This year, for the first time, Bishop Alan Williams sm celebrated Mass at Clacton at 11am on the Feast of Our Lady of Light, after welcoming parishioners who had made a 48-mile pilgrimage from Brentwood to the church over the previous week. The pilgrims were joined by hundreds of others from the parish for the final stretch, processing to Our Lady of Light from a Martello Tower on the seafront.
During this Jubilee Year, Our Lady of Light & St Osyth, Clacton-on-Sea, together with Brentwood Cathedral and St Antony of Padua, Forest Gate, is one of the three designated churches in the Diocese of Brentwood where the Jubilee Indulgence may be obtained. Not surprisingly, therefore, the patronal feast day was celebrated in a significant manner by the parish, not only with the pilgrimage and procession but with every parishioner laying a flower before the shrine.
Although for the rest of the diocese the day was the celebration of the Dedication of Brentwood Cathedral, at Clacton the 31 May was the Feast of Our Lady of Light, the feast itself falling on the Saturday after the Ascension and before the Sunday before Pentecost. Diocesan archivist Fr Stewart Foster says: “The church at Clacton is the National Shrine of Our Lady of Light and one of only two churches in the country to bear that title. The other is at Sclerder, near Looe, Cornwall.”
Fr Stewart explains the history of the church: “In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the devotion to Our Lady of Light, Spouse of the Holy Spirit, was popularised in Brittany by St Louis-Marie Grignon de Montfort, a native of the region. There was also a devotion under the same title in Spain and Mexico.
“Early in the nineteenth century Sir Harry Trelawny, a widowed Anglican clergyman from Trelawne, Cornwall (now Sclerder, which means ‘Light’ in Breton), became a Catholic priest and lived in Brittany with his daughters. The family became great devotees of the shrine of Our Lady of Light near St Pol-de-Leon.
“On their father’s death in 1842 the daughters returned to Trelawne (Sclerder) and a Catholic church was in due course opened bearing the title ‘Our Lady of Light’. Over the years several religious congregations were established at Sclerder, but from 1878 to 1893 two ladies, Mrs Pauline de Bary and Mrs Agnes St John, were in residence at Sclerder and did much to promote devotion to Our Lady of Light. Dr William Vaughan, the Bishop of Plymouth – into whose diocese Sclerder fell – took a somewhat nuanced position to the devotion, but the bishop’s nephew, Herbert Vaughan, then Bishop of Salford, was a keen supporter of Our Lady of Light.
“Eventually, in December 1893 Mrs de Bary and Mrs St John left Cornwall, taking with them a beautiful statue of Our Lady of Light that Mrs de Bary had commissioned from Mayer & Co. of Munich. The ladies came to Clacton-on-Sea at the suggestion of Cardinal Herbert Vaughan, now Archbishop of Westminster, in whose diocese Clacton was situated. There was then no permanent Catholic mission at Clacton and in inviting the ladies to take up residence in a house they re-named ‘Montfort’ (the present-day presbytery at Clacton), a Catholic Mass centre was established and in 1895 the Oblates of St Charles were entrusted with the Clacton mission. Cardinal Vaughan had himself been one of the early members of the Oblates of St Charles when they were founded at Bayswater, London, by Monsignor (later Cardinal) Henry Edward Manning in 1857.
“The Oblates of St Charles built the present fine church at Clacton in 1903 and served the parish until 1967. Since then Clacton has been served by priests of the Diocese of Brentwood, the present Parish Priest being Father Patrick Daly. Throughout its existence, the church at Clacton has always been the National Shrine of Our Lady of Light, Spouse of the Holy Spirit, housing as it does an altar on which stands the statue brought by the two ladies from Cornwall.”
Referring to the procession from the nearby Martello Tower on the seafront to the church, he said: “The significance of this is that in 1845, as he was leaving Colchester (where he had founded the mission in Priory Street in 1837), Father Charles Patrick King celebrated what is thought to be the first post-Reformation Mass in the district. He walked to Clacton from Colchester (some 17 miles). In the parish archives at Colchester there is mention of Catholic coastguards and fishermen at Clacton, and the Martello Tower was used as a coastguard lookout (a function it retained until recently). Father King went on to establish the Catholic mission at Chelmsford (Our Lady Immaculate) later in the same year.”
Walking in faith
After Our Lady of Light was designated a Jubilee Year place of pilgrimage for the Diocese by Bishop Alan, parish priest Fr Patrick Daly decided it would be a good thing to do the first pilgrimage himself. He was joined by Peter O’Neill, grand knight of the Clacton branch of the Knights of St Columba, treasurer Paul Twyford, and retired teacher Barbara de la Nougered.
Once Bishop Alan had confirmed that he would be coming to celebrate Mass at Our Lady of Light on its feast day itself, the timing worked really well.
After a blessing from Bishop Alan, the four pilgrims set off from Brentwood and walked the distance to their own parish over a period of four days, supported by other parishioners who would pick them up at the end of each day and ferry them to a hotel in Maldon. “We had a great support team,” says Paul.
Fr Patrick celebrated Mass every morning before they set out which was a lovely start to the day, he adds. “The pilgrimage was a wonderful bonding session for the group. You learn a lot about people when you spend four days hiking with them – and we had a superb support group.”
He said the pilgrimage had brought home to him what a wonderful county we live in. “We walked along the old A12 with its history through Margaretting, and then from Chelmsford to Maldon along the Chelmer Canal. You don’t see any houses for 10 or 20 miles, it is so isolated and rural.”
Then it was on along the sea wall to Heybridge and Tollesbury – where they met a herd of goats – and on to Mersea Island where a ferry would take them to West Mersea and Point Clear. “That was what I enjoyed most, the tranquillity especially along the canal, the sea wall and West Mersea. You get to see things that you don’t notice when you are driving. When we arrived on the beach in East Mersea there was a scout troop sailing dinghies and we saw a seal floating in the water watching a boy who had capsized. I have lived in Clacton for 40 years and never seen a seal in the river mouth or estuary before. East Mersea and Point Clear are the most remote parts and you could almost be in a different world.”
At Point Clear they were joined by another five people for the final walk into Clacton. “We suspended the pilgrimage a mile from the church on the Thursday afternoon. On the Saturday around 200 people joined us for a procession to the church ahead of the feast day mass. We were welcomed at Our Lady of Light by Bishop Alan and every parishioner brought a flower, creating a carpet of flowers at the shrine.”
The success of the whole undertaking may see that feast day procession becoming an annual event for the parish, he says.