The Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes, Blackpool, stands in Whinney Heys Road,

Blackpool Blackpool is a seaside town in Lancashire, England. It is located on the Irish Sea coast of the Fylde peninsula, approximately north of Liverpool and west of Preston, Lancashire, Preston. It is the main settlement in the Borough of Blackpool ...

, Lancashire, England (). It is recorded in the

National Heritage List for England The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, ...

as a designated Grade II*

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

, and now owned by

Historic Chapels Trust The Historic Chapels Trust is a British Registered Charity set up to care for redundant non-Anglican churches, chapels, and places of worship in England. To date, its holdings encompass various nonconformist Christian denominations and Roma ...

. Locally it is simply known as 'The Shrine' or the 'Bishop's folly'. The 'White Church' is another Church building in Ansdell.

History

The Blackpool

shrine A shrine ( "case or chest for books or papers"; Old French: ''escrin'' "box or case") is a sacred space">-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ...: ''escri ...

was built between 1955 and 1957 to a design by F. X. Velarde. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

Bishop Thomas E. Flynn, the bishop of the

Roman Catholic Diocese of Lancaster The Diocese of Lancaster () is a Latin Church Roman Catholic diocese centred on Lancaster Cathedral in the city of Lancaster in Lancashire, England. History The diocese was erected in 1924, taking areas and parishes from the Archdiocese of Liv ...

, prayed to

Our Lady of Lourdes Our Lady of Lourdes (; ) is one the Marian devotions, devotional names or titles under which the Catholic Church venerates the Mary, mother of Jesus, Virgin Mary. The name commemorates a series of Lourdes apparitions, 18 apparitions reported by ...

, the

patron saint A patron saint, patroness saint, patron hallow or heavenly protector is a saint who in Catholicism, Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodoxy or Oriental Orthodoxy is regarded as the heavenly advocate of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, fa ...

of the

diocese In Ecclesiastical polity, church governance, a diocese or bishopric is the ecclesiastical district under the jurisdiction of a bishop. History In the later organization of the Roman Empire, the increasingly subdivided Roman province, prov ...

, to protect the diocese from war damage. By the end of the war, Blackpool was indeed relatively undamaged, and the bishop conceived the idea of building a thanksgiving chapel to commemorate this. It cost £50,000 (equivalent to £ in ), and many of the parishes in the diocese made a subscription. The land on which it is sited was given by William Eaves, a local builder, who left the plot of land between the Shrine and the Whinney Hays roundabout undeveloped to give the Shrine prominence on that approach to the town. Until the 1990s the Shrine was looked after by successive orders of

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

monks and nuns, among them the nuns of the Congregation of Adoration of Marie Reparatrice, and the Blessed Sacrament Fathers.

Architecture

The chapel is constructed in brick and concrete with a

Portland stone Portland stone is a limestone geological formation (formally named the Portland Stone Formation) dating to the Tithonian age of the Late Jurassic that is quarried on the Isle of Portland in Dorset, England. The quarries are cut in beds of whi ...

covering and has copper cladding to the roof and

flèche Flèche or Fleche may refer to: * Flèche (architecture), a type of church spire * Flèche (cycling), a team cycling competition * Flèche (fencing), an aggressive offensive fencing technique * Flèche (fortification), a defensive work *, ships of ...

. The wide nave has four

bays A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a ''gulf'', ''sea'', ''sound'', or ''bight''. A ''cove'' is a small, ci ...

. At the west end there is a single-bay

narthex The narthex is an architectural element typical of Early Christian art and architecture, early Christian and Byzantine architecture, Byzantine basilicas and Church architecture, churches consisting of the entrance or Vestibule (architecture), ve ...

, and at the east end is an

apse In architecture, an apse (: apses; from Latin , 'arch, vault'; from Ancient Greek , , 'arch'; sometimes written apsis; : apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical Vault (architecture), vault or semi-dome, also known as an ' ...

forming the

sanctuary A sanctuary, in its original meaning, is a sacred space, sacred place, such as a shrine, protected by ecclesiastical immunity. By the use of such places as a haven, by extension the term has come to be used for any place of safety. This seconda ...

, and projecting

vestries A vestry was a committee for the local secular and ecclesiastical government of a parish in England, Wales and some English colonies. At their height, the vestries were the only form of local government in many places and spent nearly one-fi ...

