Pilgrim Ways

In August 651 St.Aidan died (just twelve days after the death of his beloved friend, Oswine, who had succeeded his brother Oswald). . On the night of his death a young shepherd, Cuthbert, was tending his sheep on pastures in the Scottish Lowlands. He saw a streak of light breaking through the sky and he believed that he was being called to follow the departed Abbot of Lindisfarne. Setting out to become a monk he joined the monastic community at Melrose. He became renowned for his visits to neighbouring hamlets and for dropping in at the cottages of the poor. He would gather the people around him, preaching, hearing confession and doing whatever he could to alleviate their suffering.

Farne Ultimately, Cuthbert became Abbot of Lindisfarne, living on Inner Farne. St.Bede the Venerable says “Cuthbert was the first man brave enough to live there alone...Having routed the enemy, Cuthbert became monarch of the place, in token of which he built a city worthy of his power and put up houses to match. The structure was almost circular in plan, from four to five poles in diameter, and the walls on the outside were higher than a man...so that with only the sky to look at, eyes and thoughts might be kept from wandering and inspired to seek for higher things. this same wall he built not with cut stone or bricks and mortar but with rough stones and peat dug out of the enclosure itself.”

The Farne Islands are extraordinarily bleak. They comprise about twenty five pieces of rock protruding form the North Sea - and are about two miles off the Northumberland coast. At low tide Inner Farne is about sixteen acres with about five acres capable of bearing some vegetation. There are precipitous cliffs and a tiny patch of sandy beach, St.Cuthbert‟s Cove, where small boats can make a landing. Thousands of birds, including Terns, Shags, Cormorants, Guillemots, Razorbills, Kittiwakes, Fulmars and Eider ducks, and Puffins all call Farne their home.

A succession of hermits followed Cuthbert to live in these inhospitable conditions. In the thirteenth century Geoffrey of Coldingham wrote about the twelfth century hermit, Bartholomew, and the spiritual foes he met on Farne: “their countenances most hideous, their heads long, the appearance of the whole troop horrible.”

Nothing remains of Cuthbert‟s cell but it is thought to have stood on the site of the Tower, built in 1500 by Prior Thomas Castell of Durham. The seepage well is thought to have been Cuthbert‟s original well. The Tower was later used as a beacon lighthouse and now provides accommodation for the wardens of the National Trust.

In the nineteenth century the Chapel of St.Cuthbert, which dated from the fourteenth century, was restored by Archdeacon Charles Thorp of Durham, and by the landing stage stands a small stone building, Fishe House, thought to be the remains of the Benedictine guest house.

Bede described Cuthbert as a man of great holiness: “He was so full of penitence, so aflame with hevenly yearnings, that when celebrating Mass he could never finish the service without shedding tears. In his zeal for righteousness he was fervid to reprove sinners, yet he was kind hearted and forbearing in pardoning the penitent, so that sometimes when the wrong-doers were confessing their sins to him, in his pity for their weakness he would be the first to burst into tears and thus, though himself righteous, by his own example would show the sinner what he ought to do.”