A HISTORIC well in Flintshire has been elevated to the status of a 'National Shrine' by the bishops of England and Wales.

St Winefride's Well in Holywell has been a site of pilgrimage for almost 1,400 years. 

The decision to promote it to a national shrine was announced during the bishops' autumn plenary meeting held at Hinsley Hall, Leeds, earlier this month.

Speaking after the meeting, General Secretary of the Bishops' Conference, Chris Thomas, said: "It will be a place of enhanced pilgrimage. To create a new national shrine at St Winifride's is a really important thing."

The holy well at St Winefride’s has been a place of pilgrimage since at least 1115.

One of the Seven Wonders of Wales, it gives the Flintshire town of Holywell its name.

Legend has it that in 660AD Caradoc, the son of a local prince, cut off the head of the young Winefride after she had spurned his advances and a spring rose from the ground at the spot where it fell.

According to the story Winefride was later restored to life by her uncle, St Beuno, who was a well-known figure in the 7th century and was responsible for bringing Celtic monasticism to much of North Wales.

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The chapel itself dates from the late 15th century. Set into the hillside, it’s a striking and unusual building, richly decorated and exceptionally well-built.

On the bottom floor, the spring water bubbles up into a star-shaped basin beneath an elaborately vaulted ceiling before flowing out into a more recent outdoor pool, where pilgrims still visit to bathe in its waters with their claimed healing properties.

Reputedly the oldest continually visited pilgrim site in Britain, it’s on the route of the North Wales Pilgrim’s Way that travels along the Llŷn Peninsula to Bardsey Island, the legendary ‘Isle of 20,000 Saints’.