To answer the question, it
must be said that the Shrine Church bearing the title is the national Shrine of
the Blessed Virgin Mary in England, the spiritual epicentre of world Anglican
Catholicism. In AD 1061 the Holy Mother of God appeared in a vision to a noblewoman,
Richeldis de Faverches, and commanded that a Shrine in honour of the
Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Family be built on her land.
Our Lady revealed the design she desired to be built, a small house, a replica
of the Holy House in which the Annunciation from the Archangel Gabriel took
place and in which the Holy Family dwelt at Nazareth. A miraculous well sprang
up in the place chosen by the Mother of God for the erection of the Shrine, and
so the original Holy House was built thereon. Eventually the small chapel
consisting of the House itself was transformed, first into a great pilgrimage
Church, and later, an entire Augustinian Priory surrounded and protected the
little House of England's Nazareth. Augustinian Canons then governed and
administered the largest centre of Marian pilgrimage in all of Europe dating
from 1146. The most popular place of Marian pilgrimage in the country, it
closely rivalled the Shrine of Saint Thomas of Canterbury for overall
celebrity. Our Lady of Walsingham is Our Lord’s Mother, the title by which the
Mother of Jesus Christ is historically honoured in the British Isles.
Over the centuries, the Kings
of England offered their royal patronage to the Shrine and endowed it with
gifts of all kinds: Henry III, Edward II, Edward III, Henry IV, Edward IV,
Henry VII, and Henry VIII all made pilgrimage to the Shrine of the Mother of
God in Walsingham. King Henry VIII, eager to have their treasures, brought
about the destruction of Our Lady's House and Shrine in 1538 - at the
dissolution of the monasteries. The devotion lay in abeyance until a young
Anglican vicar, Father Alfred Hope Patten, moved to Walsingham in 1921 with the
hope of restoring the ancient Shrine as well as the ancient Faith. A leader of
the Catholic Movement in the Anglican Church, the energetic Father Patten restored
the fullness of orthodox doctrine and practice to the parish Church of Saint
Mary's, Little Walsingham, and in 1922 he restored the Image of Our Lady of
Walsingham inside the parish Church at the north side of the building. It was
his idea to base the new statue of Our Lady of Walsingham on the Image depicted
on the seal of the medieval Priory. Regular pilgrimage and devotion were
returned to Walsingham. From the first night the Image was restored, people
gathered to offer their intercessions in union with the prayers of Our Lady,
and the ministry of prayer, intercession, and devotion has gone on unbroken
every day since. Father Patten firmly believed that if the Anglican Church were
truly an Apostolic Church, it must have a living centre of devotion to the
Mother of the Lord. The Restoration of the Shrine was for him a proof of
Anglicanism's universality and a vital connection with her pre-reformation
Faith and history.
Throughout the 1920s, the
trickle of pilgrims became a flood of large numbers, for whom eventually a
Pilgrim Hospice was opened (a hospice is technically 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 Image translated there with great
solemnity. In 1938 that church was enlarged to form the Anglican Shrine of Our
Lady, more or less as we know it today. Anglicans around the world continue to
flock to England's Nazareth to worship and adore the Divine Son of Mary, Jesus
Christ, and to venerate God's lowly Mother. Devotion to Our Lady under the
title of Walsingham has become an undoubted defining characteristic of the Traditional
Anglican. 15th October 1931 is today commemorated as the Feast of Our Lady of
Walsingham. In 2005, the Anglican Shrine was ranked by the BBC as Britain's
most popular and loved site of Christian pilgrimage and prayer: the dream of
Father Patten has been realised and Walsingham is once again the centre of orthodox
English Church life and devotion.
