The Portsmouth GrottoThe original Amos Smith estate on the monastery grounds, centered on what is now known as the Manor House, is still accessed by a sweeping entry drive that begins at a now familiar gated entry marked by two stone pillars. The road opens directly onto a sweeping view of the Narragansett Bay and offers a beautiful visual introduction to the grounds of the monastery and school. It was along this drive that the monastic community eventually came to settle on the site for the construction of a gathering place dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes. The late Hugh A. Markey, alumnus of the class of 1940, had long hoped the monastery would construct such a shrine. Mr. Markey had for decades been the sponsor of Portsmouth’s participation in the summer Ampleforth Lourdes Pilgrimage, coming to be known as “Our Lady’s Travel Agent” for his dedication to getting pilgrims to various Marian sites. Fortunately, this hope for Portsmouth came to fruition with the dedication of Portsmouth’s Lourdes Grotto in 2012, three years before his passing. After many years of consideration, a reticence to create such a shrine at Portsmouth was overcome and the monastic community set its mind, soul, and strength to producing a fitting shrine.
Stones lined up for workAbbot Caedmon Holmes, who was the superior of Portsmouth at this time, maintains a firm devotion to Our Lady. He placed the achievement of a fitting shrine not only in the hands of those in the community with appropriate skills, but also firmly into the hands of Mary in his daily prayer, for “a worthy image of herself somewhere positioned on the property.” In an interview with School alumnus and film producer Jamie MacGuire ‘70, he noted, “She is the mother of Jesus and the mother of the Church, and without her none of this would have happened the way it has happened. The Church has a special closeness to her as her child.” Adding to his personal devotion to Mary, he also points to the monastery’s patronage, established under Prior Gregory Borgstedt, of Our Lady, Queen of Peace. It is this same Lady who had appeared to Bernadette at the Grotto in Lourdes, and Abbot Caedmon stated at the dedication ceremony on May 4, 2012: “Under the title of Our Lady of Lourdes, this image will remind us of the close ties of Mary to Christ… First of all, she is Christ‘s mother, the mother of the visible image of the invisible God. She is also the image and model of the church, and she is its exemplar. In Mary, the church joyfully contemplates the image of all that the church herself desires and hopes completely to be.” With the community determined to produce the shrine, the key questions arising before it could happen revolved around the design of the grotto, the determination of the site, and the procurement of a statue of Our Lady. Abbot Caedmon had been concerned that, as one drove down to the historic Manor House encountering the grounds of the monastery and the campus of its school, there was no visual sign of the community’s rootedness in the Catholic faith. The venue located along the lower drive offered visibility for a witness to our heritage of faith and hopefully provided an enhancement to our distinctive and beautiful location.
Daponte team at workBr. Joseph Byron found himself tasked with a uniquely challenging part of the project: conceiving and constructing the grotto itself. One dilemma arising here was how to evoke the original grotto at Massabielle while also reflecting seamlessly our own location here in Portsmouth. A similar dilemma, though perhaps yet more profound, was to achieve a spiritual resonance reflecting the message of Lourdes and the character of Portsmouth. Br. Joseph carefully studied many of the various Lourdes Grotto “replicas,” noting the wide-ranging spectrum of images, from the closely realistic resemblances to the more abstract. His mission was to produce a grotto expressing the sensibilities of our own community, balancing an authenticity both to Lourdes and to Portsmouth. He came to settle on a design composed of the large rock found in ample supply in our fields. In this effective first step, Br. Joseph was in fact following a path mirroring one Pietro Belluschi had taken in his work here, as well as one followed by Doms Hilary Martin and Peter Sidler here: to utilize and reflect local materials. The literal “building blocks” for the Grotto’s design became materials to be taken from our own monastic grounds. But unlike the stones that populate the numerous stone walls delineating the pastures of New England, the stones of our Grotto are massive, not moveable without heavy machinery. The accomplishment of the concept envisioned by Brother Joseph became, he notes, “quite an adventure.”
