Things to do in Durham

Finchale Priory (pronounced ‘finkle’) owes its origin to St Godric, a colourful figure born about 1070 who, after years of travel as a sailor, merchant and pilgrim, felt called to the solitary life. He eventually settled at Finchale, where he lived to the ripe old age of about 100. Some 25 years after his death, his hermitage became a priory. By the mid 14th century this was serving as a holiday home for monks from Finchale’s parent monastery, Durham. Finchale’s story can be read in its surviving remains, from St Godric’s original church and tomb to the Durham monks’ rural retreat. In late 1112 or 1113, while he was living in Durham, Godric heard of Finchale, a few miles downstream on the river Wear, and with the approval of the landowner, the Bishop of Durham, he settled there. His first hermitage was probably a mile or so upriver from Finchale – a spot now known as St Godric’s Garth – but he soon moved to the site where the ruins of Finchale Priory now stand. He was to remain there for the last 60 years of his life. Here he built himself a hut with a turf roof, and a chapel in which he had a crucifix, an image of the Virgin Mary, and a bell. His life as a hermit was severe. He often prayed immersed in cold water, either in the river or in a barrel set in the floor of his chapel. He fasted frequently, wore a hair shirt and chain mail, and slept with a stone as a pillow. As well as these self-imposed hardships, Godric was robbed and beaten by marauding Scots in about 1138, and narrowly survived a flood in about 1150 when the Wear burst its banks. In thanksgiving for this escape he built a new church dedicated to St John the Baptist, which he linked to his earlier chapel with a thatched walk or cloister. His life was not totally solitary, as his mother, brother and sister all came to live nearby within a few years of his arrival. Several notable individuals are said to have consulted him, including Thomas Becket, Aelred of Rievaulx and Pope Alexander III, and King William the Lion of Scotland visited him in person. Later in life Godric submitted to the authority of Durham Cathedral Priory, and as he grew more and more infirm, one or more of the Durham monks came to live with him. After eight years confined to bed in his little church, living on milk, and frequently depressed and irritable, Godric died, aged around 100, on 21 May 1170. He was buried against the north wall of his church, where his burial place is marked by a cross in the grass.