Few places in the Rhondda feel as old as Penrhys, even though the ridge now carries a housing estate. In the Middle Ages this windy saddle between the Rhondda Fawr and Rhondda Fach was one of the most famous pilgrimage places in Wales, drawing people from all over the country to a statue of the Virgin Mary and a healing spring below it, Ffynnon Fair, St Mary's Well.
The shrine had a foundation legend. A statue of the Virgin, seated and holding the infant Christ, was found in the branches of an oak tree near the holy well. It was beautiful, and people understood it to be a gift from heaven. Many tried to take it down and carry it away, and all failed: in a phrase repeated by the shrine's historians, "eight oxen could not have drawn the Image of Penrhys from its place". It would only allow itself to be moved once a chapel had been built for it on the brow of Cefn Penrhys. Medieval Welsh poets praised the image and the cures worked there and at the well.
The shrine did not survive the Reformation. In 1538, under Henry VIII, the shrine was burned during the night and the statue was taken to London, where it was burned publicly with other famous Marian images, including that of Walsingham. The chapel fell into ruin.
In 1912 a replica carved in oak was placed in the new Catholic church of Our Lady of Penrhys at Ferndale, and on 2 July 1953 a large statue in Portland stone, carved to the old poets' descriptions, was unveiled on the site of the chapel. Pilgrimages resumed. The well house still stands on the slope below.
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