St. Mary's dates from 1158. If it was built to hold the statue then Our Lady of Cardigan is indeed ancient. It resembles an earlier shrine in the city of Arras, which was then in Flanders. Did Flemish merchants, who settled in Cardigan and traded in Welsh wool out of the port, bring the statue back with them?

Outside town, on the old pilgrim track, lie the ruins of a building by a stream. It is called Capel Bach (Little Chapel), and may have been an oratory where travellers prayed before walking the last mile to the shrine. It is the same distance from St. Mary's as Walsingham Slipper Chapel is from the shrine there.