St Werburga

Pilgrim badge from the shrine of St Werburga in Chester. St Werburga was the daughter of a 6th century king in Mercia (now the English Midlands). She became a nun and supervised the building of various monasteries in the Midlands before her death in about 700. She was initially buried at Hanbury in Staffordshire but her body was later moved to Chester to protect it from Viking raiders in the 10th century. One of her miracles involved a flock of geese that were eating the crops at the abbey of Weedon in Northamptonshire. St Werburga ordered the geese to be surrounded by a fence and miraculously they did not fly away. One of the geese went missing and was found to have been cooked and eaten. St Werburga took up its bones and brought the goose back to life. The flock of geese then flew away, never to return. This badge depicts that miracle – there are four geese inside a wattle fence. St Werburga’s shrine in Chester cathedral attracted pilgrims until the Reformation in the 16th century.