Map of Local Saints

The little we know about Saint Alchmund (or Ealhmund) comes from the late twelfth-century chronicle attributed to Simeon of Durham that seems to draw on a set of York annals 703-802. Alchmund was the second son of Alhred or Alchred who was the Christian king of Northumbria from 765 until Aethelred deposed him in 774. According to Simeon he fled to the kingdom of the Picts where he and his family were given refuge in the court of King Ciniod. In the ensuing dynastic struggles Alchmund returned to Northumbria with some forces where, after some initial success, he was killed around 800. There is some confusion among the chroniclers as to the mode and the date of his death. However, in his Historia Regum Simeon records that:“In 800 Alkmund, as some say the son of King Alhred of Northumberland was seized by the guards of King Eardwulf and by his order killed along with some of his fellow-fugitives.” Within a short space of time he was honoured as a saint and recorded in an anonymous 9th century treatise that contains a list of saints’ resting places. In this treatise his relics were said to lie in a minster at Northworthy (Derby), ‘beside the River Derwent’.

Saint Chad was one of three brothers born in Northumbria, and was educated at the monastery on Lindisfarne under Saint Aidan. In 664 he succeeded his brother, Cedd as Abbot of Lastingham.

 In 669 that Chad became Bishop of Lichfield and today Saint Chad’s Well is to be found in the churchyard at Stowe on the north side of Lichfield town centre.

When he died on March 2 672 his body was first buried in Saint Mary,s Church where miracles of healing were soon being reported.

Later the shrine of Saint Chad was a popular place of pilgrimage when an elaborate shrine was erected in the present cathedral.    Many place names have associations with Saint Chad. One example is Hanmer in North East Wales that in the Domesday Book is simply called “St. Chad’s”.  Within the ancient parish is Cadney (Chad’s island?) and nearby is the Gospel Meadow in which is the Gospel Pool. Less than a mile to the north is Llys Beddyd (lake of Baptism), Eglwys Cross (‘Church Cross’) and a few hundred yards from the parish church of Saint Chad is a holy well.    Another instance is the oldest church in Shrewsbury built on a hill within a loop of the Severn which, at that time must have almost been an island and was dedicated to Saint Chad, was characteristic of a Celtic monastic settlement.

Saint Eata was a native of Northumbria and was probably born in the reign of King Oswald.  He was one of the original twelve pupils of St Aidan at Lindisfarne.

Around the year 640 Saint Aidan founded a monastery on land beskde the River Tweed, which today is known as Old Melrose.  In 651 Eata was made the first Abbot of Melrose and it was here that he admitted Cuthbert into the community. Around 658 he founded a new monastery at Ripon in Yorkshire taking Cuthbert with him.  Celtic monastic and liturgical practices were followed until, because he was unable to accept the Roman practices promoted by Wilfred, Eata and his monks were expelled from Ripon and returned to Melrose. Some time later Eata was moved from Melrose to become the Abbot of Lindisfarne.  When Theodore became Archbishop in 669 he divided the vast diocese of Northumbria in 678 and consecrated Eata as Bishop of Bernicia, its northern half.  Three years later this too was divided into the dioceses of Hexham and Lindisfarne and Eata then became Bishop of Lindisfarne.  In 685, by mutual agreement, Cuthbert became Bishop of Lindisfarne and Eata returned to Hexham.[1]  In less than a year Eata died and was buried at Hexham where a chapel was later built over his grave.[2]  His relics were translated inside the church in the eleventh century. 

Atcham, between the Roman city of Wroxeter (Viroconium) and Shrewsbury is the only church dedicated to Saint Eata and, because of the considerable distance from the location of his ministry, much doubt has been cast on its authenticity. In recent times evidence has emerged to suggest that Atcham  (the Home of the Children of Eata) is exactly what the name suggests. 

[1]  Stephanus, Vita Wilfred

[2] F. M. Powick, Handbook of British Chronology, 1961

A number of ascetics chose the tops of hills. One such was the hermit and monastic founder St Gwyddfarch. We know little about his early life beyond the fact that he was part of the community founded by his spiritual father, St Llywelyn at Trallwng (Tre = town, Llwng = Llywelyn, i.e. Llywelyn’s Town), now know in English as Welshpool.  This was at some point during the sixth century.  It was part of the “Eastern Mission” i.e. the influx of Christian Britons into Wales from what is now Shropshire and probably in particular from the town of Wroxeter (Uriconium).

