Shrine Church of Our Lady of Consolation and St Francis

The Church of Our Lady of Consolation and St Francis at West Grinstead, in West Sussex, is a Roman Catholic parish church and a major Marian shrine, set in the quiet countryside near Horsham. Built in the 1870s as a "miniature French cathedral", and home to a shrine of Our Lady of Consolation crowned by papal decree, it stands at the heart of one of the most remarkable stories of Catholic survival in England — for West Grinstead was a stronghold of the old faith all through the long centuries of persecution, kept alive by the recusant Caryll family and a succession of devoted priests. A Grade II listed Gothic Revival building, it remains a place of pilgrimage and devotion to this day.

There was a shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary at West Grinstead even before the Reformation, and after the Reformation, remarkably, Catholic worship continued in the area without a break — a rare thing in Protestant England. The key to this survival was the Caryll family, a famous recusant Catholic dynasty. In the mid-seventeenth century John Caryll, 1st Baron Caryll of Durford, bought West Grinstead Manor, and the manor's private chapel became the place of worship for the local Catholics; in 1671 Caryll provided money to support priests, and the manor house became the presbytery of the mission. Catholics were few — only sixteen were recorded in the area in 1685 — but the mission endured, served by the Jesuits between 1710 and 1754, and then, after the recusant Carylls were finally forced by the costs of their faith to sell the manor in 1758, by the Franciscans, who served the local Catholics from the old presbytery until 1815. Through all the penal years, the flame of Catholic worship never went out at West Grinstead.

The modern church was born of the great revival of English Catholicism in the nineteenth century. In 1863 the mission was reinvigorated when a French priest, Jean-Marie Denis, was appointed to serve the Catholic population; he reopened the school — which later became an orphanage — and built St Juliana's Priory beside the church. Denis was asked by the Bishop of Southwark to build a "miniature French cathedral", and an appeal for funds spread across the Channel to France, Belgium and the Netherlands, reflecting the church's strong continental connections. The foundation stone was laid on 29 May 1875, and the church, designed in the Gothic Revival style by the architect John Aloysius Crawley, was built over 1875 and 1876, with later additions by Frederick Arthur Walters in 1896 and further work in 1964.

The church's status as a shrine was confirmed at the highest level. The shrine is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary under the venerated title of Our Lady of Consolation, and the image of Our Lady was granted a pontifical decree of coronation by Pope Leo XIII on 12 July 1893 — a rare honour that marked West Grinstead as a place of special Marian devotion. Pilgrims have long come to the shrine to pray before the crowned image of Our Lady of Consolation, and the church continues to draw pilgrims today, especially on the great feasts of the Virgin.

The wider complex around the church had a busy life of its own. The priory, built in 1869, housed thirty-six nuns, and from 1871 the Dominican Sisters ran a refuge for girls there, which merged with the orphanage; the institution went through several names over the decades before closing in the 1930s, after which the premises were used by a Catholic boys' school run by the Presentation Brothers until 1984, the buildings later being demolished. The old West Grinstead Manor, the home of the recusant Carylls, was itself demolished in 1964, but the church and its shrine endure as the living heart of this long Catholic story.

The church stands in the rural parish of West Grinstead, in the Weald of West Sussex, between the town of Horsham and the South Downs, near the River Adur. The surrounding countryside is among the most beautiful in Sussex, and includes the famous Knepp Estate nearby, celebrated as a pioneering rewilding project; the South Downs National Park rises to the south, with the villages, woods and farmland of the Low Weald all around, and the historic towns of Horsham, Steyning and Henfield within easy reach.

From a pre-Reformation Marian shrine, through the heroic survival of Catholic worship under the recusant Caryll family and the Jesuit and Franciscan priests, to the building of the "miniature French cathedral" in the 1870s and the papal coronation of Our Lady of Consolation in 1893, the Church of Our Lady of Consolation and St Francis gathers centuries of English Catholic devotion into one building. A Grade II listed church and a Marian shrine of national importance, it remains a living place of worship and pilgrimage at West Grinstead — a precious witness to the unbroken Catholic faith of the Sussex Weald.