Patrick Comerford
During my recent stay in Walsingham earlier this month, when I was a guest speaker at the Ecumenical Pilgrimage, I visited about a dozen or so churches and chapels in the area, including the Catholic Church of the Annunciation, set back from the Friday Market, almost beside the Black Lion Hotel, a grade II listed hotel, pub and restaurant that partly dates back to the 15th century.
Today is the Feast of the Annunciation, and earlier this month I was in the Church of the Annunciation for Catholic Sung Mass celebrated by Bishop Peter Collins of East Anglia, with Monsignor Keith Newton the preacher. There were addresses too by Bishop Peter Collins, who spoke about Anglican Roman Catholic dialogue, and the Revd Norman Wallwork, who spoke about the prayers of Eric Milner-White.
Walsingham was one of the most famous pilgrim shrines in Europe until the Reformation, and the tradition of pilgrimage there was not revived until the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
After Catholic Emancipation in 1829 and the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England in 1851, Walsingham found itself in the parish of King’s Lynn, then in the Diocese of Northampton.
The Roman Catholic presence in the immediate was not established until the 1890s, when Charlotte Pearson Boyd (1837-1906) bought the Slipper Chapel at Houghton St Giles, a mile outside Walsingham, hoping to see it being used for pilgrims and liturgies.
However, there was virtually no Catholic presence in Walsingham at the time, and the King’s Lynn parish records at the time recorded only one Catholic resident, and she was a resident of the workhouse. This explains why the Catholic shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham remained in the church in King’s Lynn and was not transferred to Walsingham for decades.
When Father Alfred Hope Patten (1885-1958) became Vicar of Little Walsingham in 1921, he was singularly responsible for making Walsingham the centre of pilgrimage it is today and established the Anglican shrine in the 1930s.
The popularity of the shrine and pilgrimages he initiated seem to have provided the impetus for the Diocese of Northampton to rapidly move the Catholic shrine in King’s Lynn to the Slipper Chapel. As a consequence, Little Walsingham became a Catholic parish in its own right, and a church needed to be built in the village itself.
A community of Capuchin friars settled at Walsingham in 1937 and acquired two cottages in Friday Market that were demolished to provide the site for a new church. But when the friars left in 1948 the church was still built.
A temporary church was built by the Diocese of Northampton in the Friday Market in Little Walsingham in 1950. The brick façade and some of the furnishings may have been designed by Enid Chadwick, an artist based in Walsingham whose work is found throughout the Anglican Shrine Church.
The plain design, with a central porch and flanking curved walls, may have been inspired by the Church of Our Lady at Wells-next-the-Sea. That small church was built as a temporary church, and it was intended to be replaced as soon as possible, but it remained in use for more than 50 years.
The priests of the Society of Mary (Marists) took over the care of the national shrine and also the parish of Walsingham in 1968. Meanwhile, the Diocese of East Anglia was formed in 1976, covering the counties of Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk and Walsingham became part of the new diocese.
Throughout that time, there were active discussions about building a more permanent parish church. However, the first plans were not drawn up until 1996, under the guidance of Bishop Peter Smith (1943-2020), Bishop of East Anglia and later Archbishop of Cardiff (2001-2010) and Archbishop of Southwark (2010-2019).
The new Church of the Annunciation was designed by the Norfolk architect Anthony Rossi (1932-2008), and it is said Bishop Smith insisted that there would be no half-measures, and that only the best would be good enough when it came to materials and design.
Work began in 2005 and the church was consecrated by Bishop Michael Evans in 2006. The site is deep and narrow, with a considerable rise in ground level from front to back, and the new building was set into the slope with a parish room in the roof space.
The church is the first important East Anglian church of the 21st century. It was designed as Britain’s first carbon-neutral church. he heating and electrical installations are designed to use renewable sources and a solar energy unit displays how much electricity is being generated by the panels on the roof, how much is being used, and how much stored.
The open forecourt in front of the church ties the building into a relationship with the Friday Market and the Pilgrim Bureau beside it. The cross is the one survival from the earlier church.
The plan includes a round tower with a nave extending to the west and a sanctuary on the north side of the nave. Behind the tower, the nave is set into the sloping ground and is largely windowless except for the timber-faced end gable, which has three windows with triangular heads.
The south-facing slope of the wide pitched roof has solar panels. The walls of the north side are a mixture of red brick and flint. In the centre of this side is a full-height projection containing the sanctuary, which has canted side walls with a central north window, a four-light window in the east and a deep sloping roof. The walls are a mixture of flint, red brick and timber boarding and the roofs are covered with red pantiles.
Wooden doors lead into a narthex. The church is not orientated on the tradition east-west axis, and the sanctuary faces north. The internal layout reflects modern liturgical practice. The interior is wide, open and fan-shaped, focused on the narrow window behind the altar, as if echoing a Norman lancet. The other focus is the font, with the holy oils displayed behind it in containers of coloured glass. Virtually everything is new and all of a piece, and the overall sense is of simplicity and beauty.
The church has a light-coloured floor covering, plain plastered walls and a panelled ceiling with the steel trusses of the roof exposed. The timber bench seating is arranged in a fan shape facing the raised semi-circular platform of the sanctuary. The sanctuary furnishings and font were designed by the architect Anthony Rossi and made by the Norwich stonemason Bruce Riley, using three types of Ancaster stone, which is also used for steps and areas of paving within the church.
The north window behind the altar is by Paul San Casciani, who began his training in 1950 at James Powell Stained Glass Studio (Whitefriars Glass). Set against it is a bronze statue of the dead Christ by the sculptor Mark Coreth. The west and east windows have simple patterns of leads of varying widths with accents of colour and were designed by the architect. Two statues and the Stations of the Cross were brought from the earlier church.
The exposed girders of the roof make it feel lower than it needs to be, and it could have benefitted from a central lantern light. Most of the furnishings were designed by the architect, but some items were brought from the earlier, 1950 church.
The low flint-faced round tower evokes the form of many mediaeval Norfolk churches. It has a conical roof incorporating a gable pierced with an oculus, with inset brick in a radiating pattern. Around the bottom of the tower is an open loggia or porch, with the letters AMDG (‘To the greater glory of God’) and the date of consecration MMVI (2006) picked out in brick. A sculpture of the Annunciation attached to the tower in 2017 was blessed by Bishop Alan Hopes in 2018.
The gable houses a bell cast by Taylor, Eayre & Smith of Loughborough and donated by the Parish of Sudbury.
The priests of the parish are the Revd Keith Tulloch SM, Parish Priest, the Rev Thomas Goonan SM, and the Rev Desmond Hanrahan SM. Masses are at 10:30 am (Sundays), 9:30 am (Monday to Saturday and Holy Days. The other places of worship in the parish include Saint Peter’s Church, Blakeney, Saint Henry Walpole, Burnham Market, and Our Lady Star of the Sea, Wells-next-the-Sea.
