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St Aidan founded the monastery here in AD 635, but St Cuthbert is the most celebrated of the priory's holy men. He was buried in the priory, his remains were transferred to a pilgrim shrine there after 11 years, and found still undecayed - regarded as a sure sign of sanctity!
From the end of the 8th century, the isolated island with monastery was easy prey for Viking raiders. So in 875 the monks left, carrying Cuthbert's remains, which after long wanderings through northern England were enshrined in Durham Cathedral in 1104, where they still rest. Only after that time did Benedictine Durham monks re-establish a priory on Lindisfarne. The ruins of the richly decorated priory church they began in c. 1150 still stand. The small community lived quietly on Holy Island until the suppression of the monastery in by Henry VIII in 1537.

Holy Island is a small Island off the coast of Northumberland. It is cut off from the mainland by tides on a daily basis. The island has a long and rich history stretching back to Anglo-Saxon times. The island possesses both a priory and castle. Website: Link

The Holy Island of Lindisfarne, commonly known as either Holy Island or Lindisfarne, is a tidal island which lies off the northeast coast of England, to the north of Bamburgh and the tidal estuary-like mud flats of Budle Bay. It is only accessible from the mainland at low tide by means of a modern causeway, which can be reached from the village of Beal, and an ancient pilgrims' path that runs over sand and mudflats and which are covered with water at high tide.

The island itself is about 3 miles wide from west to east and about one and a half miles from north to south. At the 2011 census, the island had a population of 180. Which is boosted by the well over 650,000 visitors coming from all over the world every year. Locally the island is rarely referred to by its Anglo-Saxon name of 'Lindisfarne'. Following on from the savage attacks on the monastery by the Vikings in 793AD, it obtained its local name “Holy Island” from the observations made by the Durham monks: 'Lindisfarne - truly a 'Holy Island' baptised in the blood of so many good men....’ But its more appropriate title is, 'The Holy Island of Lindisfarne'.