The Shrine that Survived the Reformation

Holywell is a quiet place not greatly blessed with visitors, unless they have come for the shrine. I visited the town several times as a boy, as it was my mother's favourite shrine. We visited the chapel which was erected around the well, saw the waters, but did not go in, prayed, and then went back to our holiday location, with mother happy and satisfied with her trip.

The well was not discovered by Christians, for the ancient Britons knew of its waters for millennia before Christianity arrived in these islands, but in the post-Roman period in these isles when the Celtic Church was thriving it acquired a Christian story. St Winefride was a young woman who committed herself to virginity for religious reasons, but one day when she was alone at home a prince came to woo her. She spurned his advances and under the pretext of going to get some clothes to go with him fled. He followed her and in anger cut off her head with a swipe of his sword. The head fell to the ground, whereupon a spring opened up where it fell .Just then her uncle, St Beuno, arrived, cursed the prince, who promptly  fell down dead. In hope Beuno  held the severed head to her body, whereupon she sprang back to life, unharmed except for a thin white scar around her neck. She went on to become a nun and abbess of her convent. This legend reflects the ancient Celtic interest in the human head and was adopted and adapted by Christianity. It is one legend among many that were absorbed into Celtic Christian culture.

The sacred well soon acquired a reputation and pilgrims began to visit, often for the healing that the sacred spring was reputed to bring. This reputation persisted into the Middle Ages and still has some traction today, as people still visit in the hope of healing, and over the years pilgrims grateful for the healing have left their crutches behind as testimonies to the miracle that they have had wrought for them. The town of Holywell is not far from the English and Welsh border, and so pilgrims have come from both Wales and England. Pilgrims sometimes bathe in the waters of the spring and/or take bottles of water away with them, though we never did.

The site had an uneventful history up to the Reformation. Little happened until the Norman Conquest and after that the shrine changed hands, coming under the jurisdiction of different monasteries at times as ecclesiastical jurisdiction of different monasteries changed. Giraldus Cambriensis travelled in Wales, but did not find the shrine important enough to note, The shrine received royal support at times when royalty visited it. The relics of St Winefride, the preserved bones were, translated to Shrewsbury. Abbey, an event which inspired Ellis Peters' novel, A Morbid Taste For Bones.  Monarchs who visited during the Mediaeval period, included Richard the Second and Henry the Fourth, who may have been giving thanks to the saint for the survival of his son who had been hit by an arrow in battle. Henry erected a chapel at the site, but it did not survive long as it was not strong enough to withstand the force of the shrine's flowing waters.

The heyday of the shrine was in the late Middle Ages, when there was a growing interest in female saints, but there were dark clouds on the horizon. In 1534 Henry the Eighth dissolved the monasteries and as Winefride's shrine was supervised by Basingwerk Abbey in Cheshire, a county of North West England, it passed into the hands of the state. The Crown passed it onto a courtier, who promptly leased it to a man calledWilliam Holcroft. The deal was that Holcroft would collect the donations made by visitors and pass them on to the Crown. This deal assumed that the shrine would persevere as a holy well with a healing function,. This might seem strange, but not all Protestants were against holy wells as they were against images. The scheme failed. Pilgrims still came but paid no money, instead Catholic sympathizers placed collection boxes for charity there, and the state got nothing.The pilgrims simply kept on coming. 

The reign of Elizabeth the First saw some tighter restrictions, especially after the Pope excommunicated Elizabeth and enjoined Catholics to rise against her. That was in 1570. But the shrine was still running in 1579 when Elizabeth ordered that the waters be investigated to see if they were rich in minerals, as many speculated that mineral riches might explain the shrine's healing function. Lack of healing would have got it closed down, but by 1590 the shrine was still operating and able to accept  a pilgrimage from Enfield organized by the Jesuit Robert Garner, later wrongly implicated in the gunpowder plot. The pilgrims rested at houses of known Catholics en route and back. 

The death of Elizabeth did not end the persecution, and in 1617 the Protestant bishop of Chester suggested that visitors to Holy Well be obliged to swear the oath of allegiance, which no Catholic would take. This may have had a deterrent effect, but not much, as in 1620 Bishop Lewis Bayly set off to Holy Well to personally arrest Catholics visiting the shrine. The visit did not end well, as the local area, Protestants included, rose in defence of the shrine. The bishop was "roughed up" to use modern parlance, and thrown into a ditch. In 1626 John Brigeman, chief justice of Chester, proposed a scheme in which innkeepers were obliged to keep records of who visited the shrine. Again this might have had a small, temporary effect, but in 1629 there was a mass pilgrimage of Catholics numbering about fourteen hundred which went unhindered.  In 1637 Bridgeman, who was nothing if not persistent, proposed closing all but two inns in Holy Well, depriving pilgrims of places to stay. He also suggested that a wall be constructed to keep Catholics away from the water. There is some evidence that this proposal was started, but by that time the earliest signs of the impending civil war were showing and the scheme was abandoned. In 1643 parliamentary troops did some damage to the shrine, but not much.

The last significant public involvement was during the brief reign of the Catholic James the Second, who supported the shrine, but then the so called Glorious Revolution restored the Protestant order. However, the days of persecution were coming to an end. There were no more political troubles.

The Eighteenth Century saw a lessening of Catholic pilgrims to the shrine, possibly because Walsingham was beginning to be influential, but a rise in tourists curious about the miracles wrought there and inspired by a  romantic interest in the past. Britons were becoming aware of the cultural deprivation left by the iconoclastic orgy of violence left by the dissolution of the monasteries. Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, was numbered among them. The popularity of the spring was boosted by a miracle when a woman named Winefride White who had long been paralysed on the left side with what seems to have been a stroke bathed in the well and instantly recovered. As testimony to the healings which have been recorded at the shrine cured pilgrims have left their crutches as testimony, and some are still displayed on site.  

The rituals at the shrine involve pilgrims bathing in the well at certain times of day. The traditional method of bathing is to go thrice through a small outer pool before you go into the main pool. Pilgrims then kneel on a submerged round stone known as St Beuno's stone while saying a decade  of the rosary and dip their heads under water for as long as the prayer takes to be completed. The origin of this ritual is said to have come from St Beuno who told Winefride that pilgrims should do this while making a wish, though the rosary was not known as a prayer in Winefride's time, for it originates with St Dominic a few hundred years later. Pilgrims often visit the shrine's stock of relics, which are said to contain a fragment of one of the saint's bones, along with relics from other saints. There is also said to be a fragment of the true cross, but as Catholic altar stones all contain a fragment, or at least are said to, this is not exceptional. A small fragment of wood from what is said to have been the original oak reliquary box containing Winefride's remains is said to be among the relics .Pilgrimages to the shrine take place a few times a year.

The shrine is a pleasant place with a a nice atmosphere, attended by friendly nuns. As a young boy I found the nuns warm and welcoming to visitors. It is worth a visit.

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