The great coal dispute, as on many previous occasions, proved a boom as far as the Grotto was concerned. Over 200 workers from Carfin, Cleland and many other neighbourhoods, assisted in laying out the long avenues and erecting the new shrines of the Child Jesus, St Joseph and St Joachim. A further 30 acres of land was purchased and as the Grotto expanded so did the crowds. On the main avenue was placed a shrine to Christ the King seated on a marble throne, reminiscent of the Chair of St Peter. Some distance to the left, shaded by tall trees, is St Margaret of Scotland. On the opposite side Ireland’s St Patrick looks down on a Mass Rock which was used as an alter to celebrate mass in the days when it was outlawed. The 2.5 ton rock was gifted to the Grotto in September 1934 by an Irish Protestant landowner from Rathfriland, CoDown, on whose land the rock was sited. The statue was unveiled by the late Joe Devlin MP, a man loved by all classes in Belfast. The Statue of St Joachim was gifted by the people of Montreal, Canada. The benefactor who collected the donations wrote to Fr. Taylor, saying, “the last two dollars to complete the total was collected from an Orangeman”.

 

In the late 1920s, the crowds continued to increase and so the Grotto continued to expand. A major project was undertaken to create Mount Assisi, which took three years of arduous work. There, the statue of St Anthony surmounts a rock garden, constructed on what was formerly a swamp. Below, at the foot of the garden, the statue of St Francis, seated on a boulder, preaches to the birds. Away to his left a small chapel has been excavated, in imitation of his Portiuncula or Chapel of Our Lady of the Angels at Assisi. On his right lies an incomparable Bethlehem Cave with its rock-like walls and crib figures, combining to portray a scene which deeply stirs the heart of the most casual visitors. In the early days, experts proclaimed that, of all the statues in the Grotto, St Francis was the masterpiece. On the first Sunday, of the Grotto season on May 1927, the London Midland and Scottish Railway Company opened a station next to the Grotto, which they called Carfin Grotto Halt. By the 1 st November that year, 67,567 pilgrims had passed through the station.

 

The first Irish pilgrimage arrived from Belfast in July 1925 and the first English pilgrimage arrived from Lancaster on 15 August 1925. The first annual Lithuanians’ rally was held in the same year. The Glasgow Ramblers, a non-Catholic organisation, likewise paid a prolonged visit. The first torchlight procession was held that year with new floodlighting installed for the occasion. The press reported that trains were run from Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee to Holytown station, about two miles from the Grotto, while charabanes conveyed crowds from thirty different towns and villages.