This ancient village is in these days a charming and peaceful place, lying in the midst of rich meadow lands, and surrounded by magnificent trees. It had its romances, too, in the course of years; so long ago as the days of the early Danish invasions a certain widow in Whittingham, in the reign of King Alfred, had no less a person than a Danish prince among her slaves; he was ransomed, however, and made king of the Danes in the North, in consequence of a vision in which St. Cuthbert had directed the Abbot of Carlisle to see this done. Young Prince Guthred's gratitude showed itself in a substantial grant of land to St. Cuthbert at Durham. Whittingham Church is supposed to have been founded by the Saxon king Ceolwulf, whose acquaintance we have already made at Holy Island, and he bestowed the lands of Whittingham on the church at Lindisfarne. It still shows some of the original Saxon work at the base of the tower, and much more was to be seen before the so-called "restoration" of the church in 1840. The pele-tower on the south side of the river, after its days of storm and stress are over, still serves as a shelter in time of need, for it is now used as an almshouse for the poor of the village, a former Lady Ravensworth having originated the quaint idea and seen it carried out.
Whittingham Fair, now Whittingham Sports, a well-known rendezvous of the whole countryside, has lost some of its former splendour, but is still looked forward to with great enjoyment in the surrounding district. The old coaching road from Newcastle to Edinburgh passed through the village, crossing the Aln by the stone bridge, from whence it went on through Glanton and Wooler to Cornhill.
In the vale of Whittingham, the little Aln flows placidly along, its waters murmuring a soothing refrain, a peaceful interlude between its busy bustling beginning and its ending. Before reaching Alnwick it flows past the ancient walls of Hulne Abbey, the monastery of Carmelite friars so romantically founded by the Northumbrian knight and monk after his visit to the monastery on Mount Carmel. A considerable portion of the ancient building is still standing, and few sites chosen by the old monks, who had an unerring eye for beauty as well as safety and convenience in their choice of abode, can surpass this one, surrounded by fair meadows, and standing on the green hill-side, with the rippling Aln flowing through the levels below. In Hulne Park is also the Brislee Tower, erected by the first Duke of Northumberland in 1781, on the top of Brislee Hill.