Church of St Candida and Holy Cross, Whitchurch Canonicorum, Dorset

Pilgrimage is nowhere more authentic than it is at this untouched shrine to a female saint, visited by the Golden Cap Pilgrimage Trail and Ways to Whitchurch Canonicorum

Highlights

• Saint’s shrine preserved intact from medieval times

This tranquil setting amid Dorset’s rolling countryside seems an unlikely rival to Westminster Abbey in central London. And yet these are the only two places in the whole of England where a saint’s body is known to have survived intact in its medieval shrine. Whitchurch Canonicorum therefore contains the rarest of holy places in England – the original shrine of a saint. In this case, it is the mysterious St Wite.

Believed to be a Saxon lady of the 9thcentury, St Wite is also referred to by her Latin name of St Candida. Little is known for certain of her life story, but one version is that she was a local hermit murdered in 831 during a Danish raid. An excellent booklet available for just £2 at the back of the church seeks to answer the pressing question in detail: ‘Who was St Wite?’. It contains a thorough investigation of the known facts about this saint, and the tale of how her relics were rediscovered is worth repeating here.

A crack had appeared in the ancient shrine stonework, which is located in the north transept. In April 1900 it was decided to repair the structure. Like all such shrines it was assumed to be empty thanks to the Reformation. However when workmen removed a broken fragment of stone they found a lead casket, 73cm long, leaning against the chamber wall.

The casket had clearly been opened at least once since it was sealed in the 14th century, but the relics lay undisturbed inside, the bones of a small woman aged around 40. The casket has been resealed inside its stone shrine, and bears the inscription ‘Here lie the relics of St Wite’. Or if you prefer the original Latin: ‘Hic reqesct reliqe Sce Wite’. The shrine structure has three holes in its base, where the sick can place body parts in need of miraculous healing. Dozens of prayers, photographs and small offerings were left inside these ‘limbholes’ when we visited. You can still use the shrine as it was intended, asking St Wite to pray for you, or you could simply pray in her memory. If the witness of saints is that they love everyone, St Wite won’t be worried about denomination. Her church is lovingly cared for by a local group, the Friends of St Candida, who help to keep her witness very much alive.

Researching this book has led to a few other saints’ relics that survived the Reformation, although perhaps not in their original shrines. Among them are St Edward King and Martyr in Dorset and now Surrey, and the Venerable Bede and St Cuthbert in Durham. But that is to take nothing away from the unique experience of visiting St Wite today and praying as others have prayed for more than a thousand years. No visit to her shrine is complete without a trip to St Wite’s Well.

Directions

Church of St Candida and Holy Cross, off Lower Street, Whitchurch Canonicorum DT6 6RQ

www.cathedralofthevale.co.uk

W3W: swoop.daunting.keeps

GPS: 50.7553N 2.8566W

There are signs to direct you through the country lanes of Whitchurch Canonicorum to the church, although the village is spread out across a wide area. The church is at the end of a short, unnamed lane, off Lower Street. The local pilgrimage initiative can be found by searching for ‘Golden Cap’ on www.salisbury.anglican.org