Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Arundel

This is a new addition to the Pilgrimage and draws upon the EWTN report on the installation of a new statue of our Lady of Walsingham in the chapel at Arundel Castle which I shared a couple of months 

back. I have edited and augmented their account.

 

Prior to the Reformation, the town of Arundel possessed no fewer than three important shrines dedicated to Our Lady. The shrine of Our Lady of Arundel was located in a chapel near the site of the present, nineteenth century, cathedral.

Thomas, Earl of Arundel, a great friend of King Henry V having been invalided home from the siege of Harfleur, in his will dated October 10th 1415, willed that his executors should build at the Mary Gate in Arundel a chapel in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary.This was done a short distance from the Mary Gate. 

Tomb effigies of Thomas Earl of Arundel, 1381-1415, and his wife Beatrice of Portugal in the FitzAlan chapel at Arundel

Image: Flickr - Church Explorer

 Another chapel of Our Lady stood over the Mary Gate which led from the castle into the park. This had been  built at the close of the thirteenth century. Our Lady was honoured here under the title Our Lady of the Gate.

The Shrine of Our Lady of Calceto was in the Augustinian Priory Church overlooking what is now the Causeway (Calceto).

May Our Lady of Arundel intercede for us and our intentions 

Jesu mercy, Mary pray

Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Winchester

The Pilgrimage now goes to Winchester Cathedral, a building which exudes the historic atmosphere of centuries in a way that is rich and rare and wonderful.

My post from previous years about the veneration of Our Lady in the Cathedral and in the neighbouring foundation of Winchester College can be accessed from Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Winchester

 The exhibition gallery in the triforium of the south transept has an important collection of fragments of the decorative sculpture removed and broken up during the Edwardian reformation or the Civil War. These indicate the quality of what was there and the fanaticism of those committed to destruction.

A damaged fourteenth century statue of the Virgin and Child from Winchester Cathedral

Image: medart.pitt.edu. 

 

May Our Lady of Winchester intercede for us and our intentions

Jesu mercy, Mary pray

Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Andover

The Pilgrimage now returns to southern England, and to the county of Hampshire.

The first at action is at Andover. My posts about what is known about this late medieval devotion from previous years are accessible at Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Andover

As I explain in those notes the church visited by the Bohemian embassy in 1466 was demolished in 1840 on the grounds that it was unsafe. As some local historians have pointed out the fact that dynamite was deemed necessary to destroy the old church is, shall we say, suspicious and the suggestion is that the present, very striking early Victorian church, was very much the pet project of the incumbent, a former headmaster of Winchester.

All that survives of the essentially Norman church in the style of its region is a crypt, the old south doorway re-erected as an entry to the churchyard and a few stone fragments. It looks to have been a fine building and its loss is to be deprecated.

Andover Church before 1840

Image: Facebook - Stockbridge and District Social History

Andover Church before demolition 

Image: Hampshire Field Club

May Our Lady of Andover intercede for us and for our intentions 

Jesu mercy, Mary pray

Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Scarborough

The Pilgrimage destinationtosay is the headland on which stands the substantial and string remains of Scarborough Castle and the shrine associated with Our Lady’s Well and the site of the adjacent medieval chapel of St Mary.

  

My previous posts about this place of pilgrimage can be accessed at Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Scarborough

I am giving again the link to an online article about it which has some good photographs of what remains at Our Lady's Well (Scarborough)

  

Plan or ‘plat’ of Scarborough 

Probably made 1539 to 1547

Image: silentheory

A later engraving of the plan  showing more including the chapel of St Mary on the Castle rock and the well next to it

Image: Facebook - Scarborough Archaeological and Historical Society

    

A reconstruction of the castle about 1300

The chapel of St Mary can be seen at the top left

Image: Chris Jones Jenkins for English Heritage

May Our Lady of Scarborough intercede for us and our intentions 

 

Jesu mercy, Mary pray

Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Wensleydale

The third of these Marian shrines, that of Our Lady of Wensleydale, as I explored in Marian pilgrimage - Our Lady of Guisborough,  Our Lady of Mount Grace, and Our Lady of Wensleydale

In that I give my reasons for preferring Jervaulx to Coverham as the home of Our Lady of Wensleydale, but I am open to correction.

