I’ve received an e-mail from someone who is visiting England’s Lake District and wanted some advice regarding places to visit of Catholic interest. Here’s my reply:
 
Grasmere is beautiful, so is the Lake District. The village is best known as the home of William Wordsworth. My favourite spot in the Lake District is the village of Wasdale Head, tucked away in the Wastwater valley. It’s difficult to get to but has some of the greatest hiking, including a fairly challenging ascent to Scafell Pike, England’s highest peak.
I led a pilgrimage to northern England a few years ago but I can’t remember the name of the house that we visited which has a priest’s hole. Your best bet is probably Lancashire, rather than Yorkshire, especially the area around Preston, just north of Manchester. Houghton Hall is in this area, a Catholic recusant manor house associated with St Edmund Campion and the young William Shakespeare. I’m not sure whether it’s open to the public. I suggest that you google priest’s holes in Lancashire, Cumbria and Yorkshire.
Other places worth visiting in the north of England if you’re willing to travel a little further:
York, especially the shrine to the English Martyr, St. Margaret Clitherow.
 
The North York Moors Railway from Pickering to Egton Bridge, the latter of which has a Catholic church associated with the English Martyr, Blessed Nicholas Postgate, who was martyred when he was an ocotgenarian.
 
Lindisfarne, or Holy Island
 
Haworth in the Yorskhire Dales, a quaint town, best known as the home of the Bronte sisters. There is a wonderful and not too challneging hike from Haworth Parsonage, where the Brontes lived, to a bleak ruined farmhouse in the middle of the moors, which is alleged to be the original inspiration for Wuthering Heights.
Enjoy my native land!