'Britain is home to many of the most beautiful holy places in the world.
'Our religious heritage and architecture is more varied
'than virtually anywhere else on Earth.
'My name is Ifor ap Glyn and I am on a journey
'to explore the best of Britain's holy sites
'and to uncover the rich and diverse history of our spiritual landscape.
'I want to know how these places came to be,
'discover what they reveal about the people who worshipped at them,
'and explore why they continue to fascinate us today.'
This place is incredible.
'My journey will take me to towering mountain hideaways...'
It was here that Saint Twrog took on the pagan forces of evil.
'..icy healing pools...'
I'm not sure what effect this is having on me,
but it is certainly having an effect!
'..and the graves of long-departed saints...'
There's something quite unsettling about this relic.
'I'll search out islands where the faithful
'seek refuge from the world.
'I'll wander ruins steeped in history...'
His congregation were roused to come here
and rip down the rich trappings of this cathedral.
'..and descend into caves which have been sacred for thousands of years.'
Wow! Wow!
'From the divine to the unexpected, join me on a journey
'to the unforgettable corners of our country,
'the landscapes that make the soul soar.'
'The idea of visiting a shrine is completely alien to me.
'I don't understand how venerating the bones of a person,
'however holy, can somehow bring you closer to the divine.
'But I'm setting my prejudice aside
'to try to understand this ancient tradition.
'I want to find out why saintly relics
'have played such a major role in our religious history
'But surprisingly,
'my journey begins at the side of a road in south London.'
"The past," someone once wrote, "is a foreign country.
"They do things differently there."
Amongst the many aspects of our past that most of us would find foreign,
we might list the veneration of saints,
going on pilgrimages to sites associated with their life on Earth,
and the evolution of shrines at those spots.
Because, after all, we wouldn't do that...would we?
'This spot, on the B306 in Barnes,
'is where T-Rex frontman Marc Bolan, suffered fatal injuries
'when his girlfriend's purple Mini
'crashed into a sycamore tree by the side of the road.
'He was just 29 years old.
'The accident happened on September 16th, 1977,
'and since then, this has become a place of pilgrimage.
'Fans come from all over the world, to remember, to pay homage,
'and feel a connection with a man most of them probably never met.
'It's as if just being here, can somehow bring people closer to Bolan
'and give more meaning to the music that has touched their lives.
'And it's not just Marc Bolan who commands this sort of interest.'
Even things that celebrities have merely touched
change hands at auction for eye-watering prices -
a lock of John Lennon's hair for £24,000,
Elvis Presley's belt for £41,000,
even Britney Spears's half-eaten sandwich
sold on eBay recently for £280.
These are mundane objects that have acquired an aura of mystery
simply by their connection with somebody whom we admire.
"Memorabilia" is what we call these things today.
But in medieval times, they'd have been known as "relics".
'A religious relic is usually a piece of a saint's body,
'or an object that was said to have been touched by them.
'These days people may revere rock and pop stars,
'but in more religious times,
'saints were the celebrities of their day.
'I'm heading to Scotland to discover just how much influence
'the shrine of one dead saint can have.'
This is the burial place of Saint Mungo.
When he came here first, in the sixth century,
the surrounding area was all open countryside
and he made his home beside a river.
He founded a church here, of which he eventually became bishop
and was so well loved, that when he died,
his grave became a place of pilgrimage.
'After a while, so many people were coming to the field by the river
'to worship at the grave of Saint Mungo
'that a small village sprang up next to the church.
'And in time, this village grew into a town,
'and the church over the grave was rebuilt as a grand cathedral.
'And, in turn, the town in which the cathedral sat grew into a city.'
And this is that city, Glasgow,
Scotland's largest metropolis.
The M8 thunders along behind us over there,
a modern reminder of all the human traffic
that's been drawn down the ages to the tomb of this holy man -
none of this would be here if it wasn't for Saint Mungo!
'Not surprisingly for the man upon whose grave Glasgow is founded,
'legends abound about Saint Mungo.
'Some believe he was
'the illegitimate son of Scottish royalty,
'some say he was King Arthur's nephew.
'It's almost impossible to separate fact from fiction.
'But we do know that Mungo came to this area around the year 540
'and lived as a hermit in a small cell.
'The saint's actual name was Kentigern,
'but he was called "Mungo" as a term of endearment.
'"Mungo" in the ancient British tongue meant "beloved one",
'and the settlement that grew up around him
'became known as "Glaschu", which means "beloved community".'
Philip Larkin once wrote that "What will survive of us is love",
and nowhere is that more graphically illustrated than here.
