Category: United Kingdom

The “Planting of the Penny Hedge” is an outdoor ritual in Whitby, North Yorkshire, England, held on Ascension Day. The Planting is based on a medieval legend about a hermit. A recent news item tells us:

The story goes that three men were hunting a wild boar which was believed to have sought refuge with a hermit at Eskdaleside but the three hunters attacked the hermit and killed him.

As punishment for the crime the trio were ordered to build a hedge cut with a penny knife at low tide and if they refused or the hedge failed to withstand three tides and fell down, they would be forced to forfeit their land.

The article does not elaborate on the nature or efficacy of this ritual, probably as unknown to its participants as to those who read this item. URL: http://www.whitbytoday.co.uk/news?articleid=2885245.

The story is nicely summarized on a page of the Whitby-UK Resources website: http://www.whitby-uk.com/cgi-bin/site.nav/whitby.pl?page=pennyhedge.

John Christopher Atkinson, author of an obscure 1894 book entitled “Memorials of Old Whitby: Historical Gleanings from Ancient Whitby Record,” also explains the probable origins of the ritual, adding, however, that on the face of it the ritual is “nonsensical” and a “farcical, objectless ceremony.”

Not a prototype hermit, of course, but Sister Wendy Beckett, the BBC popularizer of art history in the 1990’s, lives as a hermit on the grounds of a Carmelite convent, taking morning Mass at the convent and spending her days — when not granting interviews — pursuing her “real life, which is a life of silence and solitude.” Article at the website AD2000; URL: http://www.ad2000.com.au/articles/2004/may2004p12_1616.html.

John Harris, the “English hermit” of North Wales, is an historical and legendary figure who lived in a cave recently the subject of archaeological investigation. This 1999 article entitled “English Hermit” by Anthony Sinclair and Keith J. Matthews of the University of Liverpool, was first published in CAPRA (Cave Archaeology and Paleontology Research Archives). It includes several pictures of the cave and site. URL: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~capra/1/hermit.html.

Here is a news item about an artist who will spend a couple of weeks as an ornamental hermit at the Painshill Park estate in Surrey, England. It is part of a collaborative project for a garden history association. The intended hermit will mimic a hired counterpart from the 18th century. URL: http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/nwh_gfx_en/ART21222.html.

Reprinted from the magazine CAPRA (Cave Archaeology and Paleontology Archive), “The English Hermit” discusses English hermits and their cave dwellings in Britain from the eighteenth century on. Several photographs and an informative overview of the topic. URL: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~capra/1/hermit.html