The Lourdes of Wales

Rev. Fr. Sebastian Wall

As we make our way to Holywell again this year we are greeted at the entrance to the town by a large road sign proclaiming, “Welcome to Holywell, the Lourdes of Wales”. I suppose it’s part of the modern psyche to giggle/sneer at this bold statement, but the fact remains that when the visions of St. Bernadette back in 1858 started pilgrimages of penance and prayer to a miraculous spring in France there had already been pilgrimages to Holywell continuously for twelve hundred years and this despite the Reformation and active persecution. 

A little genealogy helps understand the principal characters in the origins of the well. I say this, the names are Welsh and, therefore, difficult enough even to pronounce let alone commit to memory. Bugi ap Gwynllyw, a nobleman of Powys, married Peren, the daughter of Lleuddun (King Lot) Luyddog of Dinas Edin (Edinburgh), a member of another family with substantial landholdings situated in the areas between Holywell and Gwytherin (the place of the eventual death and burial of St. Winefride). The children of Peren and Bugi were Gwenlo and St. Beuno. Gwenlo, the wife of Tyfid ab Eiludd, was the mother of St. Gwenffrewi, (Winefride is a mediaeval Latinisation of her Welsh name), the saint at the heart of the Holywell devotions. In addition, Gwenlo’s mother Peren had a sister, Tenoi. Her Welsh name is Tenoch (known as Enoch in Glasgow from the assimilation of the final ‘t’ in Saint [T]enoch), who married Dingad ap Nudd Hael, by whom she became the mother of St. Eleri and a number of other saints of the Middle Ages (including St. Mungo who settled in Glasgow but spent some time in South Wales with St. David and St. Asaph in the North), whose influence as monastic founders spread right across North Wales and beyond.

Everyone is aware of the story of the miraculous origin of the well but perhaps less well known is the later life of Gwenffrewi. St. Beuno, her uncle, in a penitential practice common to many of the Celtic saints, used to pray kneeling on a stone in cold water. His place of prayer was the stream which now flowed from the miraculous spring. When it was time for him to leave to found another religious community in Caernarfon he took Gwenffrewi to this stone (now visible within the exterior bath constructed in the 17^th century) and made the following promise: Whoever shall, at any time, in whatsoever sorrow or suffering, implore thine aid for deliverance from sickness or misfortune, shall at the first, or the second, or certainly the third petition, obtain his wish, and rejoice in the attainment of what he asked for. Then he told her that in future times people would come to her Well in memory of the bloody defence of her chastity, and of her resurrection to life. This is the origin of the tradition of bathing three times, either all at once, over three days or on three separate visits. 

Gwenffrewi lived for 15 years after her return to life and eventually joined the convent of her great-aunt Abbess Tenoi, at Gwytherin (Denbighshire), under the instruction of Tenoi’s son, St. Eleri. She eventually succeeded St. Tenoi as abbess, and after her death was buried at Gwytherin, until her body was taken to the abbey of Shrewsbury five centuries later, in 1138. 

The very name Holywell also attests to the antiquity of the devotions. In 1093, shortly after the Norman conquest, we see in the records that the church of Haliwel was given to the monks of St. Werburgh’s Abbey, now Chester Cathedral. In today’s political climate it has become difficult to know which place name is original since all are obliged to display a Welsh and an English name (unless they only have a Welsh name like Llandudno or Aberystwyth). Treffynnon dates from the mid-14^th century but the earliest records refer to an Anglo-Saxon name which in North Wales points clearly to an origin earlier than the battle of Morfa Rhuddlan, fought in 795. So, just after the saint’s death in c.660 it seems that the well was considered to be a holy place by Welsh and Saxon alike.

Certainly, devotion and pilgrimage grew during the Middle Ages culminating in the construction of the Gothic perpendicular building which still stands today and which dates from the first decade of the 16^th century. It is a remarkable fact that Holywell is the only shrine in Britain to have preserved intact a tradition of public pilgrimage from its time of origin to the present day. The Reformation began in Holywell with the dissolution of Basingwerk Abbey in 1537. Ownership of the Well passed to the Crown, but unlike every other shrine in Wales and England, there was little initial attempt to halt the pilgrimage. The North Welsh remained substantially loyal to the Old Faith, and the local gentry and Justiciaries connived at the continuing pilgrimages — as they continued to do, to a greater or lesser extent, for the next 150 years. 

State opposition to Catholicism hardened in the reign of Elizabeth I, and for the next 100 years Catholics were hounded for their faith. Priests could be — and were — executed simply for being priests, and lay-people were fined heavily and even tortured and killed rather than conform to the new religion. Penal Times had begun, and British Catholicism went underground. Except in Holywell. 

