The Lost Shrine of St Werburgh

She rested here for two centuries, until the Danes came and her bones were carried away.

Werburgh was a daughter of King Wulfhere of Mercia, the king of the Stone legend, and spent her life as a nun. She died on 3 February 700 and was buried at Hanbury. In 708 her tomb was opened and her body found miraculously intact. Her shrine stayed there until Danish raids in the late ninth century, when her remains were taken to Chester for safety. Her most famous miracle, banishing a flock of geese, belongs to Weedon Bec, not Hanbury. The church of St Werburgh is largely 13th century on a 12th-century core, with two Anglo-Saxon crosses in its west wall and an 1842 statue of the saint.