Because whatever we may think today about saints, relics and shrines,
you cannot deny
the very real presence of Scotland's largest city -
a lasting testament to people's love for Mungo.
'It'll be hard to top this,
'but there is another saint who has a special place in my heart.
'I am a Welshman through and through, and there is a saint
'who has had an even greater impact on my country
'than Mungo had in Scotland.
'I'm in St David's to visit the shrine of a man
'who not only founded a city
'but who lies at the very heart of a nation.'
I'm following in the footsteps of the thousands of medieval pilgrims
who have flocked here to the shrine of Saint David.
His cult here in the Middle Ages,
not only shaped the whole history of the church in Wales,
as our patron saint, he's helped shape our national identity.
Now, it may seem strange
that a country as thoroughly non-conformist
and Protestant as Wales
should retain an affection for a Catholic saint.
Perhaps it's because,
unlike the other patron saints of Britain and Ireland,
he's the only one who was born and brought up
in the country that he came to represent.
'David was born on the Pembrokeshire coast
'and his mother, Non, was also a saint,
'so he clearly came from good holy stock.
'During his lifetime, David rose through the ranks of the church,
'becoming first a monk, an abbot,
'a bishop and finally, Archbishop of Wales.
'He was famously strict on himself and others.
'He refused to drink anything but water,
'and the Welsh national symbol, the leek,
'is maybe a reference to his Spartan diet.'
Saint David's actual relics were lost at the time of the Reformation,
but his stone tomb survives
and has recently been restored to its former glory.
'When the restored shrine was unveiled in 2012,
the Bishop of St David's said,
'"Let us pray that today will mark the beginning
'"of our great mission to turn visitors into pilgrims."
'To me, this seems like a bit of a tall order.'
It's unlikely that restoring Saint David's tomb
will radically alter how we think of him
in predominantly Protestant Wales.
Although it was the cult of the saint here at St David's
that brought him to prominence in the Middle Ages,
he has since acquired a secular, and even political, significance.
When we wear our leeks and our daffodils on March 1st
and attend Saint David's Day dinners,
we are affirming our national identity
rather than our religious identity.
'But there does seem to be something afoot.
'50 years ago, people would have been surprised that shrines
'like this were being restored at all, so maybe times are changing.
'Or rather changing back again,
'as I discover as I head into England and my next location.'
I'm in St Albans, home to Britain's oldest Christian shrine.
It's easy to understand the enduring appeal of Saint Alban's story.
This was the site of the Roman town of Verulamium,
and sometime at the dawn of the fourth century,
Saint Alban was arrested by the Romans for his faith.
He was tried in public and taken up the hill behind us to be executed.
Now, does that remind you
of somebody else in the Christian tradition?
'Saint Alban died a terrifying and painful death
'nearly 1,700 years ago,
'in a scene reminiscent of Christ's death.
'Perhaps this is why pilgrims soon flocked to his grave
'and, in time, this cathedral was built in his honour.
'This is considered to be one of the most important shrines in Britain.
'It's certainly one of the most ornate.
'But looks can be deceptive.
'This is an Anglican cathedral,
'and as the Anglican tradition rejected relics
'during the Reformation,
'Saint Alban's shrine has just been through a traumatic 500 years.
'In 1539, it was smashed to bits and the rubble used to build a wall.
'It was rediscovered in 1872 in nearly 2,000 pieces
'before being painstakingly reassembled.
'However it was not returned to this spot
'at the very heart of the cathedral till 1992.
'And a fragment of Saint Alban's shoulder blade,
'the relic itself, was not placed back in the shrine until 2002.
'I'm meeting with Jeffrey John, Dean of the Cathedral,
'who was here during the celebration of Saint Alban's return.'
When the relic was returned here in 2002,
we had a rather grand service, and the bishop came over from Cologne
to restore the relic to the shrine.
And it had a surprising effect, even on the people here,
where you might think there wouldn't be
an instinctive interest in relics.
One lady happened to say...
Outside the cathedral, she saw the procession passing,
she said, "Alban's come home then."
And the Clerk of Works here, after the service, said to me,
"I don't know, Dean, when that bone went back into the shrine,
"it was like the battery went back into the works."
Which is an extraordinary thing to say.
But I do understand what he means.
To be honest, before I came here,
I hadn't had very much interest in relics
or hadn't thought very much about devotion to them,
but I can see why it matters.
What exactly is it about relics
that compels people to visit them and venerate them?
The main thing is that it's a physical connection with the saint.
We do this kind of thing in ordinary life.
People sometimes keep a piece of jewellery
from a loved one who's departed, or even a lock of hair.
