Patrick Comerford
I was discussing the Shrine Church in the Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in a posting yesterday (16 March 2026), and how much the church and its side chapels owe to the work of the artist Enid Mary Chadwick (1902-1987). I spent much of last week in Walsingham, where I was an invited speaker at the Ecumenical Pilgrimage.
Enid Chadwick was known for her religious art and children’s religious material and her best-known book is probably My Book of the Church’s Year (1948), which she wrote and illustrated, providing a month-by-month guide to the principal feasts, seasons, saints and celebrations in the Church calendar.
She was an Anglo-Catholic and she first came to the restored Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham as a pilgrim. She stayed and devoted 53 years – until the day before she died – to the work of decorating the Shrine Church. She was, it has been said, ‘for all practical purposes, the official artist of the restored Anglican shrine throughout much of the 20th century’.
Enid Mary Chadwick was born on 26 October 1902, the daughter of an Anglican priest. She attended a convent school in Oxford run by the Society of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, whose house is now Saint Antony’s College. She then trained at the Brighton School of Art, before coming to Walsingham in 1934.
Father Charles Smith, a later Administrator of the Shrine (1968-1972), has suggested that when she first came to Walsingham she ‘could not have foreseen the next 50 years, the way in which she would become completely identified with this Shrine Church, but she had just those abilities Father Hope Patten could use’.
Enid Chadwick’s painting and personal style made the Shrine Church what it is today. Her mark is everywhere inside the Church. Her work in and around the shrine included the painting of roof bosses, heraldic hatchments, the guardians’ stalls, statues, Stations of the Cross, an intercessions box, and murals in the shrine’s 15 chapels and elsewhere.
The side chapels of the Shrine Church have a continuous theme of the 15 mysteries of the Rosary and of the saints of the church. Three chapels side-by-side on the liturgical north side of the church are dedicated to three sorrowful mysteries, ‘the Scourging at the Pillar’, ‘the Crowning with Thorns’ and ‘the Carrying of the Cross.’
The middle of these three chapels is also dedicated to Saint Hugh of Lincoln and Saint Patrick of Ireland. Enid Chadwick painted the walls of this chapel in 1942.
The walls on the left-hand (west) side of the chapel illustrate the life of Saint Hugh, while those on the right-hand (east) side of the chapel depict scenes from the life of Saint Patrick.
The scenes from the life of Saint Patrick depicted in the chapel include his visit to Pope Leo (Leo I or Saint Leo the Great) in Rome and his consecration as bishop by Germanus of Auxerre ca 432; Saint Patrick landing in Ireland; brigands interrupting a baptism; the saint’s crozier piercing the foot of Aengus; two princesses seeking instruction; Saint Patrick’s Purgatory (Lough Derg); and Saint Patrick revealing the mystery of the Trinity.
The window in the chapel was presented in thanksgiving for the life and work of Father Derrick Albert Lingwood (1910-1972), founding lay guardian of the shrine (1931); priest guardian (from 1934); Bursar and Registrar (1931-1956).
Another chapel at the east end of the Shrine Church, behind the High Altar is dedicated to Saint Columba and the Celtic Saints.
Enid’s studio in the Shrine Gardens stood on the higher ground near the present Orangery, where I spoke about pilgrimage last Thursday (12 March 2062). Her earlier studio had been the shrine office, and before that in the first sacristy.
The wide variety of her work included report covers, cards, notices, letterheads, orders of service and books for the shrine and for wider circulation. Her best-known book is probably My Book of the Church’s Year (1948), in which she provides a month-by-month guide to the principal feasts, seasons and celebrations of the Church year. Her other illustrated books included The Seven Sacraments and Things We See in Church.
Although Enid Chadwick was closely identified with the shrine, her work and influence extended far and wide. In 1950, she designed the brick façade and some of the furnishings for a temporary church built by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Northampton, on the site of the Church of the Annunciation in Walsingham.
She also designed the central panel of the war memorial that stood in Saint Mary and All Saints, the Church of England parish church in Little Walsingham until it was destroyed in a fire in 1961.
The quantity and quality of her work is greater than was appreciated in her lifetime. She was part of a tradition of Anglo-Catholic decoration that brings simplicity together with elaboration, developed by people such as Sir Ninian Comper, William Butterfield, Alexander Gibbs and Martin Travers.
Much of her work can still be seen in the shrine today. Isabel Syed, a former honorary archivist at the shrine, has said that ‘everywhere you look in the shrine, you see something Enid has done.’
Enid Chadwick died on 24 October 1987. The Revd Charles Smith, a later Administrator of the Shrine, gave the address at her funeral mass in the Shrine Church on 28 October 1987. She was buried in the churchyard at Saint Mary and All Saints, the parish church in Little Walsingham. The words on her gravestone read: ‘Lord, I have loved the habitation of thy house.’
Father Smith described her style as ‘direct, and full of devotion … The mysteries of the faith, the lives and legends of the saints, are set before us in a way all can understand. The simple, as in the Middle Ages she loved, learn directly from her paintings, and many who would be regarded as sophisticated in these matters, find that their unpretentious charm speaks to them as the children of God.’
Behind all her work and supporting it was a life of deep and dedicated prayer, remaining quietly in the presence of God. Her sense of humour is often seen in her paintings. Her power as a caricaturist is seen in the collections of her cartoons treasured by her friends.
The art historian the Revd Dr Ayla Lepine places Chadwick with artists such as Winifred Knights, Elisabeth Frink and Tracey Emin, who have ‘encouraged the Church to include women and express sacramental theology in ways that continue to inspire and challenge’.
Enid Chadwick is part of a generation of innovative female artists whose work is increasingly being re-evaluated. Alongside artists such as Vanessa Bell, Hilda Carline, Evelyn Dunbar, Gwynneth Holt, Gwen John, Laura Knight, Winifred Knights, Dod Procter, Rosemary Rutherford and Betty Swanwick, she was one of the women who challenged the conventions of their day to become respected artists, engaged with religious art or church commissions.
