1922

“Everyone knows” that 1931 and 1938 are the two most important and iconic dates in the Shrine’s history - 1931 when the image of Our Lady of Walsingham was translated from St Mary’s Church to the newly-built Holy House, and 1938 when the Shrine Church was enlarged and opened. But “Everyone” forgets 1922, without which the above would not have happened. On 6 July 1922 the newly-commissioned image was brought to St Mary’s Church and set up on a pillar in the Guilds Chapel as the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, where it remained until 15 October 1931. In January 2021 we observed the centenary of Fr Patten’s arrival, and in July 2022 the centenary of the setting-up of the Shrine. We can see from that comparatively short interval of eighteen months how quickly Fr Patten must have pressed ahead with his clear intention of reviving the medieval pilgrimage, alongside his work as Walsingham’s new parish priest. Unlike as in 1931 and 1938, there are no photograph albums, and significant reminiscence from only Fr Patten of this great day in 1922, but we are fortunate that Michael Yelton, in his biography of Fr Patten*, has pulled together what is recorded in various places. Our usual mine of information - Our Lady’s Mirror - was not created until 1926. In the early 1920s Fr Patten held a series of annual three-day Priests’ Conferences at Walsingham, as part of the Anglo-Catholic Congress movement. Their aim was to promote the Catholic Revival in the local area. In the extract reproduced below, as written by Fr Patten for Our Lady’s Mirror, Spring/Summer Number 1947, he looked back in ‘The Story of the Shrine 1922-1947’: It was during these conferences, towards the end of the week, that the new image of Our Lady of Walsingham, having been made from the seal of the Priory and accounts culled from the British Museum and elsewhere, was placed in the South Porch of the Parish Church, and on the evening of July 6th was blessed after an oration delivered from the steps of the font. A procession was formed consisting of inhabitants from the village, the visiting priests. Girls in white, some carrying long boughs of syringa and others bearing the feretory on which the image was placed, accompanied by the organ and the ringing of the old bells in the Church tower. “O.L.W.” was carried up into the Guilds’ Chapel of S. Mary’s and there enthroned on the pillar to the south of the Altar. From that day forward each evening, with the exception of Friday and Saturday in Holy Week, the Rosary has been said before the Image and after a few days, not more than a week after the setting up of the figure, an intercession book was opened and petitions offered, also daily. These have now amounted to hundreds of thousands of requests. And again in 1954, Fr Patten ‘looked back’ in Mary’s Shrine of the Holy House, Walsingham (1954). * The following is from Michael Yelton’s biography of Fr Patten (2006 p 53; 2nd edn 2022 pp 64-5) reproduced in full, with permission: Hope Patten wasted no time in putting into effect the restoration of the shrine. He was instituted to the parish on 19 January 1921 by the local Rural Dean, Canon Gordon Roe, brother of his former vicar, acting for the Bishop of Thetford. In July 1922 he used the occasion of one of the local conferences described above to incorporate the reestablishment of the devotion to Our Lady of Walsingham. Hope Patten had always had a theatrical streak which had earlier manifested itself in his involvement in amateur dramatics. He was now able to harness that talent to the organisation of events such as this, and, importantly, to involve the parishioners in what he was doing. On 6 July 1922 the image was set up in the Guilds, or north, chapel of the parish church. Father Alban Baverstock, who was in Walsingham for the priests’ conference, assisted by blessing the image, which had initially been placed on a litter near the font. It was then carried into the chapel accompanied by some of the village girls in white dresses and veils and carrying branches of syringa (mock orange) to the accompaniment of the church bells, and placed on a pillar, looking towards the ruins of the Priory from which its predecessor had been removed in 1538. The image was carried by two servers, Frederick Shepherd and George Howe. The sermon was preached by the Revd Archdale King, then curate of St. Saviour, Poplar and later vicar of Holy Trinity, Reading, who subsequently seceded to Rome and wrote a number of very learned books on liturgical matters. The following year Hope Patten started a local guild, which was later to be transformed into the nationwide Society of Our Lady of Walsingham. MISTAKES HAPPEN BUT ONCE THEY’RE IN PRINT IT’S HARD TO STOP THEM SPREADING. In Donald Hole’s much-loved 1939 book England’s Nazareth, which until Fr Colin Stephenson’s Walsingham Way in 1970 was the only straight narrative of Fr Patten’s Restoration of the Shrine in 1922, he unfortunately gave the year of this important event as 1921. The book ran into eight editions, and, although revised in parts, it carried on in the same format - with the mistake amazingly uncorrected, even up to its last edition in 1990. This mistake was perpetuated, and can still cause confusion for those reading old publications. (Details of the covers and make-up of the eight editions, but not the text, are on the Publications website.) In fairness to Fr Donald Hole’s reputation, it ought to be recorded that, during the recent archive work, several instances were found of Fr Patten’s having himself written the Restoration date as 1921, instead of 1922. Therefore we guess that in 1939 Fr Donald’s error came via Fr Patten in some way. And it seems that no one followed it up. top of page