It is noteworthy as the site of a large Anglo-Saxon period settlement that archaeologists have interpreted as being one of the seats of royal power held by the kings of Bernicia in the 7th century AD.

[4] Strong winds persistently blow through the area from a west or south-westerly direction, often reaching level 8 (gale) and sometimes 12 (hurricane force) on the Beaufort Scale.

[6] In the later Neolithic and Bronze Age periods, humans living in Britain settled down in permanent communities and began farming to produce food.

[7] Archaeologist Brian Hope-Taylor believed it likely that by the 1st century CE, the settlement at Yeavering Bell had become "a major political (tribal or sub-tribal) centre, either of the immediately surrounding area or of the whole region between the rivers Tyne and Tweed (in which there is no other monument of comparable character and size.

[11][12] The site has been described as 'An Anglo-British centre of early Northumbria' due to having both native British and Anglo-Saxon influences[13] Archaeologist Brian Hope-Taylor believed that the monarchs of Bernicia had to rule over a kingdom in which there were populations belonging to two separate cultural and ethnic groups: the native Britons who were the descendants of the Romano-British population, and the Anglo-Saxons who were migrant colonists from continental Europe.

For this reason, he suspected that the Bernician rulers, in an attempt to administer both ethnic groups, decided to have two royal seats of government, one of which was at Bamburgh on the coast, and the other which was at Yeavering, which was in the British-dominated central area of their kingdom.

[23] Building C1 was a rectangular pit, leading archaeologists to speculate that it was the site of a water tank or cistern, and the presence of a layer of white ash led them to surmise that it had burnt down.

Although likely intended to be rectangular, from the post hole evidence it is apparent that the finished result was rhomboidal, and it appears that not long after construction, the building collapsed or was demolished, to be replaced by another hall, which also exhibited various structural problems such as wonky walls.

[29] Building D2 has been widely interpreted as a temple or shrine room dedicated to one or more of the gods of Anglo-Saxon paganism, making it the only known example of such a site yet found by archaeologists in England.

From the positioning, depth and width of the post holes, the excavators came to the conclusion that the building was a large tiered seating area facing a platform that may have carried a throne.

[35] Further examining the metal objects located in the grave, Hope-Taylor came to the conclusion that one of them, a seven-foot long bronze-bound wooden pole, was most likely a staff or perhaps standard used for ceremonial purposes.

Typically the halls are rectangular buildings, massive in construction with (in A4, for example) square-section timbers of 140mm placed upright side-by-side along the wall lines; twice as long as their width, arranged as a single large room or, sometimes, with a small space partitioned off at one or both ends.

Hope-Taylor understood Yeavering as a place of contact between an indigenous British population and an incoming Anglian elite, few in number: an Anglo-British centre, as he expressed it in his monograph title.

The then current view (as expressed, for instance, in the final (1971) edition of Sir Frank Stenton's Anglo-Saxon England) was that the early Bernician kings were hemmed into their coastal stronghold at Bamburgh by aggressive British neighbours until Æthelfrith (592–616) succeeded in overcoming the Britons and expanding the kingdom.

Yeavering convinced Hope-Taylor that the Bernician kings had developed interests inland from Bamburgh through peaceful collaboration with the Britons at an earlier date.

It is suggested that the refurbishment of the 'temple' building D2a (re-built in the same position as D2b) was a Christianisation as recommended by Pope Gregory I (see Bede's Ecclesiastical History, Book 1 Chapter 30).

He established a fixed chronology for the scheme by arguing that a fire which destroyed the Great Hall A4, the auditorium and other buildings was the result of an attack following the death of King Edwin in 633.

This leads to what might be called a minimalist view, as articulated recently by Tim Gates (2005), which sees the site originating as an ordinary Anglian farming settlement of the sixth century, subsequently elaborated.

In place of a literal, chronological continuity, he proposed the idea of a 'creation of continuity' (akin, perhaps, to Eric Hobsbawn's idea of the 'invention of tradition') to suggest that the burials in the Eastern and Western Ring Ditches are a deliberate re-use (long after the original use) of these features as a strategy by a new elite group to appropriate to themselves the ideological power held in the memory of the traditional burial places.

The Great Enclosure, the third element supporting the culture contact idea, has been less closely studied, despite the fact that for Hope-Taylor this was the first feature on the site, beginning when a Romano-British field system went out of use.

Colm O'Brien (2005) has analysed the stratigraphic linkages of the Great Enclosure, showing, in the light of the arguments of Scull and Gates, how uncertain is the chronology of this feature.

Carolyn Ware (2005) has proposed a similar sort of approach to study of the Great Halls through an examination of openness and seclusion and of sight lines within the buildings.

The Latin term villa regia, which Bede used of the site, suggests an estate centre as the functional heart of a territory held in the king's demesne.

The territory is the land whose surplus production is taken into the centre as food render to support the king and his retinue on their periodic visits as part of a progress around the kingdom.

It sits within the wider Germanic tradition of a life centred around the hall and its occupants drew upon forms, practices and ideas from the Roman and Frankish worlds.

It was decided that the trust should be made up from representatives of local government, English Heritage and the academic world with the ability to co-opt other members to address specific needs and issues should they arise.

The main purpose, in the words of archaeologist Roger Miket, is simply to "create a presence for these two days and be on hand to meet and greet anyone who might wish to come to the site.

[40] In 1951, the archaeologist Brian Hope-Taylor examined these aerial photographs to determine whether they could show the 7th century royal township described by Bede as Ad Gefrin.

[41] Whilst he began to approach government bodies for funding, the site itself came under threat in 1952 from nearby quarrying on its south-western side, but was saved when Sir Walter de L. Aitchison informed St Joseph, who had risen to the position of Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments at the Ministry of Works.

[43] As an important centre of Anglo-Saxon royalty about which a lot is known, Yeavering occurs as a location in several works of fiction set in the Early Middle Ages.