I think it's the same kind of thing.
Any way of getting a more material connection or contact with the saint
helps people to feel in communion with the saint, helps prayer.
'To me, the return of the relic
'and the restoration of the shrine is surprising.
'It seems to suggest that the Anglican Church is turning away
'from one of the key ideas at the heart of the Reformation.'
There doesn't seem to have been much opposition.
I think people understand that what happened at the Reformation
was probably an inevitable kind of overreaction.
There are many things about the veneration of relics
that we would never want to restore.
I'm sure there was a great deal of superstition attaching to them,
a great deal of bargaining and money attaching to them sometimes,
all of which would have been corrupting and dangerous
and we wouldn't want to see that again.
But I come back to the fact that there is something
about the material connection that the relic makes possible
between the faithful and the saint
which is important and, perhaps, shouldn't have been lost.
And I think that's what we are trying to restore.
So, you're not worshipping the relic? Certainly not.
The relic is an aid to worship? Absolutely.
'Saint Alban's martyrdom touched people in a profound way
'and is still touching people over one and a half millennia later.
'It seems that bringing his physical remains back to this town
'has had a real effect on people, it's not what I would have expected,
'but the more I learn about shrines, the more intrigued I become.
'I think it's time to go and visit the experts
'in a place where the idea of venerating the saints
'has never gone out of fashion.
'This is Westminster Cathedral in London,
'just down the road from the more famous Westminster Abbey.
'This is the most important Catholic Church in England and Wales
'and a place where saints and their shrines
'are held in the highest esteem.
'Since leaving Marc Bolan's roadside memorial
'I have visited the shrines of saints
'who lived well over 1,000 years ago,
'certainly long before the Reformation.
'But the shrine I've come to see here
'is for a man who lived just 350 years ago,
'and it still has the power to shock.'
This is not a typical relic.
It's not a small finger bone shut away in a case,
or a piece of skull, or whatever.
It's the entire body of Saint John Southworth,
a man who died for his beliefs.
He was executed, butchered by due legal process,
hung, drawn and quartered,
and then his body reconstituted and spirited away,
and eventually brought back here.
It's... It's very powerful,
because it's a tangible piece of our history.
It's not from the remote past,
this is from 350 years ago.
And, perhaps because of that, it's all the easier to see
how a relic such as this can inspire faith.
'The body beneath these covers
'has undergone a basic form of mummification.
'The organs have been removed,
'but the dried remains of Saint John Southworth are largely intact.
'The physicality of this shrine is very moving, it's a tangible link
'to the past, and I think that's what makes it so powerful.
'To hear more about John Southworth,
'I've arranged to meet the head of the Roman Catholic Church
'in England and Wales, Archbishop Vincent Nichols.'
Well, Saint John Southworth
was a Lancashire man.
He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1613.
And of course, at that time,
being a Catholic priest was an illegal status. And dangerous.
And a dangerous thing to do. Yes.
But he ministered in Lancashire
till he was arrested for the first time in 1630.
He was imprisoned in Preston
and eventually sent down to prison here in London.
By this time, magistrates were becoming sympathetic.
He was basically allowed out on bail.
Which meant that, in this area,
in the streets around this cathedral,
he then became a very well-loved figure,
caring for the sick - especially those who had the plague -
and administering the sacraments to them.
That went on until 1654 when he was again arrested
and brought before the magistrate.
The story goes that the magistrate said to him,
"You're charged with being a Catholic priest,
"there is no evidence to prove that,
"so if you would like to plead not guilty, you can go."
And he said, "I can't, I am a Catholic priest."
He was quite an old man by this time.
"And I'm not going to hide the fact, everybody knows this.
"And people would be astonished if I denied it in court."
So he was condemned to death. He was hung, drawn and quartered in 1654.
And then, I think it's often the case with saints,
then perhaps the more interesting part of their life begins!
His body was paid for by the Spanish ambassador,
who stitched it together again
and eventually it was returned to this cathedral in the 1920s.
'Saint John Southworth was clearly a very worthy man,
'but what makes people like him
'so important to the Catholic Church?'
The Catholic understanding of saints
is that they are alive in Heaven
and they are attentive to our efforts here
and help us with their prayers.
So there is, if you like, not just a memory relationship,
but a living relationship with saints.
I think sometimes it is a misunderstanding
that we worship saints. We don't.
We offer them our love, and we ask for their prayers,
and we draw great strength from their example,
and their continuing presence as part of the living Church.
'I'm struck again by the idea that I had at the start of my journey.
'Saints were the celebrities of their age,
'and people hold on to their memory
'because they were inspired by their lives and deeds.
