Far from resort of people that did pass
In travel to and fro; a little wide
There was an holy chapel edified,
Wherein the hermit duly wont to say
His holy things each morn and eventide;
Thereby a crystal stream did gently play,
Which from a sacred fountain welled forth alway.”
Except as regards the little stream and the sacred fountain this is accurately descriptive of the hermitage at Warkworth. The Coquet is here a tolerably broad river indeed, so that to reach the lowly hermit’s cell one must make employment of the boatman’s art. A little church hewn out of rock, and with a certain architectural skill—that is the famous hermitage of Warkworth. A wood grows high above it; there is a pleasant walk by the riverside below; and above the cave there are some steps by which the hermit is supposed to have ascended to his garden ground. The Hermitage is, as Bishop Percy says—
“Deep hewn within a craggy cliff,