. Bede comments on this:
And let no one be surprised that, though we have said above that in this island of Lindisfarne, small as it is, there is found the seat of a bishop, now we say also that it is the home of an abbot and monks; for it actually is so. For one and the same dwelling-place of the servants of God holds both; and indeed all are monks. Aidan, who was the first bishop of this place, was a monk and always lived according to monastic rule together with all his followers. Hence all the bishops of that place up to the present time exercise their episcopal functions in such a way that the abbot, who they themselves have chosen by the advice of the brethren, rules the monastery; and all the priests, deacons, singers and readers and other ecclesiastical grades, together with the bishop himself, keep the monastic rule in all things.