Hulne Friary; Ruins Of Church And Claustral Buildings

Hulne Friary consists of the ruins of a Carmelite friary founded around 1240 by William de Vesci. The claustral buildings were converted into a house in the 16th century, with some alterations made in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The structure is built from squared stone and features a long aisleless church with a southeast sacristy. There is a cloister on the south side and an east range that includes a cloister walk, chapter house, and warming house or reredorter block, both projecting to the east.

The west gable of the church has a tall lancet window with a vesica above it. The south wall features three trefoiled lancets above corbelling for the cloister roof, a doorway leading to the walking place between the nave and choir, and two two-light windows to the west of the sacristy. There are also triple sedilia and part of a piscina. The north wall and east end of the church are much reduced. The gabled two-storey sacristy includes a piscina and a recess with a bowl, shelf, and flue. The chapter house has a double-chamfered door and four trefoiled lancets on the south side, while the warming house contains a fireplace.

The transomed windows in the south gable end of the east range may be alterations made after the Dissolution, as are the blocked openings in the south wall of the cloister. The wall on the west side of the cloister is the outer wall of the former west range, which has an attached 18th-century Gothick privy below an earlier first-floor fireplace and stack. To the right is an 18th-century summerhouse.

Inside the nave, there is an unusual graveslab with a Tau cross, and a worn slab set in the west end of the church was brought in during the early 19th century from St. Waleric's Church at Alnmouth. Additionally, there is an 18th-century statue of a praying friar by the south wall of the chapter house.

Hulne Friary is noted as the best preserved and likely the earliest Carmelite friary in England. The foundations of other buildings, identified from a 16th-century survey, were excavated in 1888-1889 by the Duke of Northumberland, but these are now covered over.