Our Lady of Lourdes at PortsmouthIn finalizing the site selection for construction, Br. Joseph contacted two friends, one a landscape designer and the other a landscape contractor, to ask their advice on what would have to be done. Having determined the general location to the south of the entry drive, the details and challenges of construction came into sharper view. Since the terrain rolled down towards the selected site, there was a need to build it up a few feet to more appropriately elicit the Lourdes grotto, which is actually situated near the base of a high-rising cliff face. Conceiving a total height of about twenty feet, this meant raising the base about three feet to offer the impression of more of a rise into the grotto. This left 16-18 feet of stones to be built up upon it. Br. Joseph comments: “This doesn’t sound like too big a deal – until you start moving the rocks.” The Daponte landscaping company, which has worked closely with the monastery on many projects on the grounds, took on the effort, perhaps not fully grasping its scope. Br. Joseph estimates the weight of some of the larger stones was 11-12,ooo pounds, and comments that you could feel the ground shake whenever one of these was set down in the production of the grotto. The most subtly complex element, beyond the sheer force of moving such weight, was to produce the “cave” with sides strong enough to support the weight of the overhang, as well as to artfully achieve the desired look for the grotto. Marveling at their work, Brother Joseph says, “They spent months building this thing, and they did a beautiful job.” Since it has the look of a dry-laid stone wall, one may overlook the level of difficulty to achieve it, given the massive size of its component stones. To console the Daponte workers as they were struggling to complete the effort, Br. Joseph told them they should realize this edifice will outlast anything else here on the grounds, “like the Pyramids.”
Marble of Carrara, ItalyA critical piece of any grotto, however, is the image of Our Lady. Fr. Gregory Havill, at the time known as Brother Gregory, was called in on the early planning stages of the grotto to find a sculptor to design the grotto’s statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. Drawing on his own decades of work as a sculptor, which included teaching art in higher education, he brought ample experience and skill to the task. The very first project of conceiving and producing a statue for the original grotto at Lourdes had been an arduous one, particularly for Saint Bernadette, the Lourdes visionary. She wept, Father Gregory notes, at the inadequacy of the image created to adequately capture the overwhelming beauty of the Lady she had seen at Massabielle. No statue, it seems, can convey the beauty of the apparition. This presents the “dilemma for the visual artist who makes a statue of Mary,” and heightened the difficulty of balancing the authentic realities of Lourdes within one’s own context. For Fr. Gregory, this difficulty was addressed by considering the statue not to be a work of realism to reflect the appearance of Our Lady, but rather that “the entire grotto is an expression of Our Lady.” The statute thus needed to help draw together the whole experience of our grotto, such that the entire place expresses that “this is where Our Lady is, where Our Lady makes herself available to us.” He engaged the sculptor Walter Arnold, from the Chicago area, who also has studios in Carrara, Italy, who worked with Fr. Gregory on the design. “Mr. Arnold was very sensitive to that kind of aspect of it – he was really a wonderful man to work with.” The image is made of Carrara marble and was carved in Italy and shipped to Portsmouth. As the Carrara marble may seem to contrast with the New England fieldstone, the peaceful elegance of the sculpted image stands out against the massive unhewn rock of the edifice. Yet, not unlike the statute set against the looming rock face of Massabielle, the two combine to render a place of quietude and of prayer, of peace and protection. “The design of the place is very beautiful,” Fr. Gregory concludes, noting that especially at night, it definitely elicits the grotto of Lourdes, and is conducive to prayer.
The Portsmouth Grotto in winter snowThe Grotto has subsequently been readily absorbed into the grounds, its presence offering the quiet witness of faith for which the monastic community had hoped. Br. Joseph remarks that, “Looks like it has always belonged there” and that it has indeed exceeded everyone’s expectations. It has been the starting point for candlelight processions, the site of Masses for the School, for the praying of the rosary. And in the flames of the many devotional candles lit there – which Br. Joseph notes require frequent replenishment – it gives outward expression to Mary, not only in its visual representation of the presence of the mother of God, but in the requests made by the faithful to her in this special place.

Candlelight procession

---

Note: In writing this article, I gratefully relied on the interviews conducted by Jamie MacGuire ’70 found in his short film, “The Grotto at Portsmouth Abbey School,” still available on YouTube.