The Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Grace
chapel in East Harlsey, Hambleton, North Yorkshire, England, UK
The Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Grace is a place of Marian devotion and pilgrimage sited in the North Yorkshire village of Osmotherley. Christians have visited this small church, known as the “Lady Chapel”, for centuries and continue the tradition through an annual pilgrimage every summer on the Sunday nearest the Feast of the Assumption, 15 August.
History
Its precise origins and history are unknown although records show that in 1397 John Ingelby was granted a licence for a chapel and the celebration of Mass. This mirrors the history of the nearby Mount Grace Priory when in 1398 Thomas de Holand (Thomas Holland, 1st Duke of Surrey) was granted a licence to found a Carthusian Monastery at Bordelby.
Little else is known about the Lady Chapel except that a former Franciscan, Thomas Parkinson, entered the hermitage at the Lady Chapel, provided for by Catharine of Aragon, in about 1515. He probably stayed until the 1539 dissolution of Mount Grace Priory and other religious sites. After this time, the Lady Chapel fell into a state of neglect and ruin.
Despite falling into ruin, the Lady Chapel continued to attract pilgrims and according to Fr A. J. Storey 16 people were arrested on the eve of Little Lady Day, 7 September 1614, and later confessed to praying there. Other reported visitors include the sisters from the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, praying for their founder, Mary Ward, when she was seriously ill. She herself later came to the chapel to give thanks for her recovery.
The public source identifies “The Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Grace” as chapel in East Harlsey, Hambleton, North Yorkshire, England, UK. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Shrine, Lady and Mount.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q26601526. Authority coordinates are 54.377, -1.302. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1397, 1398, 1515 and 1539.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Grace” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.