'Maybe that's why there's a move back to revering saints.
'In our celebrity-obsessed world,
'what we now crave is a person upon whom
'to hang our hopes, fears and aspirations.'
I remember vividly
the cortege carrying the body of Princess Diana
coming up the Edgware Road.
And the Edgware Road was crowded with people.
And they were throwing flowers forward
to catch them on the hearse as it went by.
And somebody said to me,
"Each of those flowers is a prayer for Diana."
The same man went on to say,
"I think this moment marks the end of the Reformation in England,
"that English people are discovering again their voice."
At the point of death, we do pray for those who have died.
And they are discovering their vision of a future
which is so vividly expressed in the lives of the saints.
'The end of the Reformation is a big claim to make,
'but it's not the first time that people have said
'that something profound seemed to happen in our society
'at the time of Diana's death.
'We are used to visiting the graves of our loved ones,
'and I'm beginning to see that it's also possible to draw inspiration
'and comfort from the memories of the dead saints.
'Something that connects us to a shared belief in what is good.
'I now understand how relics
'can help some people to find that connection.
'It's time to go back home to Wales.
'I have spent most of this journey in the grand surroundings
'of some incredible cathedrals,
'but now I am heading somewhere that couldn't be more different.
'This is Pennant Melangell near the Snowdonia National Park.
'It's home to the shrine of a woman who made this a place of sanctuary.'
Saint Melangell was a seventh-century princess
who became a hermit following an unwanted marriage proposal.
She retreated to this valley
and lived a life of prayer in harmony with nature.
Until one day, when King Brochwell and his huntsmen
came to the valley, coursing hares.
One of these frightened animals
hid beneath Melangell's cloak as she prayed,
but she was able to use her saintly powers to save it.
When the king's huntsman came and brought his horn up to his mouth,
about blow the note to summon the hounds in for the kill,
not a sound would come out, blow as he might.
King Brochwell was suitably impressed by this
and so he placed the valley and its wildlife
under Melangell's protection in perpetuity.
And even to this day, hares are known locally
as "Melangell's little lambs".
'Melangell's story is simple.
'She did not found a city,
'represent a nation or lay down her life in barbaric circumstances.
'But there is something about her that has endured.
'She lived here over 1,400 years ago,
'and her memory is still held very dearly.
'This church and shrine have a special place
'in many people's hearts.'
This is Saint Melangell's actual shrine
dating back to the 12th century.
It stood on legs like this, apparently,
so that pilgrims could more easily pray beneath her relics.
The shrine itself was destroyed at the time of the Reformation
and some of the bits were incorporated
into the lych gate and into the fabric of the nave.
When they were rediscovered, just a little bit over 100 years ago,
they tried to put it back together again like a huge jigsaw
and, of course, some of the pieces were missing.
But since the shrine has been restored,
it's become a place for pilgrims to visit once again.
Beneath the shrine,
we have these cards, prayer cards, with these simple messages.
"Dear Nan, 15 today.
"There isn't a day we all go by without missing you."
"May this peaceful place bring healing powers to my dear wife."
Another gentleman - pray for his addiction recovery, please.
"Grandma and grandad, I love you always."
They're very...
They're very simple messages.
Um...
and the idea that praying in this way,
or leaving a prayer card in this way
can somehow make somebody better,
or help to remember them,
it may work, it may not.
But there is no denying the emotional energy
that you can feel channelling through this place. There's a...
The pain...but also, the hope.
And it's very moving.
During restoration work, it was found that this part of church,
that the footings were semicircular
and it was rebuilt according to that design.
Which may suggest this was the earliest part of the church,
as that is an architectural style characteristic of the Romans
or at least Roman-inspired architecture.
And, when they were here,
working away on that, they found this grave.
And within it were the bones of a woman of the correct period.
It's thought that they may well be
the bones of Saint Melangell stowed here, or reburied here
at the time of the Reformation,
where they remained in secret
until modern times, when they were restored to the shrine.
So, it may well be that Saint Melangell's relics
are once again back in the shrine.
It's difficult to know what it is exactly about this shrine
in this valley that appeals so much.
Is it the simple story of a good woman?
Is it the fact that people feel that praying to her for help
can bring about results?
Is it simply the glorious, unspoilt setting
that instantly transports us back to her time here?
Because it is relatively unchanged.
Whatever the reason,
and I guess, it must be a combination of all those factors,
there's no denying this place has an incredible appeal.
It's one of the places that's moved me most.
I didn't expect shrines to really get under my skin at all.
But this place has been described as one of Britain's holiest places
and I, for one, am inclined to agree.
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