St Winefride's Well () is a holy well and national shrine located in the town of Holywell in Flintshire, Wales. The patron saint of the well, St Winefride, was a 7th-century Christian martyr who according to legend was decapitated by a lustful prince and then miraculously restored to life. The well is said to have sprung up at the spot where her head hit the ground. This story is first recorded in the 12th century, and since then St Winefride's Well has been a popular pilgrimage destination, known for its healing waters. The well is unique among Britain's sacred sites in that it retained a continuous pilgrimage tradition throughout the English Reformation.
During the Middle Ages, the well formed part of the estate of nearby Basingwerk Abbey. It was visited by several English monarchs, including Richard II and Henry IV. Following the establishment of the Church of England, attempts were made by the Protestant authorities to prevent Catholic pilgrimage to the well, but these attempts were unsuccessful. From the 18th century onwards, the well increasingly attracted secular tourism, and it was commonly believed that the well-water had natural healing properties by virtue of its mineral content. Two bath-houses were built on the site in 1869. In 1917, the well dried up as a result of mining operations in the Greenfield valley; to get it flowing again, water had to be diverted from a new underground source.
The chapel above the well was built in the 16th century. It is a grade I listed building and a scheduled ancient monument. It comprises two parts, the upper chapel and the well crypt. The upper chapel has seen a variety of uses, including service as a sessions house and a secular day school, but is presently used for religious worship. The well crypt contains a star-shaped basin that encloses the well-spring, and an 18th-century statue of St Winefride. Both sections of the chapel are under state guardianship and managed by Cadw.
The well complex is currently open to visitors, who may bathe in the water at certain times of day or fill water bottles from an outdoor tap. There is a visitors' centre and museum on the site. Organised group pilgrimages take place several times a year, and during the pilgrimage season, St Winefride's relic is venerated daily in the well crypt.
Legend of St Winefride
The story of St Winefride, the 7th-century martyr for whom the well is named, is told in two 12th-century Lives: one written by Robert Pennant, prior of Shrewsbury Abbey, and a shorter work of unknown authorship, known as the Vita Prima. Both works tell substantially the same story of the origin of the well.
Winefride is said to have been the daughter of Teuyth, a chieftain of Tegeingl, who had permitted St Beuno to establish a church within his territory. Beuno became Winefride's religious instructor (later iterations of the story make him Winefride's uncle), and at an early age she took a vow of chastity, intending to devote her life to God. One Sunday morning, while her parents were at Mass, a prince named Caradoc visited their home. Finding Winefride alone, he tried to convince her to sleep with him, threatening to take her by force if she refused. Winefride pretended to consent, only asking that she first be allowed to retire to her room to get changed. By this ruse she managed to escape the house and fled down the valley towards Beuno's church. As she reached it, Caradoc caught up with her and decapitated her with his sword. Her body fell outside the church door, but her head landed inside the threshold, and where it landed, a spring burst forth from the earth.
Beuno came forward and pronounced a curse on Caradoc, who was instantly struck dead. Then Beuno placed Winefride's head back onto her body and prayed for her revival. The prayer was granted and Winefride returned to life, the only trace of her injury being a thin white line around her neck. The two 12th-century sources give differing accounts of her later life, but both agree that she took command of an abbey in Gwytherin, where she eventually died and was buried.
History of the well Early history It is not known how long the well has been associated with St Winefride. A fragment of a wooden reliquary from Gwytherin (known as the Arch Gwenfrewi) provides evidence that Winefride was venerated as a saint in the mid-8th century, but the earliest reference to a church in Holywell (which also marks the first time that the town is referred to by that name) is in a document dated 1093, in which the wife of the 1st Earl of Chester grants "the churche of Haliwel" to the monks of St Werburgh's Abbey. It appears that the cult of St Winefride had at this time not achieved any great notoriety, since the medieval historian Giraldus Cambrensis, who visited the area in 1188, does not mention Winefride or the well, and she is also not included in the 12th-century Calendar of Welsh Saints in Cotton Vespasian A.xiv.
The grant of the church to St Werburgh's was confirmed by Richard d'Avranches, 2nd Earl of Chester, in 1119, but in 1135, the town and church of Holywell were given into the possession of the newly-established Basingwerk Abbey in Flintshire. The church was briefly transferred back to St Werbergh's between 1157 and 1196, but then reverted to Basingwerk.
During the late Middle Ages the fame of St Winefride began to spread, as the growth of Marian culture in Europe caused a surge of interest in female saints. One focal point of Winefride's cult was Shrewsbury Abbey, which had taken possession of the saint's remains in 1137, but Holywell also received large numbers of pilgrims, who came to offer their devotions and to take advantage of the reputed healing power of the water.
