Alfred Hope Patten and the Shrine of our Lady of Walsingham

Michael Yelton

• Publisher: Sacristy Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781789592276
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Biographies

Walsingham, "England's Nazareth", is England's premier place of pilgrimage for Anglicans and Roman Catholics alike, and its appeal continues to expand. The refounding of the eleventh-century Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in 1922 looked at the time like an inconsequential piece of neo-medievalism, but the intervening years have vindicated the determination of its founder Alfred Hope Patten to bring his unique vision to reality.

Some eighty years after his death, Hope Patten is now viewed in a way that he never experienced in his lifetime. Not only was he an archetypal Anglo-Catholic priest, but history has judged him to be one of the most significant figures in the Church of England in the twentieth century.

Based on unrestricted access to the archives of the Shrine and now fully revised and updated, this full biography of Hope Patten is once again available. This definitive work on the history of the Shrine and its founder explores Hope Patten's background and ministry as well as many of the myths which he created about himself. It records the struggles he had – personal and financial – to establish his dream in the Norfolk countryside, the failure of his vision in other areas and assesses his lasting legacy to the Church of England.

Chapter 7

Walsingham: The Third Phase, 1932–7

Hope Patten was at a high point in his ministry at the end of 1931. He was, however, at this stage never a man to stand still, and the experience of being concerned with the erection of a building had a profoundly addictive effect on him. Thereafter he was constantly thinking of or carrying into effect extensions or alterations to the shrine chapel or of other new construction projects, his vivid imagination restrained only by fiscal reality, usually conveyed to him by Derrick Lingwood.

It is also important to stress that the Walsingham shrine at this time was still a very small-scale affair, which barely registered in the national consciousness or even in that of much of the Church of England. The first edition of the Mirror for 1932 recorded that on average there had been eighty to ninety pilgrims a week visiting, which is not indicative of widespread outside interest.

However, the number of pilgrimages did definitely increase. In May and June of that year, there were five, including the recently formed Society of Mary and the Catholic League, and the first weekend pilgrimage, from SS Peter and Paul, Teddington, near Hope Patten’s old church of St Alban, and St John, Isle of Dogs, of which Father Kingdon, a Guardian, was the priest. The party drove up from London on Saturday by coach, arrived at 8.30 p.m. and made a “first visit”, and then the next day attended at parish mass, intercessions, benediction, the sprinkling at the well, and a talk, followed by a “last visit” before leaving for town. For the Feast of the Assumption in 1932, a large marquee, soon nicknamed “the cathedral”, was erected on the lawn so that the devotions could take place within private grounds and so that demonstrators could easily be excluded; this followed Kensitite attendance at the Catholic League pilgrimage which led to what Hope Patten referred to as “a very disgraceful and sacrilegious brawn (sic)” in the parish church. At the same time the village was decorated again for the patronal festival of the church. Then the anniversary of the previous year’s translation was marked in October by three days of prayer in both the parish church and the shrine, and the first children’s pilgrimage took place.

Despite these positive developments, the financial position of the parish and shrine was, as ever, under strain. On the one hand Hope Patten was appealing in the newsletter in early 1932 for funds to build a sacristy adjacent to the new chapel; the required money was not forthcoming, and a temporary wooden building was erected later in the year. On the other, the faithful Father Leeds had to leave because the money to pay him was being used for the shrine. Father Leeds featured little or not at all in Hope Patten’s newsletters, perhaps because he was embarrassed at the presence of a married priest on the staff, although personally they remained on very good terms. He also said to an outsider that he himself was not especially interested in the restoration of the shrine, but what held him in Norfolk was the manifest Catholic life among the parishioners.1 He went initially for a short further curacy at All Souls, South Ascot, and then the following year became vicar of another All Souls in Clapton, East London, where he stayed for many years.

This departure of course put yet further strain on Hope Patten, who was, after the October 1932 meeting of the Guardians at which the constitution was adopted, simultaneously parish priest, Master of the Guardians, and priest administrator of the shrine. He advertised, optimistically and unsuccessfully, for a priest who would be prepared to work in the parish and to take charge of Houghton with a free house but otherwise without stipend.

