Book Review: Steeple Chasing by Peter Ross

This is a travel book describing the many chapels, churches, and cathedrals in the UK that have an interesting story to tell ranging from Southwark Cathedral’s former resident cat to the village church in Chaldon in Surrey with its 850-year old mural depicting torment and resurrection.

I read about the holy wells in rural Wales, the monumental Angel of the North in Gateshead, and a ‘working’ monastery called Pluscarden Abbey in north-east Scotland.

St Winefride’s Well Shrine in Holywell in North Wales is known as the Lourdes of Wales although it should be the other way around as St Winifride’s Well is over 1,300 years old. It attracts around 35,000 visitors a year. The present buildings only date from the late 15th Century and were paid for by Lady Margaret Beaufort to thank God for her son’s victory at Bosworth Field in 1485. This association may ‘well’ explain why her grandson Henry VIII didn’t destroy the shrine during his reformation of the monasteries.