Ad Gefrin
Read the story behind the new Anglo-Saxon Museum and Whisky Distillery based in the heart of Northumberland.
Volcano fire and glacier ice have carved the rolling landscape that defines the Cheviot Hills and Glendale Valley below. There has been a settlement on the valley floor near the hamlet of Yeavering since the Bronze Age. For nearly 5,000 years, communities have farmed, traded and grazed goats on the fertile slopes of the twin-peaked conical hill called Yeavering Bell. Then, in the seventh century, this thriving region caught the eye of the Anglo-Saxon kings Edwin, Oswald and finally Oswiu. The location had great appeal to the Anglo-Saxon kings and queens. It was near enough to their coastal headquarters at Bamburgh, there were lush pastures for their cattle to graze, and it possessed an abundance of straight tree trunks to build their grand mead halls. With plenty going for it, they decided to locate their summer citadel here, building an elaborate palace complex and naming it Ad Gefrin, meaning ‘by the hill of the goats’.
It was aerial photographs taken during a hot dry summer in 1949 which led to the site’s discovery. Subsequent excavations carried out by archaeologist Brian Hope-Taylor between 1953 and 1962 revealed a huge complex of large timber halls, a great enclosure and a unique 150-seat wooden grandstand that make the palace one of the most important archaeological sites of the 20th century.
If you stand at the site of Ad Gefrin today, there is not a great deal to see. But if you were to wind the clock back 1,400 years, this rolling pastureland was the centre of some of the most momentous events in early northern English history, including the first conversions to Christianity.
As well as a place of faith, Ad Gefrin was also a place of power for the Anglo-Saxon kings and queens, and the royal household visited the palace regularly to cement their influence and authority, often hosting great feasts in order to oversee the nobles, priests, free-people and slaves in the court and community. The royals of this day lived a precarious Game of Thrones lifestyle, often one sword-thrust from victory and one dice-roll from disaster, constantly seeking allies, warring with rivals and paranoid of new rising powers.
Whilst the rich history of Ad Gefrin is fascinating, the absence of any physical remains has always made the idea of the citadel difficult to grasp – until now. Four miles east of the royal palace, in the market town of Wooler, a bold new £16m Anglo-Saxon museum and whisky distillery seeks to bring the forgotten stories of Ad Gefrin to life, whilst reawakening the ancient tradition for Northumbrian whisky distilling which has slept for over 200 years.
Five years in the making, Ad Gefrin is the creation of the Ferguson family, who owned the derelict agricultural haulage site where the visitor centre now stands. Wooler-born Eileen Ferguson and her husband Alan raised £10.5 million for the project in the hope that the attraction will encourage more people to visit the area and discover its remarkable history. Long ago, the Kingdom of Northumbria stretched from the River Humber to the Firth of Forth and people would travel from all over the world to visit. The Fergusons see Ad Gefrin as an opportunity to rekindle the sense that this place really matters. Though the challenge of communicating a rich archaeological landscape when there is almost nothing to see above ground is significant, this is where the awe-inspiring design of the new visitor attraction excels.
The result is a striking new museum, whisky distillery, shop and bistro designed by architect Richard Elphick. Upon entry to Ad Gefrin, visitors look up into a staggering barrel-like atrium constructed with 9,300 wood panels, all individually cut by a local joiner. In the museum, visitors enter the Great Hall, which is of the same width as the palace that once stood at Yeavering. This was meticulously created in partnership with the Gefrin Trust, an organisation which exists to preserve the archaeological heritage of the region. Inside, the hall is extended to its true length by a projection and is populated by virtual characters such as Edwin and his wife Æthelburh who tell their stories. The hall's walls are decorated with hand-embroidered hangings that evoke the rich creativity of this ancient heyday. A 40-minute audiovisual experience imagines life in the royal court, while next door the museum collection gleams with over 50 artefacts including jewellery, swords, and most notably, an astonishingly well-preserved glass claw beaker.
From the outside of the building, a picture window reveals another important part of the new attraction. Two enormous hand-hammered copper stills symbolise what is the first whisky distillery to open in Northumberland for 200 years. The still room is located at the very heart of the building, and it is here where Ad Gefrin’s international team of distillers turn the purest raw ingredients into the finest spirits. The distillers have opted to use traditional methods with the support of the latest technology. As such, the washbacks were made with Douglas fir wood instead of steel, and the traditional three-tonne copper stills were made by hand – a product of no fewer than 1,200 hours of work.
The location of Ad Gefrin as a distillery couldn’t be more ideal and will eventually lead to a single-malt whisky which is truly unique to the surrounding environment. The water used in the process is brought up from a borehole beneath the site, which is fed with the purest water running off the Cheviot Hills. The malting barley is all nurtured by a cooperative of local farmers in the fertile fields around Powburn, Lowick and Etal.
Ad Gefrin’s signature distillery tour and tasting experience takes you on an all-encompassing journey from the arrival of the malt, through mashing, fermentation and distillation, to filling the casks for maturing. The tour has been designed to include a special viewing of the cask store before you are invited into a multi-sensory tasting room, enabling immersion into the landscape that has inspired the flavour profiles.
To legally be a single malt, Ad Gefrin’s whisky must mature for at least three years and a day. So while a spirit using local barley and water from the Cheviot Hills is some years off, a very sippable blended whisky – Tácnbora – is already available. A fusion of Scottish and Irish whiskies, Tácnbora has been created with the utmost devotion by the head of distilling Ben Murphy, and reflects the heritage of those who once gathered in the Great Hall at Yeavering. It’s no doubt far more preferable than the various ales and meads that might have filled beakers all those years ago.
Photography by Joe Taylor
