Before we leave the Thames valley it is appropriate to include a famous Marian shrine that is not, unaccountably, on the Stevenson itinerary. This is the shrine of Our Lady of Caversham which faces Reading across the Thames.
It may well have an origin in the Anglo-Saxon period - the parish history linked to below sets this in context. The shrine was a chapel east of the village which had the historic parish church, the river crossing and another focus of devotion, St Anne’s Well, at its western end.
By 1106 it was sufficiently established to revive relics from the Holy Land and in 1162 passed under the control of the Augustinian abbey at Notley in Buckinghamshire. One of the canons was assigned to live in a house at the shrine.
It continued to receive the support of the lords of Caversham - Marshals, Clares and Despensers over the centuries. In 1439, as we saw at Tewkesbury earlier in the month the last Despenser, Isabella Countess of Warwick, bequeaths twenty pounds of gold to make a crown for the Caversham statue.
On July 17th 1532 Queen Catherine of Aragon came, not apparently for the first time, on pilgrimage to Caversham doubtless seeking aid in her increasingly beleaguered position in “The King’s Great Matter”
The original shrine was closed on September 14th 1538 by Thomas Cromwell’s representative Dr John London. Fr Bridgett quotes his letter back to Cromwell:
have pulled down the image of our Lady of Caversham, whereunto was great pilgrimage. The image is plated over with silver, and I have put it in a chest, fast locked and nailed up, and by the next barge that cometh from Reading to London it shall be brought to your lordship. I have also pulled down the place she stood in, with all other ceremonies — as lights, shrouds, crutches, and images of wax hanging about the chapel — and have defaced the same thoroughly, in eschewing of any farther resort thither. . . . I have made fast the doors of the chapel, which is thoroughly well covered with lead ; and if it be your lordship's pleasure, I shall see it made sure to the king's grace's usje. And if it be not so ordered, the chapel standeth so wildly that the lead will be stolen by night, as I was served at the friars ; for as soon as I had taken the friars' surrender the multitude of the poverty of the town resorted thither, and all things that might be had they stole away. ... In this 1 have done as much as I could to save everything to the king's grace's use.'
He goes on to add:
At Caversham is a proper lodging, where the canon lay, with a fair garden and an orchard, meet to be bestowed upon some friend of your lord-ship's in these parts.'
The Tudor Society blog has a post about the closure of the shrine with substantial additional textual references about these events and information about other relics housed there, including what was believed to be the dagger used to kill King Henry VI in 1471, and the knife used in the murder of St Edward the Martyr in 978, and which can be read at 14 September 1538 - The Destruction of the Shrine of Our Lady of Caversham
The original site of the shrine chapel appears to have been quarried away by gravel extraction, but in 1897 a new statue was installed in the newly founded Catholic parish church of Our Lady and St Anne in Caversham.
In the years 1954-58 an extremely skilful apsial stonebchapel in the style of the twelfth century was added to this red brick church ans a late medieval statute acquired and installed. In 1996 to mark the centenary of the parish a crown was commissioned and, having been blessed on a parish pilgrimage to Rome by Pope John Paul II, was the statue crowned. In more recent years the chapel walls have been decorated with paintings in a medieval style.
The result is a beautiful and prayerful shrine, a regular place of pilgrimage, seemingly straight out of the middle ages yet on a modern suburban side street - quite entrancing.
The history section from the parish website can be read at History - Church of Our Lady and St Anne
Our Lady of Caversham Pray for us
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