Coquet Island

An RSPB reserve about 1½ km offshore at Amble. Apparently it’s home to a colony of Roseate Terns. In the 7th-century the monk Cuthbert, living as a hermit, met Ælfflæd, Abbess of Whitby here. The island’s isolation appealed to many later medieval hermits and became a Benedictine monastic cell linked to Tynemouth Priory. The tower dates back to this period but the whitewashed lighthouse on top and other buildings are Victorian. The first lighthouse keeper was William Darling, the brother of the Northumberland heroine Grace Darling.