 

Unfortunately less survives above ground of the abbey than at several of the other Cistercian monasteries in Yorkshire, but it is still very well worth visiting.

 

Reconstruction model of Jervaulx abbey, on display at the site

Image: linkaonline.co.uk

There are more images of the model at Jervaulx Abbey

One striking fragment thought to have been salvaged from Jervaulx is the east window of the Lady Chapel in the parish church of the nearby market town of Bedale. The remarkably interesting church, described by Wikipedia at Church_of_St_Gregory,_Bedale incorporates this over-large window. It may have been in the west or east front of the abbey, or maybe the north transept.

Image. bedale.church

The interior of the Lady Chapel

Image: Wikipedia 

May Our Lady of Wensleydale intercede for us and our intentions 

Jesu mercy, Mary pray

Marian Pilgrimage- Our Lady of Mount Grace

The Carthusian house of Mount Grace is by far the best preserved example of a medieval Charterhouse in the British Isles, and still being in a rural setting is that much easier to envisage as it would have been in the fifteenth or early sixteenth century. Similarly the separate Lady Chapel on the hill above the priory, probably visited by the monks on their weekly walk, witnesses to medieval piety, to recusant fidelity and to modern revival. 

What has also b en shown by academic research is the exceptional part played by the community at Mount Grace in disseminating devotional literature in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

 

Model of Mount Grace

Image: eatsleepenjoy.com

English Heritage has a history of the monastery at History of Mount Grace Priory 

My posts from previous years discussing Mount Grace  can be found through Marian pilgrimage - Our Lady of Guisborough,  Our Lady of Mount Grace, and Our Lady of Wensleydale

 

Above the site of the ruined Priory is the restored Lady Chapel, and close by is the Catholic parish church in Osmotherley. There is more about that at Osmotherley village - Our Lady of Mount Grace - Taking Stock

The Lady Chapel overlooking the monastery

Image: Taking Stock

After the Elizabethan break with Rome the area around the North Yorkshire Moors was one with strong recusant sympathies. 

   

There is an excellent history of the Lady Chapel at History – The Lady Chapel

The Priory ruins with the hill on which the Lady Chapel stands in the background

Image:Country Life 

May Our Lady of Mount Grace intercede for us and our intentions 

Jesu mercy, Mary pray

Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Guisborough

The Pilgrimage journey northwards again to the North Riding of Yorkshire, and to three more shrines.In past years I have grouped them together, but think that I will now give each a separate post. 

The first stop is the important Augustinian priory at Guisborough in the northern margins of the Riding.

My posts from previous years about all three monasteries can be found through Marian pilgrimage - Our Lady of Guisborough,  Our Lady of Mount Grace, and Our Lady of Wensleydale  

The surviving east wall of the Priory  church at Guisborough 

Image/ Britain Express

English Heritage has an illustrated account of the history of the monastery at History of Gisborough Priory

I recently came upon a video, obviously made using AI for its images, but on the whole well made - although the second church shapeshifts between two different versions. Nonetheless it is definitely superior to many, ma g others online relating to the past. It can be seen at 

 Guisborough Priory ‘Restoration/reconstruction’

May sour Lady of Guisborough interced for us and for our intentions

Jesu mercy, Mary pray

Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Howden, of Stamford and of Flawford

Today the pilgrimage takes in three medieval statues of Our Lady which doubtless attracted devotional prayer in the later medieval centuries, but which were not, as far as an be seen, the focus of a particular cultus.

My posts about them from last year and others from earlier years can be accessed from Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Howden, of Stamford,  and of Flawford

Howden Minster

Image: A Church Near You

St Mary’s Stamford

Image: Britain Express

Flawford Church before demolition in 1775-9

Image: Flawford.org.uk

The statue of the Virgin and Child from Flawford

Image: Southwell and Nottingham Church History Project

 There is more about the statues at The Flawford Alabasters and at Flawford - Features and Fittings. There is an online video about an academic study leading to a reconstruction of the original painted decoration of the statue, and that is a revelation. It can be viewed at Re-imagining the Flawford Virgin

 May Our Lady of Howden, Our Lady of Stamford and Our Lady of Flawford intercede for us and our intentions

Jesu mercy, Mary pray