Skip to content

'This island is not a museum, it is a working village'

Jo LonsdaleHoly Island
BBC Dr Richard Hills and his wife Dr Sarah Hills are a couple in their sixties. She is wearing a purple top with a clerical collar and a large cross necklace. She has curly grey hair and glasses. He is wearing a zipped-up dark outdoor jacket and has short receding grey hair. Both are smiling. Behind them is a beach with a small low island in the sea and, in the distance, a larger stretch of rolling land across the water.BBC
Richard and Sarah Hills have found visitors to Holy Island looking round their garden

Holy Island, a tiny settlement connected to the mainland by a majestic tidal causeway which disappears under the North Sea twice a day, welcomes up to 700,000 visitors a year. They sustain many businesses and livelihoods, but some islanders say it can feel like living in a museum.

Dr Richard Hills's home sits above the sea, its long verdant garden opening on to the beach and overlooking the island where legend suggests St Cuthbert embraced a life of solitude away from the other monks in the 7th Century.

"We have had people coming into our garden and just wandering around," he says.

"Which can be a little odd."

Getty Images The causeway which connects Holy Island to the mainland. It is a long tarmac road which goes across the sand with the sea on either side - the dunes of Holy Island are in the distance. One small white van with red and yellow diagonal markings on the rear doors is travelling towards the island.Getty Images
Holy Island is connected to the mainland by a tidal causeway which is cut off by the tide twice a day

A newly retired GP, he has lived on the island for seven years with his wife and local vicar the Reverend Canon Dr Sarah Hills and co-chairs Holy Island 2050, an organisation set up to find a sustainable future for the island.

"It's not just the volume of visitors we get, it's the fact they are concentrated in such a short period of time because of the tides," he says.

"It can be so busy you can't drive down the street and many of our elderly residents simply don't come out."

A street on Holy Island is deserted of cars but has lots of people walking up the pavement to the left. It looks like a typical village residential street, shaded by trees with a stone wall and some buildings and cottages in the distance. A brown directional road sign is partially in shot on the right hand side.
Holy Island has a permanent population of 150 but welcomes up to 700,000 visitors a year

The island's tidal causeway includes a narrow bridge which can only take one car at a time.

"If you're trying to get back on the island as everybody is leaving ahead of the safe crossing times ending, you can sit there for hours," Richard Hills says.

"I've actually had to get out of my car and walk on to the bridge to stop the traffic so I can get home after a surgery."

A narrow straight road bridge sits above a body of water on a tidal causeway stretching towards Holy Island which can be seen in the distance. There are straight wooden barriers, one on each side of the road, which are made of uprights at equal distances and a horizontal top bar created with long, square-ended wooden poles (like a fence posts) turned so one corner of the square cut sits on the uprights. A large expanse of light sand can be seen either side of the bridge at the far end. Halfway along the roadway is a white building which stands high above the bridge. It looks like a white garden shed on stilts and is the refuge point where people trapped by the tide can remain in safety.
There are calls for the bridge to be replaced to allow traffic to flow in both directions

The island's church welcomes more visitors than many cathedrals, which Sarah Hills says is "absolutely wonderful of course".

But that too, brings its challenges.

"You can be holding a service and visitors will still be wandering around, chatting and taking photographs."

"Do you stop the service and ask them to stop or do you just try and carry on?"

A narrow rural street has a wall on one side and a row of old cottages on the right. They are a mixture of one storey and two and are made of stone, with one painted white, and have pots of flowers outside on a narrow cobbled pavement.
One islander returned home to find a visitor coming down her stairs

Farmer Alison Brigham, who has lived on the island all her life and has a stall selling local produce, accepts the need for visitors.

"But since lockdown it's just gone mad," she says. "That's the only way to describe it."

Natural England asked her to give up one of her fields for a dog walking area because Holy Island is part of an internationally important nature reserve, home to up to 60,000 migratory ducks, geese and wading birds, so people are asked to keep their dogs on leads.

A long wooden sign on a wooden fence carries the wording: Dog walking area. Dogs off lead welcome. There is a stone wall next to it and a field beyond.
Locals say a dedicated dog walking area has not stopped people letting their pets roam free in the nature reserve

"It hasn't made a jot of difference," Brigham says.

"People tramp through my fields all the time, their dogs chase my sheep.

"I have to cable tie the gates to stop them leaving them open and the sheep getting on to the road."

Her favourite story involves her Gran, who lived in a cottage in the village, returning home to find a visitor coming down the stairs of her home.

"He was out of there pretty quickly I can tell you," she laughs.

Sue Massey is a woman of 80 wearing a purply blue cardigan over a lighter blue floral shirt. She is standing at the doorway of her home which is a stone building with a deep dark burgundy-brown front door. A grey slate sign to the side of the door carries the name Palace House.
Sue Massey says she is regularly scowled at by visitors as she drives through the village to reach her home

Sue Massey, 80, often has visitors looking through the windows of her home.

She arrived in 1972, has run both a hotel and a cafe and lives in a house which dates to the 15th Century.

"People cup their hands around their faces to peer in," she says.

"I just pull the blinds so they can't see.

"When you're driving through the village to get to your house the visitors fill the road and scowl at you when they have to move.

"I had one man shake his fist at me."

Sarah Hills The sun is setting beyond a fishing pier with Lindisfarne Castle rising like a volcano in the distance. The whole sky is bathed orange and the sea is completely calm with two small boats moored up beyond the shoreline.Sarah Hills
Holy Island is a place where people come for retreats and for its wildlife

While the challenges from tourism are easy to identify, the solutions are not.

"We absolutely want to share this beautiful place with visitors but we have to find a way of spreading the numbers," Richard Hills says.

"Some days we can three or four thousand people arriving and the car park can't take anything like that".

It is hoped the narrow bridge on the causeway, which is "nearing the end of its life", will be replaced to help traffic flow and a social media campaign is encouraging people to come on less busy days.

"Most of all the message we want to get out to visitors is 'plan ahead, think about a good time to come and what you'd like to do when you're here'," Hills says.

"And remember, this is not a museum like Beamish.

"This is a working village."

Follow BBC North East on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram.

Related internet links