From Trallwng Gwyddfarch set out into rather wilder country to the North East and settled in the Vyrnwy Valley near to the present-day village of Meifod.  Above this valley is a solitary, steep-sided hill and it was close to the summit of this that Gwyddfarch built his cell, lived and finally died.  It was here that he was buried and he is still there to this day.  The hill is now known as Moel yr Ancr (the bald hill of the anchorite).  Looking at the setting today it is astonishingly beautiful and pastoral and shows little signs of being a desert.  In winter, however, when there is a cold East wind one can better appreciate that living on the top of that hill surrounded by wolf-infested woods was hard, cold and uncomfortable – not so far off the deserts of North Africa!  St Gwyddfarch is commemorated on November 3rd.

Werburgh, a princess of Mercia, exchanged her coronet for a veil early in life and became a great foundress and leader of monastic communities in East Anglia and Mercia.  Her greatness in life is reflected in her veneration in death.  Her holy body, jealously guarded by her monastic community in Triccingham, was given up through a miracle when the locks fell away and she was borne by monks to Hanbury, her desired resting place.  But it was Aethelflaed – Lady of the Mercians – who most likely delivered her relics to Chester – the city of her patronage – and established her veneration in Shrewsbury.  In Chester she delivered the city from fire and perils inflicted by barbarian invaders.  In Shrewsbury her veneration was joined with that of the royal saints Alchmnund and Milburga to offer the town protection against the heathen Viking invaders.  Her chapel in Shrewsbury is long gone but her memory has been recently restored.  She now joins other local saints on the walls of the Orthodox Church of the 318 Godbearing Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council, Shrewsbury in a beautiful roundels by master iconographer Aidan Hart.  She helps unite the community in renewed veneration. The British who have found a home in Orthodoxy honour her as a predecessor linking them to the undivided Church in these lands. The people who have settled here with roots in traditional Orthodox countries now adopt her as a local patron as her way of life mirrors that of their own saints from the East. Read on for a wonderful history of the saint researched and offered by Chris Jobson – the history is presented here as an offering to accompany Aidan Hart’s splendid work.

Born probably between 610 and 620, Winefride was said to be the child of Tyfid and Gwenlo who were of noble birth.  As a child she resolved to dedicate her life to God by living a life of chastity and prayer.  Winefride was martyred as a teenager one Sunday as St Beuno, Winefride’s priestly uncle and spiritual father, was preparing to serve the Liturgy on the Feast of Saint Alban (June 22^nd). A young prince named Caradog, hot and thirsty from hunting called at the cottage for something to drink.  Finding the beautiful Winefride alone there he attempted to seduce her.  Winefride fled down the valley to the chapel of Saint Beuno pursued by Caradog.  He caught her by the chapel door and in his rage at being rejected he beheaded her.  Where her head fell a spring of water gushed forth and thus created the Holy Well that has been a place of pilgrimage ever since.

IN the old Saintly Pedigrees Teon is not entered as a saint but merely as the grandfather of S. Llywelyn. But in a MS. circa 1670 printed in the lolo MSS. it is stated that S. Teon, the son of Gwineu Deufreuddwyd, of the line of Beli Mawr, was ” a saint and bishop of Cor Illtyd, and afterwards a bishop in Gloucester ; and after that an archbishop’ in London, from whence he was driven by the pagan Saxons, and went to Brittany.” 1 The latter part of the notice is taken from Geoffrey of Monmouth, who tells us that Theonus or Teon, with the archbishops of Caerleon and York (Thadioceus), in the time of Ceredig, King of Britain, seeing that all the churches within their jurisdictions had been devastated, fled with their clergy into Wales, taking with them the relics of the saints. Many took flight to Brittany. 2 Theonus was the last of the reputed metropolitans of London (the first of them was also named Theonus or Theanus), and is supposed to have been translated from Gloucester in 542, and to have fled into Wales in 586.

In Llanstephan MS. 187, Teon is said to have been of Cegidfa, i.e., Guilsfield, near Welshpool. He was the father of Tegonwy, the father of S. Llywelyn of Welshpool.

The Stiperstones mountain, in the parish of Worthen, Shropshire,, was called from him by the Welsh Carneddi Teon.

