The first Processional Image
Recently a pilgrim enquired about two photographs printed in Michael
Yelton’s Alfred Hope Patten: his life and times in pictures (2007), a
supplement to his 2006 definitive biography of Fr Patten. The later book contained
the overflow of photographs left out of the biography, arranged in no particular
order, with brief captions. The two in question (on pages 53 & 71 [left]) are in the
Archives collection but had not appeared before on the Walsingham Archives
website. The archivist posted them on Twitter (@olwarchives), hoping to learn more.
Here is all the information we have found, and more photographs, undated,
belonging to the Shrine and to the Sisters. If anyone can contribute info or
comments, please do so, by email or Twitter.
In late 1932 the processional image was recorded as a gift to the Shrine.
On 19 July 1933 the image was used - almost certainly for the first time - on the
day of the Mass at the Halifax Altar in the Shrine grounds, marking the Centenary of
the Oxford Movement.
from Our Lady’s Mirror Spring & Summer & Autumn 1933
"In the evening Vespers were sung pontifically in the grounds at the pavilion [the
Halifax Altar], and then there was a long procession in honour of Our Lady, in which
the beautiful image made last autumn for this purpose was carried. A station was
made, as usual, and the Magnificat was sung before returning to the altar for
Benediction, at the conclusion of which all the pilgrims went to the Holy House and
sung the Credo, Salve and Te Deum.”
At first glance the statue looked so like that in the Sisters’ Chapel (right),
that they could be one and the same - but the differences are clear. The
Sisters kindly carried out their own research and told us that the 38-inch
statue was signed ‘K[arel] Dupon’. [from an old-established family of
Belgian sculptors].
above and below: two separate
occasions? the feretory cover is
lifted in one.
The photographs below are some of the others we have of the
Shrine’s image, and of what appears to be another. More
photographs of early pilgrimages may emerge.
Another pilgrim has been going through old Our Lady’s
Mirror copies, and elsewhere, and has deduced that
the first processional image, seen in 1951, had been
replaced by 1959. Any more information, about this or
any of the other processional images shown?