The evolution of the College of Guardians over the next few years was an interesting one. In one sense, they were a safeguard against the incumbent seceding to Rome, and therefore they had no role save in those circumstances; in another sense, however, they were a public demonstration of support for the shrine. While Hope Patten was alive, he certainly did not perceive the Guardians as having any management responsibilities which conflicted with his own, and he tended to disregard any expressed views of theirs which did not accord with his own. However, in accordance with the outlook of himself and of his chief lieutenant, Father Fynes-Clinton, the College gradually adopted a quasi-mediaeval tone. In 1933, Fynes-Clinton donated a silver gilt chain, cross and jewel, the latter depicting Our Lady of Walsingham, for the use of the Master of the College. In November 1938, the Guardians adopted distinctive blue cloaks or mantles, and in 1947 stars were added to these. A Guardian was expected to return his regalia when he left office.

In addition to any other support which they provided, the Guardians were generous with gifts for furnishing the shrine, as indeed were others. In 1932, an anonymous Guardian (possibly Father Whitby, who was wealthy and well-disposed towards the artist in question) presented to the shrine a crucifix by Martin Travers, which was initially hung in the Holy House at the west end.2 The same year, a staff of Father Ignatius, the maverick predecessor of Aelred Carlyle in the foundation of male Benedictinism in the Church of England, was given.

Another gift that year was a feretory for the relics of St Vincent of Saragossa which Hope Patten had acquired in Assisi in 1924. In considering the life of any figure, there are some episodes and objects which sharply illuminate the personality of the subject of the biography. The manufacture and introduction of the feretory to the shrine throws a very clear shaft of light on Hope Patten’s life and outlook at this time. In the winter 1933 edition of the Mirror, he described the reliquary, which was given by the mother of the late Lincoln Brett in his memory.3 The original reliquary of ebony was enclosed within the new; the description reads as follows:

The shrine stands on a base coloured a dark green emblazoned with shields of those intimately connected with Walsingham. At the west end are the arms of S. Vincent, D.M., and the family of Brett, the donors. On the south side are the arms of Sir William Milner, the donor of the land on which the present Sanctuary of Our Lady stands, Edward the Confessor, who was lord of the manor when the Holy House was first erected, and Henry III, the first of the long line of royal pilgrims recorded to have visited the shrine. At the east end are the shields of Walsingham and the first Administrator [i.e. himself], while on the north we have those of S. Augustine whose canons were the guardians of England’s Nazareth for close on four hundred years. The next is a badge in a shield representing the Holy House; and the last on the base is the shield of the Clares, who were the patrons of the Priory and incidentally founders of the Franciscan house in the town. Over the base is a wooden cover, similar to that depicted in Mr Charles Walls’ Shrines of British Saints for the Venerable Bede; indeed ours was entirely suggested by the picture. The cover is painted in a dark green and is covered with a pall of silk. It is raised by means of a rope and pulley and rings attached to four iron posts which terminate in sockets for candles. When this cover is raised the actual shrine is revealed. It is beautifully made and is in colour and much gold leaf. There is a carved ridge on the top terminating in two crockets carved and gilded. At each corner there are pinnacles also carved and crocketed. On the east end is a panel with the figure of the saint holding his gridiron and a palm branch; he is vested in a scarlet dalmatic, and the back of this panel is diapered in gold and colour. At the west end the panel depicts Our Blessed Lady and the Holy Child vested in a similar way. On the sides are other panels containing heraldry repeating the shields of the base: the Holy House, S. Vincent and Brett, and on the other side S. Vincent, Walsingham and Brett. The west end is made in the form of a door and the whole of the south side wall can be removed to enable the relics to be exposed for public veneration. This was done of course on the feast of S. Vincent after the parish mass . . . ”

This shows a number of facets of Hope Patten’s character: the looking back to the past, the ignoring of what had occurred at the Reformation and his increasing interest in heraldry, fuelled by Father Fynes-Clinton, who was deeply interested in that subject and later devised armorial bearings for the College of Guardians, then obtained letters patent, and presented them. The feretory was painted by Lily Dagless. In 1946, Norwich goldsmith Howard Brown created a new feretory.

At the first annual chapter of the Guardians in October 1932, it was decided not only to have a special pilgrimage the following year, for the Oxford Movement centenary, but also to extend the shrine to include what was termed a choir. This proposal was to cost £3,000 and was to double the size of the pilgrimage church. Hope Patten reminded his readers that the great priory church was 408 feet long, and all he was asking for was a choir some 54 feet by 30 feet. The response to this appeal, coming so close after the last, was not encouraging and in early 1933 the vicar rather optimistically suggested that the potential donors might be waiting until the centenary year itself before putting their hands into their pockets. That particular project in the end came to nothing, despite printed material being prepared and distributed.

