In exciting news, the Gefrin Trust has acquired the lease on the Maelmin Heritage Trail in Northumberland. This development will unite the management of Maelmin with its Royal Anglo-Saxon sister site of Ad Gefrin at Yeavering – allowing for improved visitor experience and more opportunities to showcase the stunning archaeology and history of the region.
Our MD, Clive Waddington, set up the free access Maelmin Heritage Trail with co-founder Peter Forrester, formally opening 26 years ago in 2000. It’s located in Milfield, the site of a major Anglo-Saxon palace identified through aerial photography. According to the historian Bede, Maelmin was the successor royal Northumbrian palace to the one at Ad Gefrin, and both feature in his account of the development of the great early medieval kingdom of Northumbria.
Not yet excavated, the Maelmin palace is right next to the Trail and is in the middle of the wider Till Valley or ‘Milfield Basin’, which forms a focus for hundreds of earlier archaeological sites that document human settlement right back to the end of the last Ice Age around 12,000 years ago. There is also a memorial that has been set up at Maelmin to the RAF and Canadian Air Force servicemen based at RAF Milfield (immediately next to the Trail site) who lost their lives in the Second World War. The Trail documents the long history of this amazing landscape; however, it is in need of an upgrade and repairs, and by bringing it into the Gefrin Trust the site’s future is secured.
While the much-loved Trail and associated reconstructions have been deteriorating over the last few years, the Gefrin Trust – working with the Parish Council – will now restore everything to its former glory and intends to update the accompanying explanatory materials for the 10,000 plus visitors it attracts each year.
Learn more about our work at the Maelmin Heritage Trail here.
You can find out more about the Gefrin Trust here: www.gefrintrust.org
Visiting the area? Be sure to pop into the amazing Ad Gefrin Anglo Saxon Museum and Whisky Distillery!