Saint of the Day – 2 August – Saint Sidwell

Saint Sidwell, also known as Sidwella, was a virgin saint from Devon, in England. She is the patroness of Exeter and sister of Saint Urith and Saint Juthwara. A Saxon living in Exeter in the 8th century, her father was a wealthy landowner named Benna, who died leaving his daughter in the care of a cruel stepmother, who was jealous of her beauty and virtue and coveted her inheritance.

The girl often left the city to bring food to the villagers working the fields outside the city walls. The Catalogus Sanctorum Pausantium in Anglia says she was beheaded by a couple of corn reapers, hired to do so by her stepmother. They cut off her head with a scythe, and where her head came to rest, water sprang up. A shaft of light shone over the site for three nights. She was buried at St Sidwells. Her ghost was seen carrying her severed head and putting it back on her shoulders at the spot where she was later buried. The spring became the Well of St Sidwell, and was a place of pilgrimage in Anglo-Saxon and Norman England. 

The Church of St Sidwell, located just outside the site of Exeter’s east gate, still exists, and one of the main streets in Exeter is Sidwell Street.