Country Life
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An oasis of quiet now stands where the steam hammers thudded at this Welsh ironworks, in a river valley that may have moved Shakespeare to write A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Once, flashes of light from great blast furnaces illuminated the hills of Monmouthshire at night, roaring along to the thud of monster steam hammers.
Now, all is quiet in the Brecon Beacons, save for the tramp of the hiker’s boot, the whistling wind and the whirr of cyclists.
Country Life
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The Warkworth Hermitage is a cave where a hermit lived as penance for an accidental double killing. Annunciata Elwes explains more.
Modern life feels distant once you’ve walked the lonely half-mile from Warkworth Castle, rung a bell and paid a boatman to row you across the River Coquet. Amid trees, you’ll find a secluded hermit’s cave and tiny chapel hewn into rock, complete with vaulted bays and relief sculpture.
Inside the Hermitage and Chapel of the Holy Trinity, Warkworth, Northumberland.
From the 15th century to the Dissolution, the Earls of Northumberland paid a chaplain to live and say Mass there, but far more romantic is the tale recounted in the 1771 ballad by Thomas Percy,