Little known outside Wales and Great Britain, the secluded Welsh shrine of St. Melangel, deep in the Berwyn Mountains, is dedicated to a sixth-century Irishwoman, an anchorite who lived here for many years, alone and unknown. An early Christian treasure, it is the oldest existing Romanesque shrine in northern Europe. When the church was restored in the 1960’s, Melangell’s relics were discovered under the chapel floor, and now more than 10,000 pilgrims a year come to ask for her intercession.

When Oswald  became the first Christian king of Northumbria he sought the aid of the monks of Iona, the disciples of Columba, for the conversion of the Saxons of the North.  

 A monk called Aidan was sent by the community of Iona to assist Oswald in the summer of 635.  He gave Aidan the island of Lindisfarne adjoining his own royal fortress of Bamborough, for his monastery.

 In 642 there was war between Oswald and Penda, the pagan King of Mercia, and, on 5th August, Oswald was defeated, killed and dismembered by Penda in a fierce battle at a place called Maserfelth which today is known today as Oswestry or Croesoswallt (Oswald’s Cross) in Welsh. Nearby is Oswald’s well which marks the place where a great bird let the right arm from the dismembered body fall and where a healing spring appeared.

 The relics of Saint Oswald were recovered and enshrined in Saint Oswald’s Priory, Gloucester, but that perished at the Dissolution.  Saint Oswald’s head was finally buried with Saint Cuthbert whose shrine is now in Durham Cathedral. When St Cuthbert’s shrine was opened in the 19th century the head of St Oswald was found to be present.

Saint Milburga’s father, Merewald, son of Penda who ruled a subkingdom called Hecani (south Shropshire and Herefordshire) had been converted in 660 and had married a Christian princess. Their eldest child, Milburga was resolved to found a monastery in her father’s kingdom. Saint Botulf, Abbot of Icheanog set up a monastery at Wimnicas (later Wenlock – white monastery) under a Frankish abbess called Liobsynde.  St Milburga later became the Abbess.

 According to tradition St. Milburga was attracted to Wimnicas by the saintly life of St. Owen who was living in a hermitage there. There exist to this day two holy wells at Much Wenlock, one dedicated to St. Milburga and the other, quite near to the parish church, to St. Owen.

The importance of Wimnicas and Saint Milburga can be seen from the extent of the territory donated to the monastery during her lifetime.  This included Sutton (where the medieval church building was built on a prehistoric sacred site dating back to 2,300 BC). Her consecration as abbess had been among the first undertakings of the aged St. Theodore, a monk of the Eastern Church, following his appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury in 667 AD.

 In 901 Aethelred, Earl of Mercia and Aethelflaedia, ‘Lady of the Mercians’ (daughter of King Alfred) donated “a gold chalice weighing thirty mancuses….for the love of God and for the honour of the venerable virgin Mildburg the abbess”.

The discovery of her relics, by children, in 1101 was attended by several miracles. The monastery church of Wenlock was rebuilt on a magnificent scale to accommodate the growing numbers of monks and pilgrims.  The church at Sutton was probably rebuilt at this time giving the monastery a presence on the edge of the county town. In 1501 a magnificent shrine built at the order of Henry VII.  

The end came with the Reformation in January 1540 when Wenlock Priory was dissolved and nearly all the relics of Saint Milburga were burnt in the marketplace.

In recent times the derelict ruin of the ancient church on Saint Milberga’s estate at Sutton has been carefully restored by the Orthodox Community of the Holy Fathers of Nicea and now the Saint Milburga, is honoured among the saints.

St. Tysilio (also spelled Tyssilo, Tyssel, Suliau, Suliac), whose name means “Dear Little Sunday’s Child”, is ranked among the Fathers of the Welsh Church. He lived in the second half of the sixth and first half of the seventh centuries. Meifod in the Welsh county of Powys has been the main center of his veneration over the centuries

Llanerfyl is where St Erfyl, the daughter of St Padarn, lived as a solitary nun. Amazingly, in the church there is the original medieval shrine and the original wooden reliquary as well as a grave marker. Quite how these have survived is remarkable.  Medieval shrines were devised so that pilgrims could walk under the saint, or at any rate put their heads underneath, this is why the reliquaries were placed as they were

Saint Cadfan https://orthochristian.com/98598.html

Saint Milburga’s father, Merewald, son of Penda who ruled a subkingdom called Hecani (south Shropshire and Herefordshire) had been converted in 660 and had married a Christian princess. Their eldest child, Milburga was resolved to found a monastery in her father’s kingdom. Saint Botulf, Abbot of Icheanog set up a monastery at Wimnicas (later Wenlock – white monastery) under a Frankish abbess called Liobsynde.  St Milburga later became the Abbess.

