[1] The road to Alnwick passes close by the village and the town of Rothbury is about 6 miles (10 km) away.

Its recorded history goes back as far as 737 when King Coelwulf gave Edlingham and three other royal Northumbrian villages to Cuthbert.

St. John the Baptist's Church dates largely from the 11th and 12th centuries, with a remarkable fortified tower added c.1300.

However, agricultural requirements overtook the need for defence over the following 200 years, and after 1514 the buildings were let to local tenant farmers for housing animals and crops, and fell into disrepair.

The causeway is a Roman road which starts at Port Gate on Hadrian's Wall, north of Corbridge, and extends 55 miles (89 km) northwards across Northumberland to the mouth of the River Tweed at Berwick-upon-Tweed.