St Mary’s Madonna & Child
Our Lady
St Mary-on-Paddington Green
Caroline Scott was born in Glasgow on 15th March 1924. She gained a scholarship to the Edinburgh College of Art aged 17, but her studies were interrupted by the war. She joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service and served in the 93rd Searchlight Regiment, the only one in the world entirely staffed by women, and was based in Wimbledon, London. At the end of the war, she completed her studies in Edinburgh, gaining her Diploma in 1950, and became a commercial artist.
In 1954 she entered the Benedictine community in Minster Abbey, Kent; taking Concordia as her name, and was professed on 22 August 1955. She continued to sculpt, entering a piece for the Manchester Vocations Exhibition in 1959, which led to numerous commissions for sculptures in the following 40 years. Her commissioned works have included statues for Westminster Abbey, Canterbury Cathedral, Coventry Cathedral and the National Shrine of Wales as well as numerous sculptures currently in Europe and the United States of America.
She was Prioress of the Minster Abbey community 1984-1999, and passed away in 2014.
This 30-inch-high statue of the Mother and Child was carved out of lime wood by Sister Concordia. It took the Sister three months to carve the delicate lines in the figure.