The healing waters of Lourdes and the miracle experienced there by Bernadette Soubirous, inspired Brother Deodat Antoine to make the construction of a replica of the 'Our Lady of Lourdes' shrine his life's work. It took three attempts by the unassuming monk to build the tiny grotto and even then he never lived to see its completion.

Deodat was a de la Salle monk, of a teaching order known as the Brothers of the Christian Schools, who came to Guernsey from Nantes in December 1913.

The wooded slope behind Les Vauxbelets college was ideal for his project, but his first version of the shrine was so small that after some caustic criticism he pulled it down.

The second attempt, built during the First World War, was more successful. It measured nine feet by six and accommodated four people. The Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth visited the shrine in 1923, but unfortunately he was a rather portly man, the entrance was too narrow for him to enter, and he declined to allow the saying of mass in the chapel. Brother Deodat again knocked down his work.

His third attempt was almost complete when the Second World War broke out, and Deodat returned to France where he died in 1951. The other monks at Les Vauxbelets finished his work, and in 1978 on the centenary of his birth a fund was successfully launched to underpin and restore the chapel.

 It is built from clinker, a by-product of the furnaces which once heated the island's greenhouses, and is beautifully decorated with local Ormer shells and pieces of china and glass. People from all over the world donated broken china and pottery to Les Vauxbelets to be incorporated into what was to become one of the most famous chapels in the world. 

The chapel can accommodate a congregation of 8 people and has a small altar. A flight of steps lead to a pair of shrines