Our Lady of La Salette and St Joseph

Introduction

Our Lady of La Salette and St Joseph in Bermondsey, part of the Archdiocese of Southwark, opened on May 2nd, 1861, and housed the first Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette erected in England.

History

The mission began in a disused School of Anatomy in Webb Street, Borough, less than a hundred yards from the present church in Melior Street. Father Robert Hodgson started the mission in 1847, and Bishop Nicholas Wiseman attended its official opening on 20th March 1848. Simon McDaniel came to the mission of Saint Patrick, Webb Street, in 1857, eleven years after the Apparition of Our Lady of La Salette. A large sum of money, with no known source, was found in the church box of the old Chapel in Webb Street, and with that money the church was finished.

In 1922, Father Flanagan came to Melior Street as its Parish Priest and decided to build a new High Altar. Father McDaniel died on March 14th, 1899.

Architecture and furnishings

The High Altar, completed in 1928, was designed by Mr Walters, the architect of Buckfast Abbey. The designs for a more fitting shrine were sketches by Mr Walters shortly before he died.

Parish life

Subscribers and benefactors for the new shrine were to have their names written on a scroll and buried in the altar, with a weekly Mass and a special commemoration offered for them.