In 1625 the Anglican bishop of Bangor complained to the House of Lords that “there is a great concourse of people to St. Winefride’s Well”, and he noted that “public Mass is said continually”. In 1629 the authorities were forced to note that hundreds of people turned up to observe St. Winefride’s feastday in June, amongst them members of the highest nobility and more than 150 priests. And even under Cromwell, in 1652, it was reported that the Well “is frequented daily by many people of Rich and Poore, of all Diseases”. In 1637 the Wellhouse had been deliberately disfigured (the damage done then is still visible on the once-fine stone screen which surrounds the star-shaped well basin). In 1656 Fr. Humphrey Evans, SJ, who was stationed in Holywell, was arrested, severely beaten, and imprisoned. And in 1679, the Jesuit John Plessington, the priest-in-charge at Holywell, was hanged, drawn, and quartered for his priesthood at Chester. St. John was canonised in 1970. 

Apart from occasional outbreaks, active persecution of Catholics ceased shortly afterwards, but by then nearly 200 years of persecution meant that there were relatively few Catholics left in England; fewer still in Wales. And there were hardly any priests left to minister to this faithful remnant. But though the 18^th century was the low point of the Holywell pilgrimage, the pilgrimage did in fact continue, as is witnessed in the writings of many contemporary travellers — Daniel Defoe in 1724, Dr. Johnson in 1774. In the writings of the latter the “great stream” from the Well is mentioned which turned “a mill within 30 yards of its eruption and in the course of 2 miles 18 mills more”. This can be partly seen in the John Speed picture of 1610 which shows the well before the construction of the outer basin or the engraving by Ingleby which shows the first wheel seen from the interior. Though the well is still flowing today it could hardly be called a great stream. The reason for this is the lead mining in the nearby Halkyn mountains which gradually sapped the flow of water from the mid-19^th century onwards. Then, on 5^th January 1917, they broke through a large cavern drilling the Milwr drainage tunnel. Within twelve hours the well had run dry. However, an alternative source was tapped and the water flowed again though at the present much reduced rate. The cures, it must be added, began immediately after the restoration of the waters. 

With the coming of Catholic Emancipation in the 19^th century the pilgrimage underwent a spectacular rebirth, which increased in strength and public awareness throughout the century. Probably the most significant figure of this period is Fr. Charles Beauclerk, SJ, who was the parish priest of Holywell from 1890 to 1898. In some ways he was the most remarkable of all the remarkable Jesuit priests who served faithfully at St. Winefride’s Well for more than 300 difficult years. The local newspaper reports one of the events organised by him. 

On 1^st May, 1896 a grand religious procession took place in Holywell, the like of which had hardly been seen anywhere in Britain since the Catholic Middle Ages. Well-street was ablaze with flags; the New-road was spanned by numerous lines of bunting... The streets were lined with some hundreds of people, and being a fair day the procession was a novelty to many who had never seen the like before. The lead was taken by … a large painted banner of St. Winefride, depicting her martyrdom by Caradoc... Here and there in the procession banners were carried, conspicuous being the new painted banners, depicting St. Augustine of Canterbury, St. Gregory the Great, St. Ignatius Loyola, Ecce Panis Angelorum, Our Lady of Good Counsel, Our Lady of Victories, St. Winefride, etc.... In the evening … a candlelight procession to the Well took place. (Flintshire Observer)

By the start of the 20^th century a new branch line was opened from the coast with up to 20 trains running every day. This, like so many rural lines, later fell victim to the Beeching cuts but by this time the construction of the motorways and the proliferation of private motor vehicles mean that today it is easier than ever to get to this holy site and maintain the tradition of over 13 centuries. The pilgrimage has, however, been poorly attended by Traditional faithful over the last few years. Canterbury and Walsingham sprang back to life since the 19^th century though of course they are ruins. Nonetheless, they are relatively well-attended. Many make the extravagant journey to France for the Paris–Chartres pilgrimage but, for some reason, Holywell is not well-known. The healing waters of the well, with many attested cures, may be entered, one may still kneel on St. Beuno’s stone and even take some of the water home. A walk of around a mile may be taken from Basingwerk Abbey up the valley to the shrine if entering the icy waters of the mountain stream is not deemed arduous enough. It is to be hoped that, this year, with the added publicity of this article, more will be intrigued, indeed, inspired to make this pilgrimage made by monarchs from Henry V (after Agincourt) to James II as well as an unceasing host of devout pilgrims in an unbroken line for almost 1400 years.

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