Virgin Mary Shrine - Ladye Park Vision of Unity

A Site Devoted to the Mother of God is Fulfilling a Desire for Unity

Feb 9, 2009

An ancient shrine to the Virgin Mary in Cornwall, England, was revitalized following a mystical experience. It is attracting pilgrims from various Christian communities.

The Ladye Park shrine to the Virgin Mary in Cornwall, England, is believed by the pilgrims who go there to be the inspiration of the Virgin Mary herself.

The shrine, beside a farmhouse in the town of Liskeard, is on the site of a chapel dating to the medieval period. It lay unused and unknown for 500 years until Dr. Margaret Pollard searched it out, urged to do so, she wrote, by what she believed was a vision of the Mother of God.

Virgin Mary Devotion

Dr. Pollard had a devotion to the Virgin Mary and used to pray in Russian, a language in which she was fluent.

In 1955, at her home in Truro, Cornwall, she saw, in her words, "a woman sitting in an armchair. She was dressed in a variety of shades of blue, full flowing, draperies and she wore a tiara-shaped crown with projecting rays that appeared to be jewelled with dull opaque stones like pearls and opals."

According to Claire Riche, author of The Lost Shrine of Liskeard, Dr. Pollard wrote that the woman asked her in Russian to take her “back to Liskeard.”

Dr. Pollard needed confirmation this was a vision of Virgin Mary and not just her imagination. She has written that she asked the Virgin to remain seated while she sketched her. She intended, she told the woman in the vision, to paint a picture and submit to the 1956 Summer Exhibition of the Paris Salon. If it was accepted and hung, she would do whatever the Virgin Mary asked. If not, she would forget the incident.

She painted the picture, La Vierge a la Porcelaine, the next day and sent it off to Paris, where it was selected and hung in the Summer Exhibition. It is shown below.

The vision has not been authenticated by the Roman Catholic Church. But Dr. Pollard took the exhibition of the picture as confirmation that the Mother of God had appeared to her and was asking her to do something -- she wasn't sure what -- at Liskeard.

Pilgrimages

Her search, described in he article Shrine to the Virgin Mary: Ladye Park, led her to discover an ancient chapel built into the wall of a farmhouse outside the built-up area of Liskeard. In 1979, she organized a pilgrimage during which the site was dedicated to "Unity" -- unity among religions and among people.

After years of work she was unable to complete before her death in 1996, it became the site of annual pilgrimages that now attract Roman Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox and other Christians in a common prayer. (Since the shrine is in private property, it is not possible to visit apart from the pilgrimages.)

Shrine for Peace and Safety

Dr. Pollard learned Ladye Park was the site of a medieval shrine that offered peace and safety for pilgrims from England's southwest.

A major English shrine was, as now, Walsingham, in Norfolk, in those days a long journey from Cornwall, one beset by outlaws.

Some pilgrims sailed from Cornish ports to Santiago de Compostela, in northwestern Spain, where the bones of Saint James the Greater are believed to be buried (and attract modern-day pilgrims to the Way of Saint James).

The medieval pilgrims began to visit Ladye Park instead, which had been a site of a pagan goddess and had been Christianized into a place of prayer to Mary the Mother of God. They came to pray in safety and peace.

Today, wrote one modern pilgrim, Philip Knight, in the Independent Catholic News, "Ladye Park is . . . a peaceful and isolated vale with numerous water features to remind the beholder of the 'water of life'."

Vision of Unity

Whether or not Dr. Pollard's claimed "vision" will be authenticated, her vision for unity in Ladye Park is being realized. Ladye Park, like Walsingham, is a place of ecumenical harmony, where faith differences are forgotten as people feel drawn together by their Blessed Mother.

Sources:

Our Lady of Liskeard, by Margaret Laird, published in New Directions on the True Share Christian web service.

The Lost Shrine of Liskeard, by Claire Riche, published by The Saint Austin Press.

The two paintings illustrating this article, La Vierge a la Porcelaine and Return to Ladye Park, are reproduced by kind permission of Claire Riche.

The copyright of the article Virgin Mary Shrine - Ladye Park Vision of Unity in Religious Tolerance is owned by Thomas Kelly. Permission to republish Virgin Mary Shrine - Ladye Park Vision of Unity in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.