Slipper Chapel: Catholic National Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Modern
- Civilizations
- British, English
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Chapel
On this page9 sections
History
Slipper Chapel is a fourteenth-century early Gothic building in Houghton St Giles, Norfolk, United Kingdom, built around 1340 as the final chapel on the pilgrimage route to the Priory of Our Lady of Walsingham. Originally dedicated to Saint Catherine of Alexandria, an early Christian martyr traditionally associated with Alexandria, it stood about one mile from Walsingham. Medieval Walsingham was regarded as England’s second most important pilgrimage centre after Canterbury, drawing visitors from England and beyond.
Medieval Pilgrimage and the Chapel’s Name
The chapel marked the last stage of the journey to the priory and its Marian shrine. Tradition holds that pilgrims removed their shoes there before walking the final “Holy Mile” barefoot as an act of penitence. Another explanation links the name with the Old English word slype, meaning “between,” because the building stood between ordinary life and the principal shrine.
Suppression and Secular Use
Religious use ended in 1538 during the English Reformation, the sixteenth-century break under Henry VIII that brought the English Church under royal control, separated it from papal authority, and suppressed many Catholic institutions and shrines. The former chapel was later used as a poorhouse, forge, cowshed, and barn.
Catholic Restoration
Charlotte Pearson Boyd, a local Anglican convert to Catholicism, identified the building in 1863. She bought it from the farm owner in 1896, restored it, and gave it to Downside Abbey, a Benedictine Catholic abbey in England, for Catholic worship. On 6 February 1897, Pope Leo XIII authorized the restoration of Catholic worship and public veneration of the Marian image associated with Walsingham. Thomas Garner directed further restoration in 1904.
The Marian image was moved from the Church of Our Lady of the Annunciation in King’s Lynn to the Slipper Chapel in 1934. On 15 August that year, Laurence Youens, Bishop of Northampton, celebrated the first public Mass in the chapel for four centuries. Two days later, Cardinal Francis Bourne led a national pilgrimage attended by the Catholic bishops of England and Wales and more than 10,000 people. The chapel thereafter became the Catholic National Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, a title for the Virgin Mary connected with the Marian devotion centred on Walsingham.
Twentieth-Century Shrine
On 15 August 1954, Pope Pius XII granted the image a canonical coronation, a papally authorized crowning expressing established religious veneration. His papal nuncio, Monsignor Gerald O’Hara, performed the ceremony with a crown funded by gold and jewels donated by Catholic women throughout the country. Approximately 15,000 pilgrims attended, and many walked barefoot along the Holy Mile. Devotees regarded two white doves that landed on the image’s lap as miraculous.
During the twentieth century, Catholic chaplains and United States Air Force personnel stationed at nearby RAF Sculthorpe used the chapel for worship. The surrounding shrine complex expanded with further chapels and service buildings. In the early 1980s, a larger Chapel of Our Lady of Reconciliation was constructed, while offices and other facilities were added for pilgrims. On 29 May 1982, a separate statue of the Virgin Mary from the chapel was taken to Wembley Stadium for blessing during Pope John Paul II’s visit to Britain.
Shared Religious Heritage
The chapel and shrine continue to serve Catholic and ecumenical pilgrimage. An annual procession for the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady, held around 8 September, begins outside the chapel. In 1980, 15,000 Anglican pilgrims led by the Archbishop of Canterbury visited to light candles and pray for Christian unity, while 10,000 Catholics accompanied Cardinal Hume and other bishops to the Anglican shrine at Walsingham. In 2015, Pope Francis elevated the shrine to Minor Basilica status through a decree of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. The chapel has been a Grade I listed building since 6 March 1959. In 2018, the Catholic shrine’s rector and the Anglican shrine’s priest administrator signed an ecumenical covenant pledging cooperation in caring for Walsingham’s shared religious heritage and promoting prayer for Christian unity.
Remains
The Slipper Chapel is a fourteenth-century Gothic-Romanesque, or early Gothic, structure. A corridor connects it with the Chapel of the Holy Spirit and reaches a door in the chapel’s north-west corner, the customary entrance. The building remains part of a wider shrine complex that includes additional chapels, service buildings, offices, a shop, and a tea room.
Chapel Interior
Inside the chapel is a venerated wooden image of Our Lady of Walsingham. Carved in Oberammergau, Germany, in the late nineteenth century, it was inspired by an image in Santa Maria in Cosmedin and blessed in Rome by Pope Leo XIII. The present reredos, an ornamental screen or altarpiece behind the altar, was made by James and Lilian Dagless. Above it, a stained-glass window by Geoffrey Webb depicts the Assumption. The west window, made by Alfred Fisher, shows the Annunciation and was installed in 1997 to mark the centenary of the first post-Reformation pilgrimage to Walsingham.
A separate stone statue of the Virgin Mary was sculpted by Marcel Barbeau. It was taken to Wembley on 29 May 1982 for blessing during Pope John Paul II’s visit to England.
Adjoining Buildings and Shrine Grounds
A presbytery, a residence for clergy serving a church, adjoins the chapel and was built by Thomas Garner in 1904. The surrounding grounds include the Chapel of Our Lady of Reconciliation, which can open toward the pilgrimage area for large ceremonies, together with buildings used for offices and other shrine facilities.
