The legend of Bardney is one of the oldest pieces of Lincolnshire folklore, recorded with precision by the Venerable Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People (c.731 AD). Around 679, Queen Osthryth of Mercia brought the bones of her uncle, the martyred King Oswald of Northumbria, to Bardney Abbey for interment. But the monks — whose house lay in the formerly independent kingdom of Lindsey, once conquered by Oswald — refused to accept the relics of their old enemy. The cart bearing the bier was left outside the monastery gates overnight.
The story
During the night, according to Bede, a pillar of light rose from the body of Oswald and blazed upward into the sky, visible across all the surrounding countryside. In the morning the monks declared it a miracle, accepted the relics with full ceremony, and hung the king's purple and gold banner over the tomb. Their penance was public and permanent: they removed the great wooden doors of the abbey and never hung new ones, so that Bardney should always stand open to every pilgrim who came. From this came the Lincolnshire proverb 'Do you come from Bardney?' — still used today to chide anyone who has left a door open.
The water in which Oswald's bones were washed was poured into a corner of the monastic garden, and Bede records both a miraculous healing of a boy with ague who kept vigil at the tomb and the healing properties of the soil where the washing water fell. Bardney Abbey later became a major Benedictine house before its dissolution in 1538; its ruins and the site of the miraculous light remain in the Lincolnshire landscape.