Walsingham - a Place of Pilgrimage

Books open up avenues to places previously unknown and sometime suggest journeys never before planned.  I was conscious of this after reading ‘Walsingham – A Place of Pilgrimage for All People’ written by Claude Fisher which I bought in a second hand book shop in Norwich while on a recent visit to the Norfolk Broads.  The book aroused my interest because of a lengthy handwritten dedication by its author to a named policeman in which Mr. Fisher expressed appreciation ‘of the way you tackled the case in which I was “welshed”’.  The signature and dedication was clearly in the handwriting of an elderly man and was dated 9^th April, 1985.  I was later to find out that Claude Fisher, who at one time was the only Catholic living in the village of Walsingham, was the father figure for the Catholic pilgrim shrine of his village where he died on 14^th May, 1985.

Walsingham, I learned, was the place where Our Lady was claimed to have appeared in 1061 and which thereafter was venerated as one of the holiest places in England.  The Walsingham Pilgrimage was established at the time of the Crusades when it was impossible for pilgrims to visit the Holy Land and so for English Catholics Walsingham became for centuries prior to the Reformation one of the four major shrines of Christendom ranking beside Jerusalem, Rome and Compostello.

As a result of reading Fisher’s book I undertook the journey from Norwich to Walsingham, not as a pilgrim, for I am a disbeliever when it comes to apparitions, but as an interested student of history.  The routes that pilgrims took to Walsingham, which is a village located at the northern end of Norfolk, were once marked by stone crosses and occasionally by chapels.  Just one mile outside of Walsingham is the last of those pilgrim chapels called ‘the Slipper Chapel’ which survived the destruction which came with the Reformation of the 1540s. 

Walsingham owed its prominence as a pilgrimage centre to King Henry III who in April 1226 made the first of his many visits to the Lady Shrine which was then under the protection of an Augustinian Priory.  It’s importance in the Catholic world was further emphasised with the establishment of a Franciscan Friary in the village in 1347.  In the meantime successive English monarchs made the pilgrimage to Walsingham, ending with King Henry VIII whom tradition relates walked barefoot to the Marian Shrine in thanksgiving for the birth of his son Prince Henry.   

Following the Reformation the priory and the friary were destroyed and Walsingham as a place of pilgrimage was no more.  In October 1781 John Wesley made his only visit to Walsingham and preached there, noting in his diary ‘had there been a grain of spirit in Henry VIII the friary, the cloister and chapel need not have run to ruin’.

It was the Oxford Movement lead by Newman, Keble, Pusey and others at Balliol College, Oxford in 1833 which lead to the development of Anglo Catholicism in the Church of England.  Almost 90 years later a devotee of the High Church, Fr. Alfred Patten, was appointed vicar of the Anglican Parish Church in Walsingham and he set about re-establishing Walsingham as a place of pilgrimage.  Fr. Patten had a Marian Shrine built to duplicate the medieval ‘Holy House’ of pre-reformation days and he soon established Walsingham as a place of pilgrimage for Anglicans.

Around the same time the Slipper Chapel which some decades previously had been purchased and restored for Catholic devotion was re-dedicated as ‘the National Shrine of our Lady for Roman Catholics in England’.  So it is today that the village of Walsingham is a place of Marian pilgrimage for both Anglican and Roman Catholics.  It is also a centre of reconciliation for both faiths which was a major theme of Claude Fisher’s book which he subtitled ‘A Place of Pilgrimage for All People’. 

The Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster usually leads the annual national pilgrimage for Roman Catholics, while the Archbishop of Canterbury leads the Anglican pilgrimage.  Both the Catholic and Anglican hierarchy have come together at times to share ecumenical services in the Church of Reconciliation which was constructed some years ago next to the medieval Slipper Chapel.  The Russian Orthodox Church has also had a presence in Walsingham since 1967 and now occupies as their church the former Victorian Methodist Chapel. 

The Anglican Marian Shrine at Walsingham is a measure of the strength of Anglo Catholicism within the Anglican Church where devotion to Mary and recourse to the confessional continue to present challenges.  Today Walsingham is a fine example of a planned medieval village with some excellent timber framed and jettied buildings where modern pilgrims, Anglican, Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox can find comfort and perhaps look to the possible future unification of the various churches.  For myself, even as a non believer in the Marian Shrine phenomenon, I took the opportunity to reflect on the recent miracle that resulted in the saving of the life of a young colleague of mine. 

Jim Connor

One of the many enduring traditions of our town, is the yearly visit home by our emigrants. Throughout the summer months they are to be seen renewing old acquaintances and keeping in touch with what are for them, the sights and sounds of their youth.