Among the pilgrims were several English monarchs. The first known royal visit to the well was that of Richard II in 1398. Richard appointed a chaplain to say regular masses at the well; the office came with an annual pension which was kept up by successive monarchs until the 16th century. Henry IV took a pilgrimage to the well in 1403, following his victory at the Battle of Shrewsbury, possibly in order to give thanks to Winefride for saving the life of his son, who had sustained an arrow wound during the battle. On the other hand, Henry's visit may have been politically motivated; by moving north he was positioning himself to head off a potential Welsh invasion, and his devotions at the well sent a message to the people of Cheshire (an area hostile to his rule) that the saint endorsed his victory. Henry seems to have established the first chapel over the well, which is described as having had three strong walls and a "great gate" on the fourth side.
Henry V may have made a pilgrimage from Shrewsbury to Holywell sometime around 1416, though the documentary evidence is ambiguous. The medieval Welsh poet Tudur Aled said of St Winefride's Well that "every earl used to go, every courtier, every king", and mentions a pilgrimage to the site by Edward IV. Though the poem gives no indication of the date of this pilgrimage, Edward was active in the area in 1461, around the time of his crowning; like Henry before him, he may have wished to secure a political advantage by showing that Winefride supported his cause.
The chapel built by Henry IV apparently did not survive for long, possibly because it was not sturdy enough to withstand the force of the water. The chapel that stands on the site today is traditionally said to have been built by Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, shortly after the 1485 Battle of Bosworth, but there is no contemporary evidence to support this claim. A 16th-century poem by Siôn ap Hywel says that the funding for the chapel was provided by Abbot Thomas Pennant of Basingwerk in 1512, and modern historians consider this a more plausible account. Tree-ring dating of one of the building's principal rafters has shown that the roof timbers were likely put in place around 1525.
English Reformation In 1534, Henry VIII officially rejected the authority of the Pope and established the Church of England, an act that dramatically altered the nation's religious landscape. Catholicism was outlawed, and traditional practices such as pilgrimage and the veneration of saints were condemned as heretical. Despite this, St Winefride's Well continued to attract large numbers of Catholic pilgrims throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. The well's uninterrupted pilgrimage tradition makes it unique among the sacred sites of Britain.
Basingwerk Abbey was dissolved circa 1537. The abbey's possessions reverted to the Crown, and St Winefride's Well was leased out to a member of the royal household, who in turn leased it to one William Holcroft. The terms of the lease entitled Holcroft to receive all donations offered by pilgrims at the shrine, but he soon came into conflict with a group of local Catholics, who brought their own donation boxes to the well and urged the pilgrims not to give their money to a servant of the king. The zeal of the locals helped protect the well chapel from the organized iconoclasm of the following decades, and the income generated by the site gave the authorities good reason not to suppress its operation.
However, anti-Catholic laws were more rigorously enforced during the reign of Elizabeth I, after the papal bull commanded English Catholics to rebel against their monarch. Any large gathering of Catholics was henceforth considered a threat to national security; notwithstanding this, the well's popularity as a pilgrimage site was undiminished. In 1579, Elizabeth ordered that the water be tested to determine if it had any natural curative properties. If so, access was to be restricted only to "diseased persons"; if not, then the chapel was to be torn down. It is unknown what resulted from this order, but the chapel remained standing and pilgrimage continued. In 1590, the Society of Jesus dispatched John Bennett to minister to Catholics in Holywell, and the Jesuits maintained a presence in the town up until the 20th century.
17th century
In 1605, under the reign of James I, the Jesuit Henry Garnet led a pilgrimage from Enfield to St Winefride's Well, stopping along the way at the homes of several people who were later implicated in the Gunpowder Plot. Garnet was accused of using the pilgrimage as cover for a "conference of the conspirators", though modern historians consider this unlikely. The backlash against the failed plot resulted in even greater legal intolerance of Catholics and sharper punishments for recusancy (refusal to attend Anglican services). Catholics were required to take an Oath of Allegiance which denied the authority of the Pope over the king.
In 1617, Bishop Richard Parry made an effort to prevent the "superstitious flocking" of Catholics to St Winefride's Well by requiring "that the oath of supremacie and allegiance be ordered unto all such strangers (before they go to the Well) as shall refuse to come to church, by which reason whereof the great concourse is stopped". If Parry did succeed in keeping pilgrims from the well, his victory was short-lived. Just three years later, a Catholic source reported that the Bishop of Bangor, Lewis Bayly, "went in person to arrest the priests and Catholics" who were visiting the well around the time of Winefride's feast day, whereupon "the people from about the countryside rose up, even though most of them are heretics [Protestants] and seized the bishop and handled him roughly and then threw him into a ditch".