Pilgrims and Posies : ST. WERBURGH - PATRON SAINT OF CHESTER

St Werburgh - Patron Saint of Chester

The shrine of St Werburgh at Chester was an important place of pilgrimage in the county of Cheshire in the 14th century. Although her relics ended up in the Abbey church dedicated to her, Werburgh was not a Cheshire saint.

What is known for certain is that Werburgh was an Anglo-Saxon princess, the daughter of Wulfhere, king of Mercia. She died around AD 690 and was buried at Hanbury in Staffordshire.

The life story of Werburgh was written by the Flemish monk Goscelin at Canterbury at the end of the 10th century. He told of how, after three years of marriage, she became a nun at Ely in Cambridgeshire, eventually becoming abbess there, she lived much of her life in Weedon, Northamptonshire and died at Threckingham in Lincolnshire before being buried in in Hanbury, Staffordshire!

Misericord depicting the miracle

A later history of St Werburgh was written in Chester c. 1513 by Henry Bradshaw, a monk at St Werburgh’s abbey in which he recounts several miracles, the most famous being the following. Whilst in Weedon she was noted for her holiness and the kindness she showed to all of God’s creatures, even the geese that ravaged the crops in her fields. One day she punished the geese by shutting them in a pen. Her holiness was such that they dared not or could not fly out of the pen. The next day she pardoned and released them and they flew away. Soon the geese returned to tell Werburgh they were missing a fellow goose. Werburgh found that a servant of hers had stolen and killed the missing goose. She brought it back to life and it rejoined the others who flew away and never again interfered with Werburgh’s fields. Werburgh was later to have a goose as her symbol.

St Werburgh's Shrine

A few years after her death, Werburgh’s body was found to be just as it was when she had been buried, totally without decay. This was seen to be a sign of her holiness and the tomb became a object of veneration. In 875 nuns removed her remains before an invading Danish army reached the tomb. They brought the body to the walled city of Chester and reburied her in a Saxon church there. In 907 the church was re-dedicated to St Werburgh and St Oswald and later the abbey (today’s Cathedral) was built on the site.

The remains of St Werburgh were kept in a jewelled casket, which around 1340 was given its own beautiful painted shrine. The shrine became an important place of pilgrimage. So many pilgrims came to visit that the stone was worn down where they knelt to pray. Pilgrims came from near and far, examples of lead pilgrim badges with pictures of Werburgh’s geese have even been found in London and Salisbury.

In 1541 as part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII, the Abbey of St Werburgh became the Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Mary. The saint’s remains were lost or destroyed and the shrine broken up with parts of the jewelled casket making their way into the bishop’s throne. In 1876 the scattered remains of the shrine were collected and placed in the Lady Chapel of the Cathedral.