226 Recent Excavations at Holy Island Priory. 



of Durham) from the year 1093 till its dissolution under Henry 

 YIII. in 1536, and which itself had taken the place of the Saxon 

 Monastery connected with the See of Lindisfarne, founded by 

 Oswald, King of Northumbria, in 635, of which St. Aidan, a 

 monk of lona, was the first bishop, and with which the name of 

 St. Cuthbert is so intimately associated. 



Of the original church and other buildings connected with the 

 ancient see which were desti-oyed by the Danes in 875, nothing 

 now remains except some masonry in the lower parts of the 

 walls of the chancel and north transept of the Priory Church, 

 which is quite different in character and of different stone to 

 that in the adjacent parts of the buildings, and may, with all 

 probability, be considered to be part of a later church of the 

 Saxon period ; for though according to Bishop Carileph's 

 Charter of 1093,* there was no church at that time on the 

 island, there was, according to former charters, a church in 

 existence in 1082 and 1083; in the intervening years this 

 church may have been partly pulled down, but portions of it 

 left to fix the orientation and proportions of the one about to be 

 built.f 



The cell at Holy Island — so called on its establishment by 

 Durham in place of the old name of Lindisfarne, | in order to do 

 honour to the memory of those holy men who had lived and 

 died there in byegone days, many of whom had suffered martyr- 

 dom at the hands of the Danes— was not a large one. It con- 

 sisted of a Prior, six to eight monks, and in tlie most flourishing 

 times not more than twenty resident lay dependants. 



But though small, it was comparatively wealth3\ Bishop 

 Carileph, when in 1082 he ejected the secular clergy from his 

 cathedral at Durham, and established in their stead a convent of 

 Benedictine monks, in addition to other grants, bestowed upon 



* Raine, pp. 74, 75. 



t On the Plan accompanying this paper, the relative positions of the 

 Priory Church and of the Parish Church of the Island are accurately laid 

 down. It will be seen that the axis of the former is 6|° N. of E. ; that of 

 the latter, which was commenced before 1145, is 3° S. of E. The Parish 

 Church is dedicated to St. Mary, the Priory Church to St. Peter. 



X " Lindisfarnea," a quodam flumine Lindis nomine, in aquam ibidem 

 decurrente, primitus est nominata; post a nece monachornm et aliorum 

 secularium per Danes ibidem f£|ota, iNSPliA Sacra est nt^ncnpata, Raine, 

 73, MSS. Prior Wevssington, 



