Projects...
Three or four years ago, a group of us from different Christian denominations visited most of the Marian shrines across England and Wales which had been desecrated at the time of the Reformation.

We felt that it was important that we should visit these destroyed shrines to pray and make reparation, asking God to forgive this terrible offence against Him and His holy Mother. Where we could we had a Mass offered, and where we couldn’t, we prayed the Rosary, the Divine Mercy Chaplet and a prayer that was written especially for the occasion.

In 2005, at the conclusion of the ‘Reparation Pilgrimages’, it was decided that we would erect a beautiful statue of Our Lady on a site in Chelsea as an act of atonement as close as possible to where Her statues were burnt after being stripped of the accumulated gifts resulting from centuries of pilgrimage.

Work in Progress…
The Art and Reconciliation Trust have commissioned the sculptor Paul Day to design a Memorial to the medieval shrines destroyed in Chelsea during the English Reformation in 1538. The proposed title of the Memorial is Mary Most Holy. This work aims to be both accurate in its chronological detail as well as appealing to reconciliation among all faiths and denominations in modern Britain, reaching out to people at large to warn against seeking to ignore, subdue, or suppress each other.

Together with the architect Tony Dyson of Donald Insall Associates. Paul created the bronze reliefs on the Battle of Britain Monument on The Victoria Embankment, The Meeting Place at St Pancras, and has recently been awarded the commission to design the National Memorial to Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother to be sited in the Mall.

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council's Public Art Advisory Group supports the project in principle and also the memorial's general location (click here for a map of the proposed site). We are in further discussions with the Council on their preferred precise location within Embankment Gardens and the development of the design of the memorial to suit that location.

The fundraising target for the Memorial is £1,250,000

The unveiling of the statue is due to take place on the 13th of October 2009, the feast of St Edward The Confessor.