Hope Patten

An introspective only child, he became an Anglo-Catholic in Brighton whilst still a teenager. He became interested in not only the medieval church but also the religious life, visiting the Anglican Benedictines at Painsthorpe in 1906 and being profoundly influenced by their abbot, Aelred Carlyle.

After attending Lichfield Theological College he was ordained deacon in 1913 at Holy Cross Church in the St Pancras area of London. After three other curacies, including the Good Shepherd church, Carshalton, in 1921 he became vicar of Great and Little Walsingham with St Giles' Houghton. Within months of arriving, he had a statue of Our Lady of Walsingham modelled on the medieval priory's seal and placed it in the parish's main church, St Mary's. He also started Marian devotions in his church and - aided by the League of Our Lady (later the Society of Mary) - the first pilgrimages from London. His bishop in Norwich opposed the statue and Hope agreed to move it out of the church, using this as a chance to rebuild the Holy House in 1931.[1] The Holy House was rebuilt in 1938 to accommodate rising pilgrim numbers and became the Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. In 1930 Rev. Patten led a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Egmanton.[2] On his death he was buried in the churchyard of St Mary's in Walsingham.

• Pilgrims' Manual (1928)
• England's National Shrine of Our Lady Past and Present with Enid Chadwick (1939)
• Mary's Shrine of the Holy House, Walsingham (1954)
• Our Lady's Mirror, a quarterly paper set up in 1926 by Hope for the members of the Society of Our Lady of Walsingham

• "Patten, Alfred Hope". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/57520. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)