ONE of the great joys of Holy Island is seeing the tide creep over the causeway. When the tarmac is covered, that's it - there's no way out. The mobile phone can ring and ring, but there's no point answering it.

And, of course, there's no way onto the island. Which is all well and good for peace-seekers, but no good when an historic boat is on fire.

Lindisfarne Castle was built in the 1570s on Beblowe Crag - one of the easternmost rocky outposts of the Great Whin Sill over which High Force topples to the west - to keep out the nasty Scots. When King James VI of Scotland took the English throne in 1603, the Scots no longer needed keeping out and the castle fell into disrepair.

In 1901, publisher Edward Hudson fell in love with the ruins and asked his architect friend, Edwin Lutyens - possibly the greatest British architect of the last century - to turn it into a fabulous hideaway.

Using vaulted ceilings, thick walls, huge fires and tiny windows, Lutyens created a cosy holiday home to keep out the fiercest of storms.

For extra storage, he copied the locals. When their herring boats were not longer seaworthy, they cut them in half, turned them upside down and put a door in the stern. Lutyens up-turned three on the headland and, with the castle rising impossibly behind them, they became one of the great views of the North-East, beloved by visitors and swallows alike.

Last October, one rain-lashed midnight six days after a £30,000 grant had been secured to research the boats' history, someone set fire to them.

"There was evidence of cans of drink and chicken, so they lit the side of the boat for a barbecue and because it was soaked in engine oil it went up very quickly," says Catherine Atkinson, the castle manager for the National Trust.

The firestarters made it across the causeway before the tide came in. The firemen didn't. If human life had been at risk, they'd have been helicoptered in; it wasn't, so they came via the Seahouses lifeboat. They arrived at 4.30am, and two boats had gone.

"It was so sad," says Catherine, "an icon of the North-East destroyed by vandalism."

One boat survived, severely scorched. It had been a local herring boat, some 150 years old.

Lutyens originally up-turned two other local boats beside it, but by 1980 they were rotten and were replaced by two halves of a Norwegian boat which had been lying around in Seahouses. "There's been a lot of romanticising about them," says Catherine. "One story says it was on the Shetland run during the Second World War taking out refugees from Norway and taking in resistance fighters; another story is that it was a lifeboat."

Probably neither was true - but the grant was to find that out.

Now they are gone, but a replacement has been found at Leith, near Edinburgh. "They were clearing out the dockyard for redevelopment and it was the last remaining boat, waiting to be broken up," says Catherine.

"It is not a fishing boat. It was built by Harland and Wolff in either Glasgow or Northern Ireland, probably for use within a harbour as a tug.

"It has got two sharp ends - it doesn't have a bow and a flat stern so they call it a stem and stern. We'll cut it in half and cover it in the traditional way with sailcloth and pitch, so it will fit in."

It'll be in place within six weeks, although the swallows that habituated the Norwegian boats will have to nest elsewhere this year.

"But it really is the perfect shape for us," says Catherine. "It's got that lovely, big curvaceous hull..."

Even a broken boat has a beauty on Holy Island

Published: 18/02/2006