St Winefride's Well, Holywell, north Wales

The waters of St Winefride’s Well never waver from an icy 50 degrees farenheight. To plunge in fully clothed can take your breath away. Yet, even on an overcast and cloudy day, the pilgrims are not deterred.

As I sit with Fr Salvatore Musella, the Superior and parish priest, on a bench at a little distance from the bathing pool that is fed by the well, a family of pilgrims slip, one by one, beneath the guard chains and into the chill waters.

St Winefride’s is unique, in both its history and its remarkable physical presence. For 13 centuries this shrine in the tiny north Wales town of Holywell has been a place of unbroken veneration. Right through penal times the pilgrims still came. And the glorious, early 16^th century, two-storey Gothic shrine building – a crypt into which the well rises tucked beneath a chapel – was never damaged, and remains intact today.

The only modern touch is a row of rather cheery yellow and blue changing tents alongside the bathing pool.

Fr Salvatore explains that, once they have entered the 3ft deep waters, pilgrims follow the tradition of walking three times around the pool, then kneel on a stone and kiss a cross cut into the bath’s edge.

This group of pilgrims is a big, extended family from Ireland, and first parents, then grandparents and finally children slip into the waters. Even the babies have their heads dipped.

The shrine building was built -- probably partly through the munificence of Henry VII’s mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort -- by the Cistercian monks of nearby Basingwerk Abbey, to replace an earlier building. Richard III was an earlier royal patron. He ordered the sum of ten marks to be paid annually from the treasury for the support of the chapel of St Winefride, and the stipend of the priest. Henry V made the pilgrimage in 1415 after his victory at Agincourt. Henry VII is said to have made a secret visit here before winning his crown at Bosworth in 1485.

In 1605, many of those involved with the Gunpowder Plot came with the Blessed Father Edward Oldcorne to give thanks for his deliverance from a gangrene that had formed in the roof of his mouth or, as some have it, to plan the plot.

Every minute, 3,000 gallons of water surges up through the 7ft deep, bottle green waters of the well basin, which is enclosed by an octagonal parapet from which eight columns rise to meet overhead in a traceried canopy, forming a crypt. The surface of the well shimmers like hot oil as the waters rise and flow into a narrow piscine and out to the bath, from which they run down Greenfield Valley to the River Dee.

Fr Salvatore, a jolly, smiling young man from Naples, is telling me: “People come with a great need, and with great faith” when the grandmother from the family group approaches. “Father,” she asks, “will you say a prayer for my family? You see that girl there in the blue, last week she had an awful turn and she has four children and we’re worried, so if you could say a prayer for her.”

Fr Salvatore nods and murmurs: “Of course, of course.”

When she has gone he says: “You see? This happens all the time, all the time.”

Fr Salvatore is of The Society of Divine Vocations, known as the Vocationist fathers, and he and his community of two other priests and two novices were entrusted with St Winefride’s in April 2008. Traditionally it was in the hands of the Jesuits. The Vocationists have a thriving centre here, with facilities for first communion and confirmation groups, those on retreat, a gift centre and museum. There is also a guest house for 31 visitors, run by Bridgettine Sisters, just up the steep hill towards Holywell, and opposite the Catholic church of St Winefride, where Fr Salvatore is parish priest.

In the relatively short time he has been here, Fr Salvatore has seen much evidence of how vibrant the tradition of pilgrimage is. In his first year, 1,000 came on the National Catholic Pilgrimage, held on the Sunday after the saint’s day of June 22. This year it was 1,500. With many other events, including an Orthodox pilgrimage, another for the Latin Mass Society, and individual visits, there are a total of 35,000 pilgrims a year.

Very often those pilgrims come with a powerful belief that they will be helped.

“We have mass here every Sunday at the well,” says Fr Salvatore. “Three or four weeks ago we had our bishop here to say mass and it was very well attended, he was giving the rite of anointing, and a woman said to me ‘last year we brought our daughter who was three years old. She couldn’t walk and we put her leg in the water and now she is walking’, and she had brought the shoes to leave with us.

“Another time there was a son in a wheelchair and they lowered him in the chair into the water. Nothing happened but it shows the level of faith that people have.”

Surviving records of cures date from the 12^th century. There is a collection in the exhibition centre of crutches discarded by pilgrims, and in the library hundreds of letters testifying to cures over a period of 150 years.

So, I ask, are miracles occurring at St Winefride’s?

“We don’t talk about miracles,” says Fr Salvatore, “but rather special grace, spiritual favours. There are celestial favours and intercessions that occur through St Winefride.” And he reiterates: “People who come have great faith, and there is great peace here.”

This is a place in which many, he says, begin their journey towards God.

“A woman said to me I’m not Catholic or Anglican but I believe in St Winefride.”

So who was St Winefride? According to the legend, Winefride was the victim, in 660, of an attempted rape by Caradog, the son of a prince who, when she fought back, cut off her head with his sword. The well is said to have erupted at the spot where her head came to rest. But Winefride was restored to life through the prayers of her uncle St Beuno, and she lived as a nun until her second death, 22 years later. Whatever the truth of the legend, Winefride and Beuno did exist.

Fr Salvatore sees the reasons why people come to St Winefride’s as being far less important than the fact that they do. He talks of St Winefride as a Welsh Lazarus, and the truth at the core of her story as being that, like Lazarus, Winefride pointed towards the resurrection of Jesus, and beyond Jesus, to the eventual resurrection of all who would believe in Him.

As is said on the shrine’s website: “How is one to interpret the legend, without explaining away the truth that countless numbers of people down the centuries have found at its core?”

At its core, that truth is about faith and hope. Fr Salvatore says: “This place can be a starting point for people. It can expand their own faith. Their faith can develop from here; it is the start of their journey of faith.”

And, as a Vocationist father, he sees a visit to St Winefride’s Well as being an aid to vocation in the broadest sense.  

“Our role is to foster vocation, but we also try to help people, especially young people, to find their own vocation in life; God’s will for them.

“This place is very important; we meet a lot of people here, from very different social levels. We can help them discover how to live, their vocation as a Christian.”

And there can be no profounder meaning to the story of St Winefride than that.