In the north, the Brigantes were reduced to subjection by AD 80. The large number of excavated Roman military camps between the Tees and Tyne rivers are reminders of the challenge in subduing that ancient kingdom of which County Durham is now a part. Roman camps or towns were situated along a major north-south military road which enabled the rapid deployment of troops and supplies. There was also a Roman road from the Tees to the Tyne, crossing the River Wear at Hylton. A Roman station may have stood at the mouth of the River Wear, at the north end of what is now Castle Street, Sunderland.
After the conquest of the Celtic Britons, the Romans turned their attention to expanding agriculture, transforming more of the the heavily forested land and swamps into productive farms. Over time, the country became the granary for the northern Roman Empire, with vast amounts of food crops grown and exported. Britain’s climate proved receptive to the introduction of new plants and fruit trees. Gradually the Roman way of life permeated the populace, especially in the well-planned Roman towns with their markets and commerce. The whole structure was protected by military garrisons, coastal defences and, of course, the great Hadrian’s Wall marking the extreme northern frontier of the empire. Christianity arrived in about AD 178, competing at first with the paganism of both Celts and Romans and finally becoming the acknowledged religion of the empire in 324 under Constantine.
The Anglo-Saxon invasions
With the collapse of the Roman Empire and the recall of the last Roman soldiers from Britain in 410, Britain entered the Dark Ages in which historical records are scanty. Now open to raiders and settlers from the Germanic tribes of Europe, the country was soon invaded and colonized by Anglo-Saxons, who overcame Celtic Britons and forced them to the western side of the island - to Cornwall, Wales and the northwest. The Angles were from the region around the neck of the Jutland peninsular (modern Denmark and northern Germany), the Saxons from lower Saxony. It was from the Angles that England later got its name, but England as a country did not yet exist.
By 600 AD several dominant Saxon kingdoms had emerged, the two largest of which were Northumbria and Mercia. Northumbria, established in 547, stretched from the Humber to the prominent Scottish inlet at the Firth of Forth, a location that invited constant trouble from the Scots and Picts to the north. From 547 to 800 Northumbria was ruled over by some 30 kings, including King Oswald who introduced Christianity.
Biscop and Bede
In 674 there came one of those pivotal moments so valued by historians, because the records of the associated events pour a flood of light onto the otherwise obscure times. King Ecgfrith of Northumbria granted a substantial tract of land to Benedict Biscop, a Northumbrian noble of Angle lineage, on which he built the monastery and church of Wearmouth. Biscop made several trips to Rome and the Continent, and brought back many books, works of art and sacred relics, as well as craftsmen who reintroduced glassmaking to England. Little of the original monastery now exists, but the associated church of St. Peter’s stands today on the same site as the parish church of Monkwearmouth, in the heart of what is now Sunderland.
Biscop was the first Abbott of the monastery, but what is even more significant than his remarkable life is the entry into the monastery in 680 of a seven year old boy known as Bede. Bede’s life was spent at St Peter’s and a sister monastery built soon after at Jarrow, a few miles to the north. Over time, Bede’s prodigious scholarship turned Jarrow into the main European center of learning north of Rome. His most famous work, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People) gained him the title "The Father of English History.” The book covers the period from Julius Caesar’s invasion to his own day, with special emphasis on the kingdom of Northumbria.