 According to tradition St. Milburga was attracted to Wimnicas by the saintly life of St. Owen who was living in a hermitage there. There exist to this day two holy wells at Much Wenlock, one dedicated to St. Milburga and the other, quite near to the parish church, to St. Owen.

The importance of Wimnicas and Saint Milburga can be seen from the extent of the territory donated to the monastery during her lifetime.  This included Sutton (where the medieval church building was built on a prehistoric sacred site dating back to 2,300 BC). Her consecration as abbess had been among the first undertakings of the aged St. Theodore, a monk of the Eastern Church, following his appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury in 667 AD.

 In 901 Aethelred, Earl of Mercia and Aethelflaedia, ‘Lady of the Mercians’ (daughter of King Alfred) donated “a gold chalice weighing thirty mancuses….for the love of God and for the honour of the venerable virgin Mildburg the abbess”.

The discovery of her relics, by children, in 1101 was attended by several miracles. The monastery church of Wenlock was rebuilt on a magnificent scale to accommodate the growing numbers of monks and pilgrims.  The church at Sutton was probably rebuilt at this time giving the monastery a presence on the edge of the county town. In 1501 a magnificent shrine built at the order of Henry VII.  

The end came with the Reformation in January 1540 when Wenlock Priory was dissolved and nearly all the relics of Saint Milburga were burnt in the marketplace.

In recent times the derelict ruin of the ancient church on Saint Milberga’s estate at Sutton has been carefully restored by the Orthodox Community of the Holy Fathers of Nicea and now the Saint Milburga, is honoured among the saints.

Born probably between 610 and 620, Winefride was said to be the child of Tyfid and Gwenlo who were of noble birth.  As a child she resolved to dedicate her life to God by living a life of chastity and prayer.  Winefride was martyred as a teenager one Sunday as St Beuno, Winefride’s priestly uncle and spiritual father, was preparing to serve the Liturgy on the Feast of Saint Alban (June 22^nd). A young prince named Caradog, hot and thirsty from hunting called at the cottage for something to drink.  Finding the beautiful Winefride alone there he attempted to seduce her.  Winefride fled down the valley to the chapel of Saint Beuno pursued by Caradog.  He caught her by the chapel door and in his rage at being rejected he beheaded her.  Where her head fell a spring of water gushed forth and thus created the Holy Well that has been a place of pilgrimage ever since.

Saint Aelhaiarn (al-high-arn) was a Welsh Confessor who lived in the 7^th C. He had two brothers, Llwchaiarn and Cynhaiarn. The family was descended from the ruling dynasty of the Kingdom of Powys at that time which traced its lineage back to Vortigern. Aelhaiarn and his brothers were cousins and disciples to Saint Beuno, founder and abbot of Clynnog Fawr, and the leader of an evangelical mission across Wales. The brothers accompanied Beuno out of Powys to Edeirnon, now in the south of the County of Gwynedd. Later they continued northwards to the Llyn Peninsula. Aelhaiarn was one of the seven people raised from the dead by Beuno, along with Beuno’s niece Winefride. According to legend, Beuno would walk out from Clynnog late at night to pray on a flat stone in a nearby river. The curious disciple Aelhaiarn followed Beuno once and when Beuno heard the rustling of bushes nearby he prayed that should the one stalking him have good intentions they would reveal themselves. If they instead meant ill an example would be made of them. Mischievous curiosity was evidently not taken to kindly because suddenly wild animals began to ravage the one in hiding, tearing him limb from limb. Beuno went to inspect the carnage to find that it was his beloved cousin. He gathered together all the pieces of the body which could be found but was unable to fix the shattered brow. The quick-thinking Beuno took the iron head from his pike staff and put it in place of the brow. With this he was able to resurrect Aelhaiarn, who’s name commemorates this event. Aelhaiarn translates as “iron-eyebrow”. His feast day is commemorated as the 2nd November but is unfortunately no loner observed by either the Church of England or the Roman Catholic Church. Upon Aelhaiarn’s death his countrymen in Powys came to Clynnog to claim the body. The brothers in Clynnog wished to bury him there and an argument ensued. At dawn the following day there were two coffins on two biers. One was taken back to Powys while the other was kept by the monks. This mimics the miracle which occurred following Saint Teilo’s death, who’s reposed body became three and was each buried separately.