. In the west front are double doors, over which is a

low relief Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces remain attached to a solid background of the same material. The term ''relief'' is from the Latin verb , to raise (). To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that th ...

of the

Holy Trinity The Trinity (, from 'threefold') is the Christian doctrine concerning the nature of God, which defines one God existing in three, , consubstantial divine persons: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ) and God the Holy Spirit, three ...

carved by David John. David John also designed the

pinnacle A pinnacle is an architectural element originally forming the cap or crown of a buttress or small turret, but afterwards used on parapets at the corners of towers and in many other situations. The pinnacle looks like a small spire. It was main ...

s at the corners of the building; these depict Our Lady of Lourdes appearing to

Saint Bernadette Bernadette Soubirous, SCN (; ; ; 7 January 184416 April 1879), also known as Bernadette of Lourdes ( in religion Sister Marie-Bernarde), was a miller's daughter from Lourdes ( in Occitan), in the department of Hautes-Pyrénées in France, and ...

, Christ appearing to Saint Margaret Mary,

Saint Thomas of Canterbury Thomas Becket (), also known as Saint Thomas of Canterbury, Thomas of London and later Thomas à Becket (21 December 1119 or 1120 – 29 December 1170), served as Lord Chancellor from 1155 to 1162, and then as Archbishop of Canterbury fr ...

, and

Saint Edward the Confessor Edward the Confessor ( 1003 – 5 January 1066) was King of England from 1042 until his death in 1066. He was the last reigning monarch of the House of Wessex. Edward was the son of Æthelred the Unready and Emma of Normandy. He succeed ...

. On the sides rectangular panels of cast concrete glazing are filled with geometric patterns, their pink and pale blue glass giving good light to the interior. At the entrance to the building are

York stone York is a cathedral city in North Yorkshire, England, with Roman Britain, Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers River Ouse, Yorkshire, Ouse and River Foss, Foss. It has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a Yor ...

steps with splayed flanking walls. The interior arcades columns are clad in gold

mosaic A mosaic () is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/Mortar (masonry), mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and ...

. The ceiling is coloured blue, red and gold, with deep

coffering A coffer (or coffering) in architecture is a series of sunken panels in the shape of a square, rectangle, or octagon in a ceiling, soffit or vault. A series of these sunken panels was often used as decoration for a ceiling or a vault, also ...

around the light fittings and the floor of the body of the shrine is tiled. The

is raised and approached on

marble Marble is a metamorphic rock consisting of carbonate minerals (most commonly calcite (CaCO3) or Dolomite (mineral), dolomite (CaMg(CO3)2) that have recrystallized under the influence of heat and pressure. It has a crystalline texture, and is ty ...

steps through a round arch; its floor is travertine with mosaic panels. The altar rails are

bronze Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals (such as phosphorus) or metalloid ...

with an

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

design. The altar

reredos A reredos ( , , ) is a large altarpiece, a screen, or decoration placed behind the altar in a Church (building), church. It often includes religious images. The term ''reredos'' may also be used for similar structures, if elaborate, in secular a ...

was carved by David John.

Repair and future use

The shrine was

deconsecrated Deconsecration, also referred to as decommissioning or ''secularization'' (a term also used for the external confiscation of church property), is the removal of a religious sanction and blessing from something that had been previously consec ...

in 1993, and passed into the ownership of the

, a secular charity, in 2000, in a poor state and without an endowment. A £100,000 grant awarded by English Heritage assisted with urgent rescue repairs, completed in April 2008, dealing with the leaking copper roof and improving the rainwater disposal system. A larger sum will be needed to convert the building into a community centre and current fund-raising is focussed on re-installing electrical supplies, rendered unsafe by water ingress, and modern facilities. The

is actively seeking partners to use the space for events once repairs are complete.

References

External links

Twentieth Century SocietyHistoric Chapels Trust
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blackpool, Our Lady of Lourdes Grade II* listed churches in Lancashire 20th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in the United Kingdom Our Lady Churches preserved by the Historic Chapels Trust Structures on the Heritage at Risk register Roman Catholic shrines in the United Kingdom Roman Catholic churches completed in 1957 F. X. Velarde buildings

History

Architecture

Repair and future use

See also

References

Further reading

External links