Phone +44 1328 820255 | ||
 | ||
Similar Basilica of Our Lady of Walsingham, Walsingham Abbey, Wells on Sea railway st, Walsingham Priory, Basilica della Santa Casa | ||
The Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham is a Church of England shrine church built in 1938 in Walsingham, Norfolk, England. Walsingham is the site of the reputed Marian apparitions to Richeldis de Faverches in 1061. The Virgin Mary is therefore venerated at the site with the title of Our Lady of Walsingham.
Contents
History
Father Alfred Hope Patten SSC, appointed as the Church of England Vicar of Walsingham in 1921, ignited Anglican interest in the pre-Reformation pilgrimage. It was his idea to create a new statue of Our Lady of Walsingham based on the image depicted on the seal of the medieval priory. In 1922 the statue was set up in the Parish Church of St Mary and regular pilgrimage devotion followed. From the first night that the statue was placed there, people gathered around it to pray, asking Mary to join her prayers with theirs.
Throughout the 1920s the trickle of pilgrims became a flood of large numbers for whom, eventually, the Pilgrim Hospice was opened (a hospice is the name of a place of hospitality for pilgrims) and, in 1931, a new Holy House encased in a small pilgrimage church was dedicated and the statue translated there with great solemnity. In 1938 that church was enlarged to form the Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. Father Patten combined the posts of Vicar of Walsingham and priest administrator of the Anglican shrine until his death in 1958. Enid Chadwick contributed to the artwork in the shrine.
List of priest administrators
Associated groups
Beyond the staff (who include a resident community, and external day staff) a number of groups are officially associated with the life of the shrine. These include: