位于威爾士弗林特郡的圣溫妮費德水井被認為是英國保存最完好的一座圣井，關于這座圣井有一個奇妙的傳說……
Holywell in Flintshire is home to the next wonder of Wales. On your way, along the "bottom-road," you may wish to stop briefly at Flint, on the shores of the Dee, to visit the much-slighted castle, the first of Edward I's chain of imposing fortresses by which he controlled his conquered principality, and where Richard II was forced to abdicate to Bolingbroke in 1399. The castle was one of James of St. George's masterpieces. The massive Dongeon is completely separate from the rest of the castle; with its own water supply, it could serve as an independent, easily defended stronghold.
Just four miles uphill from Flint is Holywell (Treffynnon), the town of the Holy Well (one of the Sacred Places of Wales). The well itself, originally formed from a mountain spring, is housed below the town on the side of a steep hill in the shrine of St. Winifride (Gwenffrwd or Gwenfrewi), regarded as the finest surviving example of a medieval holy well in Britain.
The legend of St. Winifred is responsible for the erection of the present shrine on a site chosen originally chosen by St. Beuno for a chapel. When a local chieftain named Caradoc tried to attack Beuno's niece Gwenffrwd, she ran to the chapel for sanctuary, but she failed to reach the doors and her pursuer cut off her head in his rage. The head rolled down the hillside, a spring miraculously appearing where it came to rest in a deep hollow. Beuno reattached Gwenffrwd's head, and she lived to become an abbess and later, a saint. Caradoc, meanwhile, fell dead under the saint's curse.
The well formed from the spring then became a place of pilgrimage visited by the rich and poor and famous, including the English Kings Richard I, to pray for his Crusade; Henry V (both before and after his famous victory at Agincourt), who came on foot from Shrewsbury; and King James II, who came here to pray for a son.
About 1490, Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry Vll, had a new two-storied chapel built over the star-shaped well, which is covered by an ornate vault and surrounded by a processional passage. In the courtyard outside there is a long bathing pool fed by the spring. Just below the surface of the ice-cold water you can see the stone of St. Beuno upon which he is said to have taught Winifred or upon which he bade farewell to her. In the garden below the well are a number of stones believed to be stained with Winifred's blood or covered with a fragrant red moss reputed to be miraculously renewed each year.
St. Winifred's Well is the only shrine in Britain that has an unbroken tradition of pilgrimage since the early Medieval period. It was visited in 1774 by the well-known literary critic Dr. Samuel Johnson on his journey around North Wales. The learned doctor remarked on the indecency of a woman bathing there, yet the popularity of the shrine continued to attract pilgrims. Over one thousand visitors came to the well during the first year of a new hospice opened in the 1880's. Since then, following centuries of Protestant neglect, the shrine has received a new lease of life, mainly from visits by considerable numbers of Irish immigrants residing in Liverpool (less than hour's road journey distant) or Manchester.
The waters at Holywell are said to contain miraculous healing powers. These waters came from an unfailing spring, gushing prodigiously from the earth, producing three thousand gallons a minute. Because of extensive mining operations, however, on nearby Halkyn Mountain in the first quarter of this century, the author's great uncle, a Holywell surveyor and civil engineer (whose first name was Caradoc, ironically), warned the Holywell Town Council that the waters feeding the spring were likely to be diverted and that the well would dry up. This is what consequently happened, so that today's pilgrims see a bubbling spring fed from the town's municipal water supply forced through a cleverly concealed pipe at the base of the well.
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