Fortunately, all the botanical and other students of the days of St. Winefred were monks, who knew well how to keep their own counsel, and turn their knowledge to their own advantage.
Our fair tourist proceeds to narrate some of the “miracles and lying wonders,” which are said to have occurred during the removal of the devout virgin’s corpse from Gwytherin to Shrewsbury; and then comes a conclusion, which we suppose the devotees of the saint of the Holy Well will regard as nothing less than “flat blasphemy.” “After all this,” observes Miss Costello, “it is mortifying to find that the blessed St. Winefred never existed at all, nor was more than an Undine, a thought, a name, a fairy of a fountain! for Gwenvrewy, as she is called in Welsh, signifies the white hill water, or the white gushing stream, meaning the overflowing well which Nature formed without a miracle.”
As our province is rather to describe the well itself, than to bandy arguments about the lady whose name it bears, we may briefly state that it is one of the most remarkable springs of water in the kingdom.
The well is an oblong square, about twelve feet by seven. The water passes into a small square court through an arch, under which the Roman Catholics used to swim as an act of penance. The quantity of water thrown up is not less than eighty-four hogsheads every minute. This water has never been known to freeze, and scarcely ever varies in quantity, either in drought, or after the greatest rains. Though this stream has little more than a mile to run before it arrives at the sea, a great number of mills, forges, and other works are kept in motion by it, three of which are placed abreast.
The sacred well is the object of many pilgrimages, even in this day, and several modern miracles are related of the influence of its waters. Pope Martin the fifth especially enjoined such pilgrimages, and the monks of Basingwerk were furnished with pardons and indulgences to sell to the devotees. James the Second visited the well in 1686; and Leopold, king of the Belgians, in 1819.
Apart from all superstitious notions, its waters doubtless possess many sanative properties.
The authoress of the new romance of “Llywelyn’s Heir,” says with reference to this charmed place: “We would recommend any strangers to the spot to visit it, should an opportunity offer, and judge with their own eyes of the lightness and beauty of the tall pointed arches and the flying buttresses that adorn the exterior; and to decide whether the interior is not even more worthy of notice. The well, into which the miraculous stream pours forth its astounding body of water, is polygonal; the columns that rise above it are singularly beautiful, and after many serpentine wanderings, meet and form a canopy worthy of the water-king, who doubtless frequently holds there his court. The legend of the saint, and beautiful carvings in stone are scattered around; but they appear to have been placed there to do honour to the house of Stanley, and not to the saint—by no means an astonishing circumstance, for the saint had been long dead, and was probably tired of working miracles; and the Stanleys were living, and willing to bestow munificent gifts, of which this building and the chapel above it remain memorials to this day.”
The church, dedicated to St. Winefred, and rebuilt in 1769, is a rather spacious structure of Grecian architecture, 68 feet long by 56 wide; consisting of a nave with north and south aisles, with a chancel, in which is a window embellished with modern stained glass. It has also two large galleries over the aisles, and the whole is calculated to contain about 3,000 persons. Remains of the ancient edifice are still seen in the remarkably plain pillars on each side of the nave. It contains several monuments and tablets, and amongst them one by Westmacott, erected to the memory of Paul Panton, Esq.
Under the chancel are the vaults of the Mostyns of Talacre, the Pennants of Downing, and the Pantons of Bagillt; in the chancel is a neat cenotaph, in memory of Mary, mother of the late Edward Pennant, Esq. On the wall, at the end of the same aisle, is a flat stone with twelve quarterings, copied from those over the chimney-piece in the dining-room at Mostyn.
In rebuilding the church, the headless figure of a priest was found in his sacerdotal habit, and with a chalice in his hand. He is supposed to have been Thomas, second son of Thomas ap David, abbot of Basingwerk. This headless trunk is often exhibited to the wondering as the image of the blessed St. Winefred! The service is alternately English and Welsh, and at night there are English lectures. Holywell contains several meeting-houses for the various denominations of dissenters. A new Roman Catholic chapel has lately been erected.