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Natural Holy Places: Britain's Top 10
Nick Mayhew-Smith, author of The Naked Hermit, rounds up a five-year journey into the wild sacred spaces of Britain with a top 10 list of the most enchanting holy sites.
Providing solace, refuge and a quiet place to reflect on the big issues of life: natural holy places have lost none of their power to soothe the soul. Sitting in the shade of a 5,000 year old sacred yew tree to reflect on what binds us together certainly offers a fresh perspective on matters of enduring importance. For the health of our planet and our communities alike, green contemplation puts us back in touch with the wisdom of the ages. And in tune with the spirit of this age, it requires no formal religion to get you there.
I discovered all of these places on a personal journey into the ancient ways and wisdom of landscape spirituality to research my new book The Naked Hermit: A Journey to the Heart of Celtic Britain. More importantly still, I wondered if it would be possible to reactivate the rituals and devotions that once drew people to venerate nature in the raw. It turns out that you can: these are places that have lost none of their power to beguile and to enchant us, drawing us in to stories from the edge of recorded history.
These are marginal places above and beyond the main: lofty peaks and mist-shrouded islands, gloomy caverns, ancient trees and wild stretches of shore. The following list is a personal selection showing the surprisingly varied array of experiences to be had by approaching the wilderness in honest simplicity. Stripping off to embrace the Atlantic chill, spending the night on a sacred mountain, communing with the birds and the butterflies, and even cursing in the darkness of a long-abandoned hermit’s cave are the stuff of Celtic dreams. Reconnecting to the rhythms and cycles of the landscape brings those dreams to life and puts flesh on our desire to reconnect with nature, an invigorating journey for body and soul alike.
1. Sacred Yew Tree, St Cynog’s Church, Defynnog, Powys
St Cynog’s Church, Defynnog, Powys, Wales LD3 8SD
Sitting beneath the tangle of gnarled and mighty limbs in this quiet churchyard, it comes as something of a jolt to learn that two ancient yew trees beside St Cynog’s Church are actually the ancient fragments of a single specimen, confirmed by DNA testing. Over the passing of millennia, many metres of the heartwood of this ever-widening tree have rotted clean away to leave two stand-alone trunks. Estimates of 5,500 years and counting have been proposed for the lifespan of this evergreen sentinel of nature spirituality. A box tomb now sits in the middle, looking for all the world like an altar in a sacred space, yet one that needs no human embellishment to still the soul and offer food for thought. This tree was already ancient when the Celtic St Cynog established his church here in the 5th century, a carved stone marker in the church porch giving testament to the ancient impulse to embrace pre-Christian trees and other natural features into the missionaries’ new faith. Proof if nothing else that sacred trees offer a meeting space, quite literally common ground where communities and faiths can coalesce and work out their differences peacefully.
2. Bathing Cove, St Abbs, Coldingham, Scottish Borders
The coastal footpath starts on the left just before entering St Abbs itself on the B6438, near post code TD14 5PL
In the dead of night some 1,400 years ago a young monk slipped out of his monastery and made his way down to the shore for a ritual long since forgotten by the formal church. For it was at Coldingham that St Cuthbert stripped and entered the chilly waters for a moment out of time. Singing hymns of praise to the rhythm of the waves, when he emerged a pair of friendly otters rushed up to dry his feet with their fur. Even today this bay has lost little of its seclusion, and none of its power to shock the soul into an appreciation of the power of the cosmos. Tuning into the sound of waves and the cries of seagulls, it is easy enough to wind back the centuries and reflect on a time when nature was feared and revered in equal measure. The ruins of the Celtic monastery are just visible in the headland above this cove, marked on some maps as Horsecastle Bay, which is a half-hour walk from the pretty coastal village of St Abbs.
3. Glastonbury Tor, Thorn and holy wells
For the holy wells see www.chalicewell.org.uk and www.whitespring.org.uk.
