Dunwich Pilgrimage

In the years following WWI, there was considerable poverty in the Suffolk coastal parishes, described as extreme by Fr Davidson, the priest from Aldeburgh. Fr Davidson received encouragement from Fr Mason with the building of the Catholic Church in Aldeburgh. Together they instituted the Dunwich Pilgrimage: on 8th March 1929, the Feast of St Felix, the two Priests gave a Mass in Dunwich to a congregation of five. From that small beginning, the Dunwich Pilgrimage grew to a most successful annual event. A report in the Tablet records that the sixth annual pilgrimage to Dunwich (August 1936) attracted its largest attendance of around two thousand people. With such large crowds, the Sunday in August when the pilgrimage took place became locally known as Catholic Sunday.

It was widely held that the Dunwich Pilgrimage brought Catholics together and reminded them of their great continuity with the Catholic history of East Anglia. The Pilgrimage ceased during WWII but was revived for a few years after the war and held in the ruins of the Old Franciscan Monastery.