After an interval of some five years, the Order’s annual Pilgrimage to the Shrine of Saint Winefride at Holywell, in North Wales, will take place from Friday 19th to Sunday 21st July. 

Saint Winefride’s Well is the only site of pilgrimage in Britain which has never suffered interruption of the devotion during the Protestant Reformation. It was visited by most of the Plantagenet and Tudor Kings, and even some of the Stuarts. Our own King Charles went there last year shortly after his accession.

St Winefride, daughter of a prince named Tyfid, and the niece of Saint Beuno, was beheaded around 630AD defending her virginity from a rapist chieftain named Caradoc. Where her head fell a well sprang up, which has been place of healing pilgrimage ever since. Her saintly uncle restored her head to her body, and she returned to life, to become a nun, later abbess, at Gwytherin, and to die a natural and holy death over 20 years later.

The pilgrimage will start with Vespers at 6pm on Friday 19th July, and conclude with sprinkling after lunch on Sunday 21st July.