A few important Anglian centres in Bernicia bear names of British origin or are known by British names elsewhere: Bamburgh is called Din Guaire in the Historia Brittonum; Dunbar (where Saint Wilfrid was once imprisoned) represents Dinbaer; and the name of Coldingham is given by Bede as Coludi urbs ("town of Colud"), where Colud seems to represent the British form, possibly for the hill-fort of St Abb's Head.
The manor of Lumsden is first mentioned when Edgar, King of Scotland, son of Malcolm III of Scotland refounded Coldingham Priory in the county of Berwick, endowing it with the villages of Swinewood, Renton, Lumsdene and Coldingham.
Bede describes it as "the Monastery of Virgins" and states that in 679 the monastery burnt down.
Eventually, in about 672, Æthelthryth persuaded Ecgfrith to allow her to become a nun, and “she entered the monastery of the Abbess Æbbe, who was aunt to King Ecgfrith, at the place called the city of Coludi (Coldingham, Berwickshire), having received the veil of the religious habit from the hands of the aforesaid Bishop Wilfrid”.
In the early 1880s he painted the rocky coastal scenes of Berwickshire whilst he was living in Coldingham.
It is held by Eanfrið son of Æðelfrið as a sworn vassal of Edwin and is also home to his sister Æbbe, later famous as the abbess of Coldingham.
A fragment of Bagimond's Roll in something very like its original form is preserved at Durham, and has been printed by James Raine in his Priory of Coldingham (Publications of the Surtees Society, vol. xii.).