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Bamburgh Castle is built on a basalt outcrop on the coast in Northumberland. It may have been the capital of the Brythonic kingdom of Bryneich between about AD 420 and 547. In 547 the castle was taken by the invading Angles led by Ida son of Eoppa and was renamed Bebbanburgh by one of his successors, Ęthelfrith, after Ęthelfrith's wife Bebba. From then onwards the castle became the capital of the Anglian kingdom of Bernicia until it merged with its southern neighbour, Deira, in 634. The Normans built a new castle on the site and this forms the core of the present one. William II unsuccessfully besieged it in 1095 during a revolt supported by its owner, Robert de Mowbray, Earl of Northumbria. After Robert was captured his wife continued the defence until coerced to surrender by the king's threat to blind her husband. Bamburgh then became the property of the English crown. Henry II probably built the keep. As an important English outpost the castle was the target of occasional raids from Scotland. In 1464 during the Wars of the Roses it became the first castle in England to be defeated by artillery, at the end of a nine-month siege by Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick. The castle deteriorated but was restored by various owners during the 18th and 19th centuries. It was finally bought by the Victorian industrialist William Armstrong, who completed the restoration. 
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