A Lourdes Grotto, dating from 1912, is located in the Vestingpark in Bredevoort. It is a (small) replica of the famous cave near the French city of Lourdes. The Bredevoort Lourdes Grotto is made of lava stone and stands on the remains of a lower rampart of the Vreesniet bastion, next to the Tea House on the Grote Gracht. It is a municipal monument.
After Mary reportedly appeared to the girl Bernadette in Lourdes in 1858, ‘Lourdes Grottos‘ were created all over the world with statues in honor of Mary and the girl. This was also the case in Bredevoort, in the former garden of the Sint Bernardus monastery.
The Bredevoort Lourdes Grotto was built by order of the Franciscan Sisters of Thuine. The construction date of the Lourdes Grotto was unknown for a long time. However, in 2010, an inscription was discovered during renovation work: ‘B. Elschot May 1, 1912’.
Procession Park
At the beginning of the last century, a procession park was laid out in the garden behind Sint Bernardus, where the Lourdes Grotto is located. Here, local Roman Catholics could perform religious ritual acts undisturbed in the open air. Processions were not permitted on the public roads in Aalten.
The sacramental procession took place here on the second Sunday after Pentecost. People walked from the monastery to the Lourdes Grotto. Paths that were not used were decorated with floral patterns by girls. After 1967, these processions ceased as a result of ecclesiastical changes. The Lourdes Grotto fell into disuse and crumbled. Vandalism did the rest.
In 1985, the last nuns left the Sint Bernardus monastery. Subsequently, the Bredevoorts Belang association purchased the monastery park to preserve it as a city park. The park was extensively renovated in 2015/2016. The park is open to the public from sunrise to sunset.
Restoration