One man who has made the annual pilgrimage since 1952 is Jim Connor, formerly of Castlemitchell, whom I had the enormous pleasure of meeting during the week. For Jim, Athy and especially Castlemitchell is still home, despite having spent 43 years in London, where he now resides with his wife, the former Mary Lawler of Athy.

His father was a member of the Dublin Metropolitan Police who joined the Irish Guards Regiment in 1905. Wounded in World War I, he was invalided out of the army in 1917 and returned to Castlemitchell. There he reared his family which included Jack and Eileen, both of whom died in recent years, Jim and his sisters, Mary Dempsey, still in Castlemitchell, and Kathleen Fay who now lives in America.

Jim attended Churchtown National School, and remembers many a trip down “Kangs” Lane, where Jack “Kang” Kearney and his wife Kate lived in a small mud cabin. Both cabin and lane have now disappeared, but the outline of the lane which ran from the site of the new National School exiting out beyond the Bleeding Horse, is still visible in parts. Jack joined the revived Churchtown Pipe Band after he started piping lessons with Jerry Byrne of Castlemitchell in 1932. Others who joined at that time included Joe Fennelly, Willie Pender and George Byrne, and many a night they spent sitting in the shadow of the paraffin oil lamp in Byrne’s house, learning the pipe scales, before progressing to their first tune, “The Minstrel Boy”. The band room was a shed at the back of Byrnes house, which doubled as a dance hall on Saturday nights. Known as the “Besonk”, it was there that the locals danced to “Byrnes Dance Band”, with John Byrne on piano accordion, Jerry on the banjo and his brother Christy on violin. The only non-Byrne family member of the quartet was the drummer Mick Sourke. Irish set dances were the rage and Marcella Donnelly, a dance teacher from the Newbridge/Kildare area, travelled over to Castlemitchell to teach the steps.

When the summer of 1934 arrived the pipers were sufficiently skilled to take to the road, and joined by Willie and Lar Hutchinson, former members of Kilberry Pipe Band, and Ned Hyland and John Luttrell, formerly of the New Inn Pipe Band, the Churchtown Pipe Band was re-activated. The band’s future was assured when it got a booking from the National Radio Station 2RN. The musicians travelled to Dublin in hackney cars, and performed so impressively that further radio bookings resulted. Churchtown Pipe Band was to broadcast on Radio 2RN, on average three times a year, between 1935 and 1941.

Jim got his secondary schooling in the Christian Brothers School Athy, where he remembers Master Walsh and Master Spillane, two lay teachers who taught with the legendary Liam Ryan. Brother Dolan was the Principal, and also on the teaching staff was Brother O’Farrell, who did so much to revive the skill of hurling in the Athy area.

In 1937 Jim started work in McHugh’s Pharmacy, Duke Street where he was employed for three or four years developing photographs. This job ended during the early part of the Second World War due to the shortage of photographic material. A spell on the building sites followed, with Jim taking up employment with Murray and McCartan, a county Meath firm which was responsible for building the County Council houses at Castlemitchell.

In 1942 he got a job in the local Asbestos factory where the redoubtable Mr. Cornish was works manager. Jim acknowledges with a wry smile that Cornish, a Welsh man, was a tough, no- nonsense man whose influence on the early development of the Asbestos factory was vital for its future success.

In 1948 Jim became an insurance agent with the Irish Assurance Company, covering the Ballylinan, Barrowhouse, Luggacurran and Castlemitchell areas. His local colleagues in the Assurance Company were Tom Moore, who had responsibility for the Rheban area, and Mick Doyle, who covered the area south of Athy. It was hard, demanding work at a time when jobs were scarce. Money was needed to put food on the table and little could be put aside for insurance policies. In 1952 Jim decided to go to England. By then, Churchtown Pipe Band had long ceased to operate, when its members joined the L.S.F. Band in Athy, which was formed by Garda Sergeant Hayes.

When Jim took the mail boat at Dun Laoghaire he was 32 years of age and embarking on a new phase of his life centred in London, where there were few opportunities to play the bagpipes. He enlisted in Brixton School of Building and later the Wandsworth School of Building before taking up employment with Tenson’s, for whom he worked for 15 years. A six-year stint with McAlpine’s followed, before he ended his working career with Higgs & Hill. Rising through the ranks from building worker to foreman he retired nine years ago as an area supervisor.

Jim has never forgotten his home place, and spends his annual summer holidays in Athy and Castlemitchell. There are so many more emigrants like Jim and Mary Connor who maintain strong links with Athy but there are also many living abroad who do not feel able, for whatever reason, to return to their “old haunts”.