In a message dated 10/10/2007 03:38:07 GMT Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: In regard to burial information. Can someone tell me where I can find information on the 10th Century Northumbrian Earl Uhtred Walþeofes sunes? He died in 1016. Where in Bamburgh would his ancestors have been buried. Also need the Monumental Inscriptions information for the Neville Family in Staindrop Cathedral? First, there is no such place as "Staindrop Cathedral". That phrase would be guaranteed to cause a lot of amusement if repeated in the village of Staindrop! Staindrop has a very nice parish church but it is not, and never has been, a cathedral. Since the days of Earl Uchtred, Staindrop has been part of the See of Durham - or at least of the Community of St Cuthbert, who were established in eg Ripon and Chester le Street before arriving in Durham, where the present Cathedral, commenced around the latter part of the 11th century, replaced an earlier Anglian one. Your question really revolves aorund that of "Where was Earl Uchtred buried?". If that was in Durham Cathedral then his tomb has been lost, possibly during the re-building operations of the 11th & 12th centuries. However, Uchtred was associated with lots of places, all over the north of England and southern Scotland (I refer to present-day boundaries), and he may have been buried in almost any other major church or monastic building in that region. I understand he probably owned the estate at Brancepeth as well as that of Raby, so Brancepeth church (recently restored after a disastrous fire) is just as likely a place as Staindrop or Durham. He may have wanted to be buried at Tynemouth Priory, close to the various members of the Northumbrian Royalty who had been buried there before him: he may have been buried at Bamburgh, either in a chapel inside what is now the Castle or else in the village church (the site of St Aidan's death, if not his burial) or he may have wanted to go back to the roots of Northumbrian Christianity and be buried on Holy Island, though in his day the Anglian monastery was probably in ruins and the Norman one not yet built. Uchtred's son in law Maldred is actually the first I have as being Lord of Raby (in Staindrop parish) so perhaps the connection was not there in Uchtred's day. Uchtred's Royal connections (his wife, Aelgifu, was a daughter of (the Saxon) King Edward II and a sister of King Edward the Confessor) may have required a burial in eg Westminster, though there again if that happened the tomb has been lost. No doubt you know more about Uchtred than I do but it strikes me that leaders of his time rarely died with their boots off. Perhaps he died in battle and his body may have either been left to the wild animals that would attack the corpses left on the battlefield, or else it would have been collected by local people/monks and buried in a mass grave in some local churchyard or monastery. Even an earl looks much the same as a peasant once his clothes have been stolen by looters and his features made unrecognisable by sword slashes! Geoff Nicholson