Wearyall Hill can be accessed by footpath from the A361 as it leaves Glastonbury to the west, or from Hill Head, Glastonbury, BA6 8AW
Britain’s capital for New Age spirituality certainly has plenty of landmarks to justify its sacred status. No less than three holy natural features cluster around the prominent Glastonbury Tor, its sacred summit pinned to heavens by the ruined tower of St Michael’s church. Across a wide spread of south-west Britain many peaks have a chapel dedicated to the Archangel Michael, the high places a natural meeting place for angels and mortals. At the tor’s foot a pair of sacred springs flow out from the hillside, the tranquil Chalice Well with its well-tended gardens, and the rather more medieval bathing pools at the White Spring opposite, where visitors are free to immerse themselves naked in the stony gloom of its wellhouse. And finally a sacred tree, or rather the stump thereof, stands on Wearyall Hill on the west side of town, the Glastonbury Thorn celebrated for its pleasing habit of flowering twice a year – at Christmas and Easter. Hacked by a vandal with a chainsaw in recent years, this particular tree is now dead. The sorry stump and the ruinous state of the church atop the tor are both a poignant reminder of the power of holy places to attract both the best and the worst of human instincts. Fortunately a living specimen of this same holy thorn still flourishes in the parish churchyard on Glastonbury High Street.
4. St Columba’s Cave, Ellary, Argyll
St Columba’s Cave, Ellary, Loch Caolisport PA31 8PB
Not all is sweetness and light when it comes to the nature devotions of our hardiest ancestors. St Columba, the great Celtic wonderworker who founded Iona’s monastery, is said to have sheltered in this gloomy cavern on his journey along the west coast of Scotland. Our earliest written records often record a sense of dread and danger that lingered around the fissures and hollows of the British landscape. One of the witnesses of the missionary saints was to face down such Pagan fears and inhabit these caves, demonstrating that every part of nature could be redeemed by a single Creator God. Spending the night in abandoned hermits’ caves is possible today, the moss-lined gloom and perpetually dripping water a reminder that the relationship between humans and nature is very much a work in progress, however much the power balance might have shifted over the centuries.
5. Skirrid, Abergavenny, Monmouthshire
The footpath up Skirrid starts at the National Trust car park off the B4521, nearest post code NP7 8AP
Skirrid revels in the local nickname Holy Mountain, its dramatic twin peak providing a memorable backdrop to the town of Abergavenny. Indeed its true name in Welsh is Ysgyryd Fawr, which means ‘the great split’, referring to the richly suggestive breach in its summit. Legend has it that the mountaintop was rent asunder at the moment of Christ’s Crucifixion in Jerusalem, triggering an earthquake that rippled throughout the cosmos. Impeccable credentials for a holy mountain, one might think, although the more prosaic truth is that this particular landslip probably occurred around the last Ice Age. Yet these sacred slopes are further embellished by the scant ruins of a chapel, dedicated like so many other hilltop shrines to St Michael. Some believe these dedications refer to the Archangel's role in the Book of Revelations, casting down the devil from heaven, an allegory for the Christian practice of overthrowing the Pagan temples from Britain’s peaks. Whether such Pagan temples actually existed is a matter of debate, but there is no escaping the ruinous state of the Christian chapel, overthrown in its turn following the Reformation. Wreathed in legend and myth, Skirrid is as good a place as any to sit and contemplate the ever-turning cycle of devotion and desecration that holy centres attract.
6. Anchor Church, Ingleby, Derbyshire
The footpath to Anchor Church starts to the west of Ingleby, Derby DE73 7HW
The 'anchor' which lends its name to this complex of holy caves has nothing to do with boats on the river Trent, which runs outside. Rather it refers to an ‘anchorite’, which is another word for a hermit. Derbyshire has a rich heritage of such hermit caves, presumably due to its overabundance of rocky crags rather than any local predilection for subterranean gloom. The Anchor Church is a veritable troglodyte cathedral compared to many of these rudimentary dwelling places, its interior embellished over the centuries with a rough attempt at vaulted ceilings and columns. Such luxury would no doubt have appalled the first recorded inhabitant of this riverside cliff, the obscure St Hardulph who lived a simple life of prayer and solitude some time in the 7th century. Numerous other little caves have been carved into the surrounding rockface, perhaps testament to a small gathering of anchorites who made this their home. A community of hermits might sound like a paradox, but is in fact the origin of something that endures to this day in Christian tradition: a monastery.
