Performing Pilgrimage to the Lourdes of Wales: St Winefride’s Well and its Pilgrims

This book charts centuries of changing pilgrimage practices to the well – from the journeys to reach it, to the actions of pilgrims in and around the water, and their post-pilgrimage lives – alongside accounts of how the shrine has been attacked, defended, restored and promoted over time. This is the first scholarly study of Britain’s oldest pilgrimage site in continuous use, St Winefride’s Well. Since the martyrdom of its titular saint in the seventh century, pilgrims have flocked to the shrine in Holywell, north Wales, in search of healing and help in its icy waters. The shrine survived the ravages of the Reformation, and remained popular in an era when pilgrimage was suppressed; it exploded in popularity during the second half of the nineteenth century, when stories of miraculous cures and mass pilgrimages filled the columns of national and international newspapers. By the 1890s, St Winefride’s Well was being called the Lourdes of Wales. This book charts centuries of changing pilgrimage practices to the well – from the journeys to reach it, to the actions of pilgrims in and around the water, and their post-pilgrimage lives – alongside accounts of how the shrine has been attacked, defended, restored and promoted over time.