Pilgrim Ways

New Dawn At Walsingham All these trends and movements would ultimately have huge implications for Walsingham. In 1852 the ownership of the estate passed to the Reverend D.H.Lee-Warner, whose nephew, the Reverend James Lee-Warner began the excavation of the site. It revealed the foundations of the priory Church, the Cloisters and the Chapter House. Above ground all that remained of the church of the Augustinian canons were the great east window and the staircase turrets, rising to about seventy feet. There were also some arches of the Refectory and the principal western gateway. Subsequently, they found the two wells and what they believed to be the Lady Chapel, which had enclosed the Holy House. Doubts have arisen about the authenticity of this identification. Mr.Lee-Warner also reproduced the seal of the Walsingham Priory which is illustrated with a Norman church of cruciform character, with a central tower, and two small towers both at the east and west ends. A supplicant is shown in prayer and at the side is the Virgin seated on a high backed chair holding the infant Jesus on her knee, a low crown on her head and a foliated scepter in her right hand. Around the margin appear the words: “Ave: Maria: Gratia: Plena: Dominus: Tecum.”

Fr.Hope-Patten During this period a succession of Lee-Warners were incumbents of the nearby Parish Church of St.Mary. Their active interest in the bare archaeological history of Walsingham paved the way for renewed theological and spiritual interest. This had to wait until the arrival of the Reverend A.Hope Patten, who was appointed vicar in 1921. He placed an image of the Virgin, copied from that on the priory seal, in the Guilds Chapel of the church. He saw this as an act of reparation. Within six years it had become necessary to make available accommodation for the regular flow of pilgrims who had begun to return to Walsingham. The hospice of Our Lady Star of the Sea was opened and an old Pilgrim Inn put into use. Concern was expressed that if the incumbency passed into less amenable hands the devotions and pilgrimages might again be terminated. This led to the construction of a purpose-built chapel enclosing a facsimile of the Holy House which the Lady Richeldis had built nine hundred years earlier. During the building work an ancient well was uncovered and evidence unearthed that the site which had been chosen had been in regular use by earlier pilgrims.

Preaching at the consecration of the new building, in 1931, the Reverend Ernest Underhill, the vicar of St.Thomas, Toxteth, in Liverpool, said that this was a logical conclusion of the Oxford Movement when : “God brought forth the old treasures of the Catholic Faith, and was presenting them to the generations in which they lived.” Such was the renewed interest that by 1938 an extension had been constructed, and more evidence uncovered of the early associations of this site with the Holy House. Fr.Hope-Patten, who died in 1958, ensured that the autonomy of the shrine was preserved by creating a Chapter of Guardians. It has been their responsibility to maintain and uphold the work of the Shrine. Among their number in recent years has been the former Cabinet Minister John Gummer MP. Vexed like Newman a century earlier over the question of the exercise of authority, he made his way to the Roman Catholic Church in the 1990s, along with five hundred Anglican clergymen. As with Newman and Manning before them their Ministry has greatly enriched the Catholic Church in England.

Renewal However, in a paradoxical way, Walsingham has helped to heal some of these decisions rather than exacerbate them. Frequently, the different traditions come together and share in