7. Carningli, Newport, Pembrokeshire
A path to the mountain starts at the southern end of Church Street in the little Pembrokeshire village of Newport, nearest post code SA42 0QB
If you fancy conversing with angels, mountain summits are the place to go according to numerous Celtic legends. And few offer as rewarding an experience as the craggy peak of Carningli, with its majestic view over Cardigan Bay more than justifying the climb alone. It was here that St Brynach is said to have conversed with God's winged messengers on his frequent ascents up these holy slopes, which stand a few miles to the south-west of his ancient church at Nevern with its sacred yew trees. The mountain's modern name is probably a corruption of Carn Engylion, 'crag of angels'. More recent stories suggest that anyone spending the night on this craggy peak is liable either to go mad or turn into a poet, food for thought as you ponder the many Bronze Age hut circles and fortifications that further embellish the hillside. A dash of creative licence will certainly help you conjure up the vision that greeted Brynach if you ascend on a summer's evening, enchanting clouds of flitting butterflies and the odd croaking raven offering a natural alternative to his heavenly beings.
8. St Herbert's Isle, Derwentwater, Cumbria
St Herbert's Isle is the tallest island on the lake, and can be reached in half an hour by rowing boat: Keswick Launch Company, Lake Road, Keswick CA12 5DJ
Our Celtic ancestors could certainly pick a spot when it came to contemplating the splendour of creation. The devout hermit St Herbert rowed out to this island in the 7th century and spent his days in solitude and prayer, punctuated only by annual visits to see his friend St Cuthbert, another island hermit who lived on Inner Farne in the North Sea. Herbert's lonely vigils provided him with 'exhilarating draughts of the heavenly life', as contemporary history records. Sitting today on the grey shingle beach where the saint once meditated, it is still possible to catch a glimpse of the earthly paradise that inspired his lofty thoughts. The island is in the care of the National Trust, uninhabited and retaining its landscape seclusion more or less untouched, centuries of human progress passing it by.
9. Pendle Hill, Barley, Lancashire
The footpath up the hill starts at Pendle House Farm, Barley Lane, Barley, Nelson BB9 6LG
Despite his distaste for anything that smacked of Paganism, it is a surprise to bump into George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, on the side of this legendary hill in eastern Lancashire. Nature worship among holy wells and sacred mountains was far removed from his rather puritanical form of Christianity, and yet still this hill managed to beguile his soul into a devout reverie. One early summer evening in 1652 he made his way to the summit and promptly received a vision of human souls, waiting like a glorious harvest for him to reap on behalf of the Lord. Today the patchwork of fields below stretches into the hazy horizon, still a view to inspire the grandest of thoughts. Half way down the side of the hill a little spring trickles out drinkable water, where the great man stopped to refresh himself before heading off to the local pub for an evening of impromptu preaching. A holy well and a sacred mountain, some might say.
10. Hermit's Chapel, Roche, Cornwall
The hermit's chapel is off Fore Street (the B3274), just outside Roche, St Austell PL26 8JZ
Exactly which hermit made this moorland crag holy is a debatable point in Cornish history, but there is nothing nebulous about the ruined chapel that perches atop. Perhaps it was St Gonand, patron saint of the nearest parish church where an ancient carved cross confirms the presence of early spiritual activity. These Celtic missionaries pushed deep into the British wilderness during the conversion of the various tribes, interacting with all manner of landmarks, trees and animals and often choosing to dwell in solitude as St Gonand seems to have done. Quite what drove them into such intense devotions amid the natural world has long been questioned, but new research presented in The Naked Hermit suggests it was a sympathetic way to reach out to their Pagan converts, demonstrating the inherent goodness of creation. Marching out to inhabit the caves, crags and islands, praying in the crashing sea, and marvelling in the company of birds and butterflies demonstrated that our relationship with the natural environment need not be antagonistic. Plenty of food for thought in our modern age.
