Winwaloe was the son of Fragan (or Fracan), a prince of Dumnonia, and his wife Gwen the Three-Breasted, who had fled to Brittany to avoid the plague.

However it was so inhospitable that after three years, he miraculously opened a passage through the sea to found another abbey on the opposite bank of the Landévennec estuary.

Winwaloe was venerated as a saint at Landévennec until Viking invasions in 914 forced the monks to flee, with his body, to Château-du-Loir and then Montreuil-sur-Mer.

He apparently acquired a priapic reputation through confusion of his name with the word gignere (French engendrer, "to beget") and was thus a patron of fertility as one of the phallic saints.

He was also popular in East Anglia where the abbey at Montreuil had a daughter house; St Winwaloe Priory in Norfolk was dedicated to him.