He went southwards and dwelt in Sussex, where his genius for hard work found scope in a mission to the Saxons of the south lands, and where he built and founded more churches and monasteries.  Readers of “Rewards and Fairies” will have made acquaintance with Wilfrid in his Sussex wanderings and hardships.  On his recall to the North by King Aldfrith, he returned to Hexham.  On the death of Aldfrith, the new King, Edwulf, banished Wilfrid once more, ordering him to leave the kingdom within six days; but the friends of Aldfrith’s young son, whom Edwulf had dispossessed, obtained the ascendancy, and Wilfrid was re-instated in his Abbeys of Hexham and Ripon.

While on his way back from Rome, on his last visit, Wilfrid had a severe illness, but was granted a vision in which he was told that he had four years more to live, and that he must build a church to the honour of the Blessed Virgin.  The little church of St. Mary, which stood close to the walls of the great Abbey of Hexham, was erected in fulfilment of this command.

In the Abbey church itself, all that was known for centuries of the original work of Wilfrid was the famous crypt, which is almost unique, that of Ripon, also the work of Wilfrid, being the only one like it; but recent excavations have brought much more of the ancient cathedral to light, and laid bare, not only its original plan, but some of the walls, and part of the very pavement trodden by the feet of Wilfrid and his fellows so many centuries ago.  The tomb of Wilfrid, however, is not at Hexham, but at his other foundation of Ripon.

The ancient Abbey suffered much at the hands of the Danes, and in later years from the ravages of the Scots, having been burnt several times, notably in 1296, when 40,000 Scots ravaged the North of England, plundering, burning, and laying waste wherever they went, exactly as the Danes had done four hundred years before.  Some of the stones of the old Abbey yet bear traces of the fires by which the ancient building was so often nearly destroyed, and in these frequent conflagrations all records, charters, etc., of the Abbey, from which might have been compiled a complete history, not only of the Abbey but of much of the provincial and national history of the times, were lost.

The Abbey was restored and rebuilt again and again, but for varying reasons was without a nave for some hundreds of years.  Within the last ten years, however, a complete restoration has been carried out, under the loving, and, what is more to the point, the capable superintendence of Canon Savage and his colleagues, in the spirit and manner, as nearly as possible, of the beautiful portions already standing; and several disfiguring so-called “restorations” of nineteenth century work, which could only detract from the beauty and dignity of the noble building, have been removed entirely.  This work was completed in 1908, and all who have the honour of our famous county at heart must rejoice that its noblest church is at last more worthy of its own high rank and glorious past.