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Built in the late fifteenth century the Lady Chapel stands close to a Holy Spring to to which steps ascended from the
Carthusian priory of Mount Grace, down in the woods below. At one time the residence of a hermit named Hugh, Lady Chapel became, at the Dissolution, the pension home of the last prior, John Wilson.
Unroofed and deserted during the late sixteenth century, it had become a lively centre of recusant pilgrimage in the early
years of James I, and evoked the attention of the Ecclesiastical Commission of the Archbishop of York in 1614. In the reign of Charles I Mary Ward, foundress of the IBVM, went there on pilgrimage, and in the
reign of Charles II a full restoration was even considered when Lady Juliana Walmsley established the Franciscans in Osmotherley for the help and support of pilgrims. The Titus Oates Plot and the fall of the
Stuarts put an end to that.
As a regular visitor to Osmotherley in the 1750s John Wesley records preaching at the Catholic Chapel in Osmotherley and visiting the ruined
chapel on the hill-top. And pilgrims continued to visit the holy spring even after the Franciscan finally withdrew in 1832.
The ruin came back into Catholic hands in 1952, and excavation
was made of the floor of the chapel with the possibility of finding burials there, one such possibility being that of Margeret Clitherow who had been secretly buried after her execution in York in 1586.
Burials were indeed found in the chapel, but their identities remain unknown.
 The chapel was restored by the Scrope and Eldon families. The arms of the families involved are shown in stained glass in the west window of the chapel, illustrated on the left. The
chapel was blessed in 1961 by Cardinal Godfrey and reopened as a pilgrimage centre. Shortly afterwards the Franciscans returned to help and support pilgrimages until they withdrew in 1994.
Today a monastery has been established in the Old Hall by
monks of Ampleforth Abbey and mass is celebrated regularly in the restored chapel. The Sunday after
the festival of the Assumption of Our Lady on August 15 sees the annual diocesan pilgrimage to the shrine, and the festival of Our Lady’s Birthday, September 8 is, once again, the other main day of
devotion as it was in penal times.
Fr Anthony Storey. February 2002
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