St Winefride's Well

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,[2] 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.[3][4][note 2] 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.[6][5]

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.[3]

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.[7] One focal point of Winefride's cult was Shrewsbury Abbey, which had taken possession of the saint's remains in 1137,[8] 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.[9]

Henry IV of England

Among the pilgrims were several English monarchs. The first known royal visit to the well was that of Richard II in 1398.[10][note 3] 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.[13][note 4] 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.[14] 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.[15]

Henry V may have made a pilgrimage from Shrewsbury to Holywell sometime around 1416, though the documentary evidence is ambiguous.[16] 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.[17]

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.[18] 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,[19] 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.[20][21] Tree-ring dating of one of the building's principal rafters has shown that the roof timbers were likely put in place around 1525.[21]

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.[22][23] 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.[24]

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.[25] 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.[26]

However, anti-Catholic laws were more rigorously enforced during the reign of Elizabeth I, after the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis 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.[27] 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.[28] 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.[29]

Earliest known illustration of the well chapel (John Speed, c. 1610)[30]

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.[31][32] 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.[33]

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".[34] 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".[35]

In 1626, Chief Justice of Chester John Bridgeman undertook to solve the problem of St Winefride's. He ordered local innkeepers to pass the names of their guests on to the authorities, and summoned all recusants to take the Oath of Allegiance in court. Before the year was out, he confidently reported that pilgrimage to the well had ceased. Once again, however, this success was only temporary. On 3 November 1629, a crowd of 1,400 "knights, ladies, gentlemen and gentlewomen of divers countries", along with an estimated 150 Catholic priests, gathered at the well to celebrate St Winefride's feast day.[36][37] The Bishop of St Asaph, in his annual reports to the Archbishop of Canterbury, repeatedly complained about the number of people visiting the well, until in 1637 John Bridgeman returned to the fray. This time, he instituted more extreme measures to stem the tide of pilgrimage. All but two of the inns at Holywell were closed, the statue of Winefride in the shrine was disfigured, the iron posts around the spring for the support of the bathers were removed, and orders were given to report the names and addresses of every pilgrim. Bridgeman also suggested building a wall to block access to the well-basin; it is unknown whether he actually attempted this, but the columns of the basin exhibit signs of damage that may be consistent with such an attempt. Further damage to the chapel occurred during the English Civil War, possibly by the Parliamentary soldiers who passed through Holywell in November 1643.[38]

Not all Protestants denied the efficacy of healing wells, though they did not believe the cures to be effected by any supernatural agency. Medicinal spas had become popular during the Elizabethan era, and 17th-century physicians sought to prove that certain springs could provide powerful health benefits on account of the mineral content of the water.[39] There are many recorded visits to St Winefride's Well by Protestants, with at least one having received permission from his parish priest to make the journey. Contemporary Catholic sources report several miraculous cures and conversions of Protestants at the well.[40][41]

The accession to the throne in 1685 of the Catholic James II brought a brief period of respite to the persecuted pilgrims. James's wife, Mary of Modena, settled a debate between the Jesuits and the secular clergy at Holywell by giving the well chapel into the sole possession of the Jesuits. James visited the well in August 1687 to pray for a son, and donated £30 for the repair of the upper chapel, which until that time was being used as a sessions house. The following year, however, James was deposed by William and Mary, and England once again became a Protestant country.[42]

An 18th-century drawing of the well crypt

During the 18th century, St Winefride's Well was increasingly frequented not only by pilgrims but also by tourists and curiosity seekers. Travel was becoming easier, and newspapers and pamphlets were spreading the word about the well and its healing waters. The well became an essential stop on the tourist itinerary; among those who visited were Celia Fiennes, Daniel Defoe and Samuel Johnson.[43] The secularization of holy wells continued, with cures being attributed to the chemical composition of the water rather than to the intervention of the patron saint.[44] In 1722, the upper chapel was converted into a day school.[45] In 1795, the antiquary Thomas Pennant noted that the number of Catholic pilgrims visiting the well had "considerably decreased".[46]

This was to change in 1805, when a dramatic and heavily-publicized cure sparked a revival of interest. A young woman named Winefrid White, who for years had been paralyzed down the left side and unable to walk without a crutch, bathed in St Winefride's Well and made an immediate recovery. Bishop John Milner published an account of the incident, in which he collated the testimonies of multiple witnesses and described the event as an "evident miracle" which defied scientific explanation. This public affirmation of the miraculous power of the well, helped along by the growing Romantic fascination with medieval history, reignited Holywell's pilgrimage tradition.[47][48] The upper chapel was once again used for religious services from 1841.[49]

The Well House

In 1859, it was discovered that the foundations of the chapel had eroded away, and the building was in a dangerous condition. The water was diverted for several days while workmen underpinned the well pool with ashlar stone and flagged the plunge bath.[50] In 1869, work began on the construction of two new buildings in the vicinity of the well. The first, called the Well House, was a three-storey bath-house which doubled as the caretaker's residence; the second was a swimming pool called the Westminster Bath. These buildings were completed by April 1871. A turnstile was installed at the entrance to the well complex, and a fee was charged for admittance.[51] In 1886, a statue of St Winefride was placed in the niche at the entrance to the well, which had stood empty since the 1630s.[52]

On 5 January 1917, St Winefride's Well ran dry. The water supply had been tapped by a drainage tunnel that was under construction near Bagillt. It had already been observed in 1885 that the drainage schemes connected with the lead mining operations in the Greenfield valley were affecting the output of the well, but the concerns of Holywell residents had been overridden. After the well dried up completely, the search began for an alternative source. A disused mine shaft northwest of Holywell was converted into a pumping plant, which was used to raise an underground water supply and divert it along a drainage tunnel known as the Holway Level. Water was then piped from this tunnel into the well basin. The well began to flow again on 22 September, and there was no indication that the water had lost any of its curative powers.[53]

In 1930, the first section of the stream that issues from the plunge bath was covered over, and the former brewery that stood beside the stream was demolished. The site was landscaped into a garden called St Winefride's Park.[54] In the 1990s, the Well House was transformed into a museum and library, and the Westminster Bath into a visitors' centre. In 2010, the guardianship of the well crypt was transferred to Cadw (who had already been responsible for the maintenance of the upper chapel since the mid-twentieth century). Restoration work was carried out in the crypt which involved strengthening the masonry, replacing missing flooring slabs, and repairing damage caused by humidity, candle-smoke and fires. New gates and railings were also erected.[55]