In the year AD 547, King Ida, or to give him his full title,“The Flamebearer,” landed his expeditionary force at Flamborough Head and conquered Northumberland. At this time, Northumberland stretched from the Humber to The Firth of Forth. This was a large kingdom and the capital was Bamburgh. King Ida's grandson, Ethelfrith, gave the settlement to his wife, Bebba, and it was then named Bebbanburgh, in her honour, ending up with the name it bears today. In the sixth century Bamburgh Castle looked nothing at all as it appears today. That ancient, historian The Reverend Bede first described Bamburgh as being fortified by a hedge and then by a timber palisade. It was not until the Norman Conquest that the castle as we now know it began to take shape.