Berwick alone holds 117 of Northumberland's 189 free openings from 11 to 20 September. Wallington, Lindisfarne Castle and Seaton Delaval Hall all open free.
Northumberland has 189 free openings in this year’s Heritage Open Days, and 117 of them are in Berwick-upon-Tweed. The festival runs from 11 to 20 September, and everything on the list is free to enter.
The county’s own printable area list carries 190 entries. One of those, Newcastle Castle, is in Newcastle upon Tyne rather than Northumberland, which is where the 189 figure comes from. We checked the doubtful postcodes with postcodes.io: Seaton Delaval Hall has a Whitley Bay postal address and Heatherslaw a Cornhill-on-Tweed one, and both sit in Northumberland.
Of the 190 listed:
- 175 are in person and 15 are online
- 135 need no pre-booking, 47 require it and 8 say booking is preferred
- 39 are listed for Saturday 19 September, the single busiest day
- 82 say only “multiple dates available”, so the per-day counts understate everything
Berwick is doing most of the county’s heavy lifting
Nearly two thirds of Northumberland’s listings have a Berwick-upon-Tweed postcode. Alnwick has 28 and Morpeth 19. Everywhere else in the county, from Haltwhistle to Seahouses to Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, adds 25 between them.
Nine of Berwick’s entries are at or about Berwick Barracks, six of them run with the Living Barracks project. That is the partnership rebuilding Berwick Barracks as museum and cultural space, run by English Heritage, The Maltings (Berwick) Trust, the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, Northumberland County Council and Berwick-upon-Tweed Heritage Trust, with money from The National Lottery Heritage Fund and the government’s Cultural Development Fund.
Its behind the scenes construction tours are the pick of them. The site manager takes visitors round the conservation work on a Grade I listed building that opened in 1721 and is not due to reopen fully until 2028. Tours run at 16:00 on Friday 11, Tuesday 15 and Wednesday 16 September, last about 30 minutes and are for ages 12 and over. Hard hats and hi-vis are provided. Stout footwear is not, and is required. Booking is essential.
The big houses that drop their admission charge
Five National Trust sites open free on set days. These are the entries most likely to fill up, and none of them needs booking.
| Site | Free days | Times |
|---|---|---|
| Seaton Delaval Hall | Fri 11, Sat 12 Sep | 10:00 to 17:00 |
| Wallington | Sun 13, Mon 14 Sep | 10:00 to 17:00 |
| Cherryburn | Fri 11, Thu 17, Fri 18 Sep | 10:00 to 16:00 |
| Farne Islands | Sat 12, Sun 13 Sep | 10:15 to 15:35 |
| Lindisfarne Castle | Sat 19, Sun 20 Sep | 12:00 to 17:00 Sat, 12:30 to 17:00 Sun, last admission 16:15 |
Cherryburn, the birthplace of the engraver Thomas Bewick, adds archaeology talks at 11:00 and 14:00 on Friday 11 September.
One caution on the Farne Islands. The listing covers the island opening, not the boat, and it makes no mention of crossing arrangements. Check with a Seahouses operator before you plan the day round it.
If you are going to Holy Island, read the tide table first
Lindisfarne Castle opens on the two days the festival ends, and the causeway is the constraint, not the castle.
Northumberland County Council’s safe crossing times for September give:
- Saturday 19 September: safe to cross 10:55 until 19:45
- Sunday 20 September: safe to cross 11:45 until 20:55
Both windows cover the castle’s opening hours, but on the Sunday you cannot get across before 11:45, so an early start is wasted. The council advises allowing an extra 30 minutes for weather, and its times apply only to the road causeway, never to the pilgrims’ route over the sands.
Book these now, one is already gone
Forty seven listings require booking. Two are worth moving on today.
Cragend Farm at Rothbury is running two tours of the award-winning farm built by the Cragside engineer Lord Armstrong, and its own event page shows Thursday 17 September, 11:00 to 13:00, is already fully booked. Sunday 20 September at the same time is still listed. Cragend is one of the two Northumberland sites shortlisted for the national Everyday History Heroes award, alongside Berwick Record Office, which we wrote about on 20 August.
The Alnwick Garden is running a new free heritage tour on Saturday 19 September at 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, 14:00, 15:00 and 16:00. It covers how the garden was built and what stood on the site before it.
Also on the 19th, local historian Jim Herbert leads a Berwick Castle tour at 10:00 and 14:00, meeting on Railway Street at the station approach.
One trap in the listings
Hexham’s House of Correction, normally closed to the public, appears on the list twice. The two entries give different dates.
- One says Saturday 12 September, at 11:00, 12:00, 14:00 and 15:00, run by North East Museums.
- The other says Saturday 13 and Sunday 14 September, at the same times, run by Museums Northumberland.
Both say booking is essential, both start from Hexham Old Gaol and both involve a 15 minute walk. They also give different accessibility information. Check with Hexham Old Gaol before you travel rather than trusting either entry.
The wider lesson holds across the whole list. The date shown on the area list is not always the date on the event’s own page, and cancellations and full bookings only ever show on the event page. Open the page before you set off.
What it means for you
Nothing on this list costs anything to enter. That includes sites that normally charge. Where a property has a shop, cafe or car park, those are separate and may not be free.
If you can only make one day, make it Saturday 19 September. It has 39 listings of its own, plus a share of the 82 that run on several dates. Lindisfarne Castle, the Alnwick Garden tour and the Berwick Castle tour are all on that day.
If you cannot travel, 15 of the listings are online. Two are virtual walking tours of Berwick’s riverside walls and Tweedmouth’s West End, and both are available at any time.
Check the train before you drive to Berwick. Berwick-upon-Tweed is on the East Coast Main Line and several of the walks start at the station approach. Services and engineering work are on our Northumberland train times page, and current road closures are on our roadworks and travel page.
More days out. Opening times and prices for the county’s paid attractions are on our things to do in Northumberland page.
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