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St George's Well, St George

© Crown: Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales:6389882

Dedication: Saint George? Location: Kinmel Park Coordinates: 53.26809N, -3.5362W Grid reference: SH976756 Heritage designation: Scheduled monument

St George, a 3rd century martyr from the Middle East, did not become the patron saint of England (a role that had previously been occupied by St Edward the Confessor) until the 14th century. His cult was brought to the country by crusaders, and although his name is thought to have been known in England as early as the 8th century, he only really gained popularity or true fame during the later medieval period. As such, his cult did not really reach Wales at all, and medieval church dedications to him are few and far between; unsurprisingly, he has only two Welsh holy wells to his name, including this one. It is not clear how exactly his name became associated with what is now known as "St George", or "Llansan Sior", but there is a possibility that the parish was originally under the tutelage of a local saint, whose patronage was usurped by that of St George later on. After all, the church must have been dedicated to someone before the cult of St George reached Denbighshire.

Interestingly, the original name of the settlement appears to have been "Cegidog" or "Kegidog", which means, according to the Rev. D. R. Thomas' History of the Diocese of St Asaph (1874), "abounding in hemlock". The Records of Denbigh and its Lordship, written in 1860 by John Williams, notes that the taxation of 1291 refers to the place as "Kegydawc". "Llansan Sior", or its Anglicised alternative, "St George", was evidently not the original name of the village; something must, therefore, have occurred that caused the introduction of this new title. Perhaps this may have been the re-dedication of the church from a minor local figure to an internationally famous one. If the church really was re-dedicated at some point, then it is clear that the well must have been too, and the date of the parish wake altered accordingly. There are many churches across Wales whose patron saints have been changed because the inhabitants have either completely forgotten who exactly their parish was originally dedicated to (simply because of the original saint's obscurity), or because of external factors, such as the gifting of a parish to an organisation like the Knights Templar (as happened at Cardington in Shropshire); in this case, the former is more likely.

It is also worth noting the existence of a local legend that St George fought a dragon somewhere in the locality. According to John Williams, the marks supposedly left by "the shoes of St. George's horse" were once pointed out on the "coping-stones of the churchyard-wall". There is a high chance that this legend (assuming that the church was re-dedicated) was originally linked to a local saint, and was later preserved because of its compatibility with the cult of St George. It is also interesting that Cegidog's version of St George was locally regarded as the tutelar saint of horses, which is not typically attributed to St George, and thus appears to be a surviving remnant of another saint's cult, further suggesting that Cegidog was originally dedicated to a local and perhaps very obscure figure.

Nonetheless, by the late medieval period Cegidog was utterly affiliated with the cult of St George. The Valor Ecclesiasticus, commissioned by Henry VIII in 1535, reports that "oblaciones S'c'o Georgio" in the parish amounted to 26 shillings and 8 pence annually, which is equivalent to roughly £750 today. As there does not seem to have been a shrine in the church notable or important enough to have attracted pilgrims, it can safely be assumed that these profits were made from what had evidently then become known as St George's Well. The holy well was, during the medieval period, believed to possess the power to cure horses of any disease or illness, a service that undoubtedly would have been in demand, and would probably have been performed by a priest in exchange for a fee (hence the "oblaciones S'c'o Georgio"). The parish also celebrated St George's Day by this time.

The earliest reference that I have found to the holy well dates from in or around the year 1700, when Edward Lhuyd included two mentions of it in Parochialia. The first mention of St George's Well, which formed part of Lhuyd's description of the parish, is rather ambiguous, and has led to the circulation of a variety of possibly inaccurate theories involving the sacrificing of horses at the spring: "Ffynnon Lan San Shôr Lhe y bydded ystalm yn offrymu kyffyle ag hevyd un i'r person, ita trad". This translates literally as "Well [of] Llansan Sior a place where an offering is to be made of horses and likewise one [horse] to the priest". Whether horses really were sacrificed at St George's Well is unclear (given its close proximity to sites like Ffynnon Degla and Crochan Caffo, this is certainly not impossible), but a letter that was sent to Lhuyd in 1701 from the new parish rector implies that the tradition was much less sinister, and that the first reference is simply garbled Welsh:

"Rhâd duw a S^t Sior arnat" translates as "the blessing of God and St George be upon thee". The tradition of sprinkling water over diseased animals appears to have been common in North Wales, with Lhuyd documenting an almost identical tradition, though linked to cattle and not horses, at nearby Ffynnon Gynhafal, and Ffynnon Beuno, Gwyddelwern.

Of course, the idea that horses had once been sacrificed at St George's Well soon spread, and, by the time that Thomas Pennant compiled his Tour of Wales in 1778, the tradition was evidently well-known. Pennant embroidered on the legend slightly, by asserting that "the rich were wont to offer one" horse, in order to "ſecure his [St George's] bleſſing on all the reſt", and reporting that Cegidog was where "the Britiſh Mars had his offering of horſes". By this time, the practice of blessing animals at the site had almost definitely died out.

Pennant's reference to the site ensured its subsequent fame, and it was mentioned in a number of Victorian tourist guides, most notably the Gossiping Guide to Wales, written by Askew Roberts and Edward Woodall, and published in 1890, which directed tourists towards "a well, once famed for curing horses", located "about 200 yards from the entrance" to Kinmel Park. Most 19th century publications refer to the spring as the well of St George, with the few exceptions being Gleanings in North Wales (1854), by M. L. Louis, who dubbed it "Ffynnon Cegidog", but irrevocably confounded the site with nearby Ffynnon Elian; and The Beauties of England and Wales, by the Rev. J. Evans (1812), who called it "a ffynon [sic] vair" with "salutiferous qualities".

Unfortunately, the only 19th century description that I have found of the well's structural appearance dates from 1893, and appears in a piece entitled The Holy Wells of North Wales, written by Elias Owen, that was published in The Montgomeryshire Collections; Owen confirmed that the "spring is still alive", but related that "a few stones only mark the greatness of its departed glory". Perhaps Owen was exaggerating slightly, however, as the Royal Commission's report, dating from 1912, suggests that more remained at the site:

Today, it appears that the majority of this structure has survived. This page's main photograph, taken in 1971 by Mr Douglas B. Hague, and now available on the Coflein database, shows the remains of what was probably a medieval structure of some kind. As the site is still marked on Ordnance Survey maps, as it has always been, it undoubtedly still exists, although whether its condition has deteriorated is unclear.

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