The Shrine of the Holy Virgin in St. Joseph’s field is an open-air religious site beside St. Joseph’s Church in Banfield, transformed from a field into the gathering place for Alice Pagett’s reported miracles and a rapidly expanding pilgrimage. Its significance lies in the tension between the place’s devotional purpose and the crowds, institutions, expectations, and violence that accumulate around it. The field’s increasingly formal altar and carefully organized services make it appear to be a sanctuary; the twisted oak at its center, and the older history attached to the parish grounds, give that appearance a more troubling dimension.

Setting and Identity

The shrine occupies the field beside St. Joseph’s Church. The church and field remain physically distinct, but the path and the later services bind them into one religious landscape: worshippers gather in the open ground, while clergy and church authorities provide its liturgical framework. The site is eventually called the Field of the Holy Virgin, a name that reflects the crowd’s belief in Alice’s visions and the Marian character of the devotion forming there. It is not simply a churchyard or a pre-existing sanctuary. Its status as a sacred destination develops alongside the reported events and the public response to them.

At the center stands a twisted oak, which becomes the field’s most conspicuous landmark. The altar is placed below it, and the tree forms the visual background to the ceremonies. The arrangement gives the site a clear focus for prayer, but also makes the oak difficult to separate from the questions raised by the field’s history. When Gerry Fenn and Monsignor Delgard search for records, both men look toward the tree; Fenn admits that it unsettles him, and Delgard gives no reassuring explanation. The site’s central object is thus at once a practical focal point and a persistent source of unease.

From Field to Pilgrimage Ground

The field’s transformation begins with the reports of Alice’s recovery. After Alice regains her ability to hear and speak, Father Hagan considers whether the change is medical, spiritual, or divinely caused. The comparison with Lourdes gives the local story a wider religious context: a place associated with healing may also draw people seeking renewed faith, consolation, or a way to live with illness. That distinction matters at Banfield, where the medical explanation of Alice’s former condition does not settle what the experience means to her or to those who witness it.

The first large Sunday gathering makes the change in the field’s use unmistakable. Traffic and village activity increase, and a crowd presses at the church-path gate. Sue has to hold Ben close to prevent him being jostled as the family moves through the entrance. Among those arriving are people with serious illnesses and disabilities, accompanied by relatives who hope for improvement. Fenn notices a girl with movements he recognizes as resembling chorea, and a boy in a wheelchair whose family’s hope is visible to him. The field has become a place where private suffering is brought into public view, although Fenn is conscious that the observers may also be witnessing disappointment.

The crowds grow beyond the first gathering. Before a later Sunday service, the field fills with thousands; estimates place the number who travel to St. Joseph’s at between eight and ten thousand, with many unable to enter the grounds. Monsignor Delgard sees the sick and disabled among the congregation and worries that the scale of their expectation will make disappointment more painful. George Southworth, by contrast, recognizes the success of the pilgrimage and its consequences for Banfield. The same crowd can therefore signify spiritual hope, pastoral responsibility, and opportunity for local promotion.

Construction and Ceremony

As the pilgrimage develops, the field is physically reorganized to accommodate worshippers. Benches spread across the ground, with places near the centerpiece especially sought after by those who wish to see Alice or feel close to her holiness. The churned, soft earth makes wheelchair access difficult, and ushers recognize that a separate area for invalids will be needed at future services. The arrangements reveal both the practical demands of the gathering and the limits of a site being adapted faster than its infrastructure can comfortably support.

The makeshift altar is replaced by a larger, carved wooden structure. Workmen extend the seating, raise posts intended for banners, and build a low rail around the platform where the congregation can kneel for Communion. By the time Fenn returns, the centerpiece has grown wider and more elaborate: a deep-red canopy shelters worshippers, a raised tier is set aside for what he takes to be a choir, banners line the aisles, and public-address equipment is positioned so the service can be heard across the field. Camera platforms within the boundary hedges enable the proceedings to be filmed from among the congregation. Lighting concentrates attention on the altar and oak, while devotional candles complete the ceremonial setting.

This development is not an uncomplicated endorsement of the field’s sanctity by the Church. Its religious authorities avoid an extravagant display of sacred images, even as the services and equipment make the site increasingly formal. The distinction between popular belief and institutional recognition remains visible in the careful staging: the field is treated as a place of worship, but its decorations do not amount to an unequivocal declaration that the ground is hallowed. Meanwhile, the growing infrastructure gives the pilgrimage a durable, public form.

Historical Associations and Narrative Significance

The field’s meaning is shadowed by the account in Thomas Woolgar’s manuscript, which Fenn discovers while searching for the old church chest. Woolgar’s chronicle describes events in the parish during the sixteenth century, including the killing of three children, the persecution and execution of Sister Einor, and the curse she is said to pronounce against those present. His account places her execution at a young oak near the church. It does not establish that this was the same tree later used as the shrine’s centerpiece, but it connects the present-day religious landscape to a history of violence, accusation, and remorse. The manuscript also reports that the church chest and parish records were transferred from St. Joseph’s to St. Peter’s, helping explain why Fenn and Delgard search for historical documents rather than treating the field’s past as settled.

At the candlelight procession and open-air Mass, the field reaches its most elaborate ceremonial form. The procession, led by Bishop Caines and accompanied by clergy, nuns, and Alice, brings Banfield residents together with visitors who have travelled from elsewhere. The service is transmitted by cameras and sound equipment, extending the gathering beyond those physically present. At its climax, Alice rises on the platform before the illuminated oak while the congregation watches. Wilkes approaches with a German Luger and shoots her at close range; the apparent killing is followed almost immediately by Alice’s rising again. The field that has been arranged to concentrate faith around a child and an altar becomes the scene of a rupture in the crowd’s expectations.

The shrine’s development therefore carries two histories at once. Its benches, altar, banners, and processions express a community’s effort to make a sacred center from reported healings; its oak and Woolgar’s manuscript suggest that the site is also bound to older wrongs that ritual cannot simply erase. The field is where hope becomes collective and visible, but also where belief, commercial and ecclesiastical organization, and latent danger converge.