One way in which the message of Walsingham was being spread was by the establishment of shrines in churches in England and indeed overseas. As early as 1926, the Mirror indicated that shrines had been erected in Nassau in the Bahamas, an unnamed place in Canada, and at Horbury for the Sisters. In 1930, a copy of the Walsingham image was erected by the Revd A. Parker Curtiss4 in Grace Episcopal Church, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, in the traditionally Anglo-Catholic Diocese of Fond du Lac, and it was blessed the following year. This followed a visit to England by Father Curtiss, who had the image and special altar carved locally; it has remained a place of pilgrimage ever since, and the building is now known as Grace Walsingham Church. Father Fynes-Clinton established a shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in St Magnus in 1931, designed by Martin Travers, as already mentioned, and others followed these leads. On 16 December 1932, Hope Patten sent out a prayer card to those in charge of the various shrines with an invitation to pray for Walsingham.

He reported with some pride in the Mirror, winter 1934, that many such shrines had been established and in particular that the most northerly was at All Saints, Inveraray, the Episcopal church near the Duke of Argyll’s Scottish castle, and that the most remote was in the church of St Mary on the island of Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic, to which at that time the Anglo-Catholic Movement had reached out. Hope Patten undoubtedly saw the establishment of devotion to Our Lady of Walsingham as supranational, although he himself never seems to have visited what was then called the Empire, save many years later when he holidayed in Malta.5

Despite the failure to make any progress with the choir, other gifts were given to the shrine. Hope Patten was anxious that the sanctuary should be properly equipped so that what was required was not continually transported from the parish church and then returned after use, and he used his customary persuasive techniques to try and ensure that new candlesticks and the like were donated. He was also faced with the unfortunate problem that a number of pilgrims had fallen down the stairs to the holy well, usually because they had been concentrating on the imported stones in the wall and had not noticed the steps. When an eighty-year-old woman fell down the entire flight head over heels and broke some bones, it was decided that an iron rail and gates were required, and they were erected in early 1934. It was a somewhat ironic sequence of events when Hope Patten was at the same time encouraging his pilgrims to report instances of cures which occurred after being sprinkled. The well was provided with a statue of Our Lady of Sudbury6 (sometimes known as Our Lady of the Smile) made by the Daglesses.

In 1932, another new organization was commenced, which seems to have run until the outbreak of war. The Apostleship of Prayer was for inhabitants of the village; those joining agreed to spend half an hour each week in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament in the parish church and half an hour in the shrine. The group placed itself under the patronage of the Sacred Heart and observed the first Friday of each month with particular care.

Despite the failure to enlarge the shrine church at this stage, in 1935 a range of properties became available on the west side of Knight Street, consisting of a house with grounds and a row of dilapidated cottages, which had been condemned as unfit for human occupation. The Guardians bought them, with the aid of a substantial donation and a mortgage, thus consolidating their holdings around the new shrine church. Hope Patten asserted that it would have been a neglect of duty not to have purchased the houses, because otherwise they might have fallen into unfriendly hands or simply given others an unrestricted view of what occurred in the shrine grounds.

There were continuing problems after the erection of the new shrine with the presence of the Benedictines in Walsingham. The underlying problem, which was to recur in later years, was that Hope Patten really wanted a separate priory in the village under his control. He also objected to the Brothers saying their office in the shrine in Latin, against which, as already described, he had a strong prejudice, and continued to be dissatisfied with their personal conduct.

Another involvement with the Benedictines, however, was the suggestion that a choir school be set up in the village to serve the shrine. Dom Anselm Hughes of Nashdom, a distinguished musician, who had of course been offered the living before Hope Patten accepted it, carried out research to this end in 1932, staying for a period of time in Walsingham. He recommended the establishment of such a school, on condition that high fees were charged so ...

Table of contents

• Introduction and Acknowledgements
• Background and Early Life, 1885–1901
• The Brighton Years, 1902–11
• Ordination and Curacies, 1911–21
• Walsingham: The Early Years and the Re-Establishment of the Shrine of Our Lady, 1921–4
• Walsingham: The Second Phase, 1925–30
• Walsingham: The Translation of the Image, 1931
• Walsingham: The Third Phase, 1932–7
• Walsingham: The Pre-War Years and the Extension of the Shrine, 1938–9
• Walsingham during the War Years, 1939–45
• The Sisters in Walsingham, 1941–7
• Walsingham in the Post-War Years, 1945–50
• Walsingham: The Fifties, 1951–6
• The Last Years at Walsingham and their Aftermath, 1956–8
• A Retrospective
• Plates