Gwenfrewy: silent saints and headless maidens

“If I can’t have you I’ll make sure no-one will!”

All too many women hear this phrase and it can make the blood run cold. Perhaps Prince Caradoc said it to Gwenfrewy—better known today as St Winifride—when he cut off her head after she refused his “attempted familiarities”¹. The prince had been hunting and, becoming thirsty, called at her parents’ home in what would become Holywell in Flintshire for a drink of water, where he found the young woman home alone.

But Gwenfrewy’s resurrection was by no means the end of her story and after some time she moved to Gwytherin in Conwy, where she ended her days as Abbess of a small convent. Over the years the spring where her head had fallen became a famous healing shrine, and continues so to this day: St Winifride’s Well at Holywell has been in the hands of the Catholic Church for centuries, while long after Gwenfrewy’s death, in 1138, her relics were taken from the churchyard at Gwytherin and transferred to the Abbey at Shrewsbury, whence they disappeared during the Reformation except for, it’s said, part of one finger bone.

I visited Holywell in May, with some trepidation. A recovering Catholic and convent school girl, I’m never quite sure that a nun isn’t going to appear out of nowhere to sentence me to detention or an hour in the chapel to pray for my many sins!

It isn’t easy to visualise the original spring; the Gothic-style shrine is very elaborate, probably built in the late 15th century by the Abbot of nearby Basingwerk Abbey, possibly with help from Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII. Perhaps this was why the shrine escaped the worst of the Reformation begun by her grandson. But in the meantime it prospered and so, of course, did the Abbey—association with a site like this would hugely increase both the prosperity and prestige of a monastery, which perhaps explains why Shrewsbury Abbey was so keen to house Gwenfrewy’s remains. Pope Martin V granted Basingwerk Abbey permission to sell indulgences³ in 1427, and Mary Tudor later extended this right. And not only the abbey prospered, of course, there were plenty of traders along the pilgrimage route to sell you a bit of bone or other “saintly relic”. I saw no mention while at Holywell that in 1917 nearby mining works diverted the underground stream which had fed the well, so that it ran dry, meaning that the source of the water is actually no longer the original spring.⁴

While Gwenfrewy’s miraculous story and the cures that apparently followed certainly played their part in the fame of the shrine, also helping its renown are the red “ferruginous”⁵ veins underlying the stones and a red moss which used to grow there and which people thought reminiscent of the virgin saint’s spilled blood. The moss is also said to have smelt of violets and was gathered into garlands, known as St Winifride’s hair, to be taken to people unable to travel to Holywell themselves.

Now for a very different story, from an odd tale used as an introduction to Chrétien de Troye’s unfinished Conte du Graal, and known as The Elucidation, although in fact it adds layers of confusion rather than illumination. But the story goes that in Britain at this time, no traveller would suffer hunger or thirst because every well had an associated damsel, who would appear on request with the food and drink best liked by the traveller, served alongside a beautiful, golden cup. But then one day a wicked king called Amangon raped one of the damsels and took her golden cup for himself. His vassals followed his example and after this no damsels emerged from the wells and the land itself–so recently fertile–began to sicken, as did the king.

As Caitlín Matthews writes, the rape of the damsels meant that “the harmony that should exist between king and land is ruptured”.⁶ That is to say, his relationship with Sovereignty was destroyed. She also believes that the golden cup was certainly connected with Sovereignty, who always offers food and drink when she appears as Herself, so the cup may indeed be the Holy Grail. A generation or so after Amangon’s crime, King Arthur set up the Knights of the Round Table, who determined to recover the wells and protect the damsels. After the grail appeared at Arthur’s own court the wells flowed again, fields became green and forests verdant. But the damsels of the wells were gone forever.