Photographs overview
and pre-1931
The early Archives photographic collection, part of which is shown on this website, is sadly not
extensive and relies heavily on the photographs taken by Fr Patten himself, by Stanley Smith
(the Bursar and Pilgrimage Secretary for 42 years), by Claude Fisher and by Kenneth
Faircloth, the village photographer. Kenneth took photographs for the Shrine’s purposes, and
was also well known by pilgrims for providing pictures of themselves in the Saturday night
processions.
On this website the larger collections shown are Fr Patten’s own albums of the building of the
Holy House (1931) and the Church (1938), Fr Kenneth Pearson’s album of the latter (1938 the
best photographs), the Guardians’ Gallery (begun in 1950) and Fr Patten’s Funeral (1958).
The press report pages for 1931 and 1938 have some of our archive photographs alongside.
A few of the Shrine’s pictures have been so widely reproduced that they have come to be
described as ‘iconic’. They appear in their contexts throughout the website, but have also been
brought together for display on a separate page.
There have been requests for the return of some photographs that were not brought over to
the revised site. One is the ‘introductory collage’, seen here.
The photographs below, believed to be copyright-free, were taken in Walsingham between
1923 and 1927.
1924 The site just purchased.
The Beeches (now Stella Maris
House) in the distance, Knight
Street to the right, the Abbey
wall to the left, and a wall on
the corner of the gardens where
the Holy House will be built in
1931 and the church in 1938.
The Beeches (Stella Maris) gardens
Sprinkling (it was sometimes called bathing) by the Abbey’s Holy
Wells before the Shrine’s Holy House and its covering building, with
well, were built in 1931. Sprinkling was only available on Wednesdays,
when the Abbey grounds were open to the public.
Scenes in the village, and (below) the earliest known photograph
(1923) of a priests’ pilgrimage procession
