page_title: Yeavering
section_title: Bede's account
hierarchical_section_title: Yeavering / Anglo-Saxon settlement / Bede's account
caption_attribution_description: "The Venerable Bede Translates John" by James Doyle Penrose (1862-1932) Inset from "The last chapter (Bede)", exhibited at the Royal Academy (1902) Details:
context_page_description: Yeavering is a very small hamlet in the north-east corner of the civil parish of Kirknewton in the English county of Northumberland. It is located on the River Glen at the northern edge of the Cheviot Hills. It is noteworthy as the site of a large Anglo-Saxon settlement that archaeologists have interpreted as being one of the seats of royal power held by the kings of Bernicia in the 7th century CE.
  Evidence for human activity in the vicinity has been found from the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age periods, although it would be in the Iron Age that significant settlement first occurred at Yeavering. In this period, a heavily inhabited hillfort was constructed on Yeavering Bell which appears to have been a major settlement centre at the time.
  According to Book 2 Chapter 14 of the Ecclesiastical History of the Venerable Bede, in the year 627 Bishop Paulinus of York accompanied the Northumbrian king Edwin and his queen Æthelburg to their royal vill, Adgefrin, where Paulinus spent 36 days preaching and baptising converts in the river Glen. The placename Gefrin, which is a Brittonic name meaning 'hill of the goats', survives as the modern Yeavering.
context_section_description: One of the best sources of information that contemporary historians have about the Anglo-Saxon period of English history are the records made by an Anglo-Saxon monk named Bede (672/673-735) who lived at the monastery in Jarrow. Considered to be "the Father of English History", Bede wrote a number of texts dealing with the Anglo-Saxon migration and conversion, most notable the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People), completed circa 731 and divided up into various books. It was in the second book of the Historia ecclesiastica that Bede mentioned a royal township, Ad Gefrin, which he located as being at a point along the River Glen. He described how King Edwin of Bernicia, shortly after converting to Christianity, brought a Christian preacher named Paulinas to his royal township at Ad Gefrin where the priest proceeded to convert the local people from their original pagan religion to Christianity. This passage goes thus:
  So great was then the fervour of the faith [Christianity], as is reported and the desire of the washing of salvation among the nation of the Northumbrians, that Paulinas at a certain time coming with the king and queen to the royal country-seat, which is called Ad Gefrin, stayed with them thirty-six days, fully occupied in catechising and baptising; during which days, from morning till night, he did nothing else but instruct the people resorting from all villages and places, in Christ's saving word; and when instructed, he washed them with the water of absolution in the river Glen which is close. This town, under the following kings, was abandoned, and another was built instead of it, at the place called Melmin.
  Archaeologist Brian Hope-Taylor believed that it was "beyond reasonable doubt" that Yeavering was indeed Bede's Ad Gefrin.
caption: An early 20th-century painting of Bede.
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