162 COINS RECENTLY DISCOVERED AT HOLY ISLAND. 



the place where they are situated, the remains of a great many of 

 the pits in which the sea-weed was burned, and the kelp made. 

 Though these pits have, in common with the ruins, been covered 

 with sand for centuries, the marks of fire and appearance of scoriae 

 are plainly now visible. We have proof, from The Rolls of the 

 Priory of Lindisfame, and other documentary evidence, that the 

 trade and business of kelp-burning was carried on at Holy Island 

 as early as the 13th century, and that it continued to be carried 

 on there as late as the year 1790, when, for the commercial and 

 economic reasons I have given, it was finally abandoned. In the 

 lease which I hold from the Crown of the manor and royalties of 

 Holy Island, one moiety of the nett profits of all kelp manufac- 

 tured there is yet reserved. Seeing the consideration with which 

 the officers of the Orow^n have always regarded, and do yet con- 

 tinue to regard, this property, I think it highly probable that the 

 business of kelp-burning was carried on at Holy Island during the 

 existence of the Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, and may have 

 been then (as it was in the last century to the land revenue de- 

 partment) a source of profit and revenue to the Saxon monarchs, 

 who resided principally at the adjacent Castle of Bamburgh; 

 or to the bishops of Lindisfarne, whose abode was at Holy Island 

 until the year a.d. 875, when Eardulph, the sixteenth and last 

 bishop of that see, was driven away by the Danes who then in- 

 vaded and devastated the coasts of Northumberland, and when 

 Holy Island, its church and monastery, were entirely deserted by 

 all its inhabitants and clergy (the latter carrying with them the 

 body of their patron, St Cuthbert), and continued waste for many 

 years. " The island fell back " (says Mr Raine, in his history of 

 North Durham, p. 71) " to its former inhabitants, the birds of 

 the ocean, which the noise of men or the bell of the monastery 

 had, for almost three centuries, scared from their original abode." 

 The kelp-burners would, of course, disappear with the other 

 inhabitants, when this desertion of the island occurred; their 

 storehouses and habitations would, in time, fall to ruin, and be 

 entombed in the ever-shifting sand which moves with every 

 changing wind in this part of the island ; and although they may 

 have, been occasionally partially uncovered, by the same means, 

 during the ten centuries which have elapsed since they were 



