Chapelle de Locmaria (Belle-Isle-en-Terre)

Belle-Isle-en-Terre

In the countryside of Belle-Isle-en-Terre, the chapel of Locmaria bears another name, less often displayed but far more telling of its former function: Notre-Dame de Pendréo, literally Our Lady of the Whooping Cough. For centuries, when this respiratory disease could kill a young child, families from all over the region came to entrust their little patients to her, before continuing the pilgrimage to a nearby miraculous fountain reputed to heal. Built in the 15th and 16th centuries, the chapel houses a carved wooden rood screen of great delicacy: four twisted columns covered with vine branches, beneath which seven angels seem suspended in mid-air — a work attributed to the same workshop as the celebrated screen of the chapel of Kerfons. In 1875 lightning struck the bell tower, destroying it and shattering the stained glass in the process; the windows one can admire today, installed in 1930, were a gift from Sir Robert and Lady Mond, British patrons devoted to Brittany. Though modern medicine has long since made whooping cough less fearsome, the memory of these healing pilgrimages, so typical of Breton popular piety, can still be read in the very name of the place and in the stories the people of Belle-Isle-en-Terre still hand down.

Getting there : Free access to the placître (chapel green); chapel open for the pardon and in season.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound