Werstan

Saint Werstan was a monk of the Anglo-⁠Saxon monastery of Deerhurst in Gloucestershire, which was destroyed by the Northmen. Escaping through Malvern Chase, he found refuge in the Malvern Hills, in a hermitage near St Ann's Well. His oratory is thought to have stood on the site of St Michael's Chapel, and when a house on that spot was demolished in 1825, ecclesiastical carvings, a medieval undercroft, human bones and parts of a coffin came to light.

Legend says that the settlement at Great Malvern began after the murder of Saint Werstan; although the legend may be monastic invention, historians have concluded that he was the original martyr of the place. A fifteenth-⁠century stained-⁠glass window in Great Malvern Priory shows his story: his vision, the consecration of his chapel, Edward the Confessor granting the charter for the settlement, and his martyrdom. One author says that Deerhurst was first an abbey and that Werstan was its abbot, but he gives no sources. He is a saint of the undivided Church, venerated at Great Malvern.