St. Peter's Church in Monkwearmouth, Sunderland, and St Paul's in Jarrow also hold significant historical value, and have made a joint bid to become a World Heritage Site.

He worked at the monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow, translating some forty books in all areas of knowledge, including nature, history, astronomy, poetry and theological matters such as the lives of the saints.

This is attested by place-name evidence, which suggests that County Durham and Northumberland were not settled by Scandinavians to the extent that Yorkshire and other parts of Northern England were.

[15] The administrative system of shires and hundreds did not extent beyond the Tees with the lands north thereof being left under the control of its native rulers: the Earls of Bamburgh and Community of St Cuthbert.

[18][19] The Scottish victory at the Battle of Carham in 1018, after which Lothian was annexed by the Kingdom of Scotland, set Northumbria's northern frontier on the Tweed rather than the Forth.

Henry of Huntingdon described northern England as consisting of three counties: the Bishopric of Carlisle, Yorkshire and Northumberland ("over which the Bishop of Durham presides").

[22][23] Originally, large swathes of land on north bank of the Tees lay outside of the liberty and formed the Wapentake of Sadberge, which consisted of a collection of exclaves ruled directly by the Earls of Northumberland.

In many ways, the governance of Northumbria between the Tweed and Tees had more in common with the highly fragmented governmental landscapes of the March of Wales and of English Ireland than with much of midland and southern England.

[21] Though forming a remote and quite distinct English "border region", Northumberland and Durham began to develop notable social and political differences.

The old kingdom of Northumbria was its underlying inspiration, albeit with medieval and early modern histories woven in as well, and the historic counties of Northumberland and Durham were its homeland.

In 1834 the Surtees Society was established with focus on publishing 'manuscripts illustrative of the history of the ancient kingdom of Northumbria, principally of County Durham and Northumberland'.

[34] The region is associated with numerous folk arts such as Durham/North Country Quilting, Northumbrian pipe-making, horn stick work and hooky mat making, which flourished due to 19th and early 20th.

[36] Northumbria possesses a distinctive style of folk music characterised by border balladry, use of the Northumbrian smallpipes and strong fiddle tradition that was already well-established in the 1690s.

It is remembered in the famous English folk song The Blaydon Races, and the event and its characters are vividly depicted in William Irving's 1903 painting.

[38] A number of fringe movements have sought to restore Northumbria as a geopolitical entity, either as a devolved region within a larger nation or as an independent state.

These endeavours typically draw inspiration from the larger historical Kingdom of Northumbria rather than the Earldom that emerged during the late middle ages.

The party applied to stand in the 2021 Hartlepool by-election, but because its Electoral Commission registration was pending, its candidate, former Labour MP Thelma Walker, stood as an independent.

[48] Northumberland and County Durham, together with the Scottish Borders, are conterminous with the ancient British tribal kingdom of Bernicia (Bryneich) which is notable for the stable ancestry of its present indigenous population.

The people of the region have been identified by DNA analysis to be strongly related to the genetic clusters of the Scottish Lowlands, Cumbria and Northern Ireland, who share a common line of descent.

Of particular importance are the saltmarshes of Lindisfarne, the Tees Estuary, the heaths, bogs and traditional upland hay meadows of the North Pennines, and the Arctic-alpine flora of Upper Teesdale.