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Our Lady's Mirror
Autumn 1954
First floor of prison on site
of leper hospital, to be
adapted as extra pilgrim
accommodation
The pilgrimage season is over and we have had a very hectic time indeed. With growing years
and increasing pilgrimages, both the Administrator and Bursar are feeling the strain to be too much,
without extra permanent help – and that help needs to be centred on and from the College.
We are hoping to be ready to receive two or three retired priests in the College early next year, when the
north wing should be completed. We think the care of some who have no home and no-one to look after
them may be intended as part of the College vocation. Each Father will have his own bed-sitting room
which he can, if he likes, furnish. They will be able to get an altar daily and assist, should they wish, at
the Chapter Mass and share in the spiritual life of the College and Shrine as far as they are able. For
some years we have been grieved to hear of the lack of adequate spiritual opportunities for priests
unable to bear the weight of parochial charges having to live in surroundings in which they can neither
say Mass nor even visit the Holy Sacrament in the chapels of their homes. We trust to be able, by this
small beginning, to help remedy these conditions – and lead the way for homes for Catholic priests to be
established – where their declining years can be passed in the spiritual surroundings to which they have
been accustomed during their ministry.
Already bookings are being made for 1955 and we would advise intending pilgrims to settle their dates.
The Administrator and Bursar would willingly visit centres to give talks about the Shrine and its works
and to show the film strips. Copies of the strip can still be bought by those who prefer to show it
themselves.
The Assumption, the Patronal feast of the parish, was as usual a very happy time at Walsingham. We
rather feared that the great influx of Roman Catholic pilgrims who came for the Crowning of Our Lady’s
image in the grounds of the Abbey would swamp our small village and spoil the feast, but we were hardly
affected at all except for the crowds passing up and down the streets and the faint echo of singing in the
distance.
This village is being spoilt by the continual screeching of planes. Unfortunately, there are two big
aerodromes close to Walsingham and the noise is constantly so great that it is not only impossible to hear
oneself speak but even to hear the choir during services. The good old peaceful days seem to have gone;
for either the noises are in the air, or over the air by wireless, or on the road by cars. What a world!
Again one has to appeal to our readers for copy for the “Mirror”. This production cannot fail to be dull and
very unvaried when it falls to one person to edit, and more often than not to write, the copy quarter by
quarter for many years. Please submit articles and pictures.
articles: G K Chesterton, 'The Donkey' [poem]; 'The Grotto of Our Lady of the Fall of Snow, Rabat';
Hugh Ross-Williamson, 'The Canon of the Mass' [continued]; Leonard J Hill, 'Our Lady of Caversham and
St Anne'; Edward J G Forse, 'Wholesome Words for the Worried' [ a reprint from Ave, Lady Day, 1940]; 'A
Cornish Holy Well'; B M S M, 'Our Lady of Aberdeen, and some favours shown by Our Lady'; B H, 'Our
Lady of Egmanton'; 'OLW in Ceylon'
photographs: first floor of prison on site of leper hospital, to be adapted as extra pilgrim
accommodation [above]; Holy Well of S Ann, Whitstone, and the approach to it; two pictures of OLW in S
Paul's Church, Ceylon;