Friar’s Carse Hermitage is a small building that was built as a summer house by Robert Burns’s friend Captain Robert Riddell of Glenriddel. He called it the ‘Hermitage’, as it was in a secluded part of his large estate. The estate is in Dumfries, and Burns lived at nearby Ellisland Farm. Burns and Riddell enjoyed drinking together, and Riddell gave Burns use of his ‘Hermitage’ as a peaceful place to do his writing. Unfortunately, the two men fell out during a drunken incident, and the rift was never healed to Riddell’s premature death, aged only thirty-nine. Burns wrote ‘Sonnet on the Death of Robert Riddell’ (1794) in memory of his former friend.