St Winifred’s Well, Holywell, Wales. (Rolleicord/Ilford HP5+)
I took this photo last summer at an old Catholic shrine at Holywell. I was on a cycle camping trip round the Welsh coast and this was a place, mentioned in the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which I did not want to miss. It was a long, a very long, pull up from the coast road on a hot day and I was beginning to wonder if it would be worth it by the time I got there. It was.
I had imagined it would be a hole in the ground with perhaps an information board but it is very much more than that. Legend connects it with St Winifred and there are the usual stories of miracle cures. As you can partly see above, the well itself is enclosed within a 15th century vaulted gallery. It is built into the hillside and on top of that is a chapel. The charming lady at the till gave me a rundown of the main figures in the well’s history and its chronology. She was of a very kindly disposition but quite elderly and unfortunately she couldn’t quite call to mind either the names of the figures or any dates in the chronology. Nonetheless, as her historical tour d’horizon meandered towards some distant conclusion, I did my best to remind myself that this is presumably how legend has been passed down through the centuries and accuracy is perhaps less important than narrative. After about 15 minutes, sensing some understandable restiveness in the growing queue behind me, I made my excuses and advanced into the well’s precincts.
As I neared it I became aware of some sort of hubbub, a splashing and shouting, and I saw that there was a plunge pool in front of the well proper and in it were several figures. Nearer still I heard Irish accents. A middle-aged man in the water seemed to be encouraging youngsters in. But it was a figure beyond him that drew my eye: a woman perhaps in her sixties, fully-dressed but her body completely immersed, making her way round the pool, grasping onto its edge as she went. Her eyes half-closed, her face thrust upwards, she was reciting some incomprehensible litany, swaying forward then stopping, then forward again, round and round. She was clearly undergoing an ecstatic experience. Although I was brought up a Catholic and educated by the fiercely faithful I have never seen such a thing in this country. Occasionally one of the woman’s group would come and support her as she made her way round and round the pool. When I glanced about me I realised that on the benches arranged against the stone walls surrounding the area were seated other figures, their eyes closed too and their lips moving silently. Just for a second, I was transported back to a medieval Britain in which faith was a commonplace and reason a mystery. Then the eye of my imagination snapped shut and I was back in the 21st century.
I got the key for the chapel and went up to have a look and when I got back they were all out of the pool and dried and chatting amicably at some tables and chairs as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
I had stayed much longer than I meant to and was well behind schedule. Then I was further detained by the views over the estuary from Flint Castle so that when I cycled into the industrial hinterland of Ellesmere Port in early evening I was beginning to wonder where on earth I was going to camp for the night. Then I came off route, rounded a corner and – boom – out of nowhere a pop-up campsite. I put up my tent, heated some food, sat back and raised my glass of tea to St Winifred.
Processional Cross, St Winifred’s Well. (Rolleicord/Ilford HP5+)