Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Northende Sherborne

This visit on the Pilgrimage is another addition to the itinerary, and one that brings us to one of my favourite churches, Sherborne Abbey in Dorset.

The outside has the calm elegance of its fifteenth century renewal, whilst the interior is a sublime place of prayer created over the decades associated with the Wars of the Roses. Sherborne is a wonderful antidote to seeing the fifteenth century as gloom and doom. What is more the seemingly effortless rhythm of the masonry literally conceals the fact that the core of the building is the late Anglo-Saxon cathedral, and not an entirely new building. For all its varied and sometimes turbulent history, not least when the present appearance of the church was taking shape in the fifteenth century the abbey has an ordered spiritual calm that transcends time and space.

Wikipedia has a detailed history, which includes the sometimes fraught relations between the abbey community and the townspeople over parochial rights, which can be read at Sherborne_Abbey

 

Sherborne Abbey from the south west

The pseudo-Norman porch is an unfortunate Victorian recreation replacing the fifteenth century re-casing

The destroyed church All Hallows extended west from the main abbey. The springer for its easternmost window can be seen. The shrine of Our Lady was in the area in shadow

Image: Sherborne Abbey

The interior looking east

Image: Wikipedia 

Sherborne Abbey with the attached church of All Hallows circa 1530

Image: strongwomen.org.uk

The statue of what was known as Our Lady of Northende stood in the now destroyed parish church of All Hallows in a chapel at the extreme east end of the north aisle. This appears to have been resorted to by local women in particular.

 

Fortunately here there survive churchwardens accounts from the early sixteenth century recording offerings at the shrine. Thus we actually have named pilgrims and benefactors to the statue. The rarely preserved details of devotion can be read in Our Lady of Northerne, All Hallows church, Sherborne

The sanctuary of Sherborne Abbey

Image: CleverDeverWherever

May Our Lady of Northende Sherborne 

intercede for us and our intentions

Jesu mercy, Mary pray

Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Salisbury

The Pilgrimage now travels westward from Hampshire to the cathedral city of Salisbury in Wiltshire. Salisbury is still, as it was in the medieval period, dominated by the cathedral dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

Salisbury Cathedral

Image:Wikipedia 

Salisbury was a specific focus by reason of the dedication for Marian prayer but there seems to be no clear evidence of a specific statue as at the similarly dedicated cathedral at Lincoln.

Our Lady of Salisbury, pilgrim badge

Although not that clear the badge does shows standing figure of Our Lady holding the Christ Child rather than the earlier enthroned type

Image: Wessex Museums

 

The Virgin Mary, being patron of Salisbury Cathedral, was believed to protect Salisbury’s citizens. In 1409 a local girl watching a game of quoits was hit on the head by an iron ring – she recovered after bystanders prayed to Our Lady of Salisbury. The Wessex Museum service says the shrine was popular with pilgrims from Europe, but unfortunately does not give further details.

Salisbury Cathedral in the 1670s

On the left is the bell tower which was built in the early 1260s and tragically demolished in 1790.

This is how the cathedral would have appeared to medieval pilgrims

Image: rareoldprints.com

There is more about the bell tower in my 2011 post Vandalism at Salisbury Cathedral and I still believe it should be rebuilt, not least because then the cathedral could have bells again - it is one of three Anglian cathedrals that do not have any.

The Salisbury bell tower 

The octagonal upper stage and spire were of wood and removed some years before the final demolition 

Image: Wikinedia Commons

May Our Lady of Salisbury intercede for us and our intentions

Jesu mercy, Mary pray

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 in Sussex 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