I have heard and read so much about Walsingham over the years but never been there. So on a two day post lockdown trip to North Norfolk it was time to check it out.
I expected a few people to be around but it seemed that we were on our own in a virtually deserted village. We made our way to the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham and, observing the one way system, had a poke around. I found it rather garish, certainly colourful, but a little daunting and difficult to take in. Somehow it seemed like a very strange building. The grounds were well cultivated and impressive. Unfortunately the café wasn't open (probably there a day too soon).
I tried to visualise pilgrims trudging through the streets of this tiny village - some weighed down by carrying a cross. I tried to visualise how important this place is to Christians from throughout the World and found it difficult to do so.
The Shrine of Our Lady is an Anglian shrine and not a Catholic as many people think. Of course it wouldn't be a shrine without somebody having a vision there in the dim and distant past.
Now this vision was experienced by somebody called Richeldis way back in 1061, just five years before the Norman Conquest and the Battle of Hastings which strangely was fought at the more appropriately named Battle rather than Hastings.
Richeldis de Faverches was a devout Englishwoman who experienced visions of the Virgin Mary and built the original shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. In her vision she was shown the house of the Annunciation in Nazareth as a place where pilgrims could honour the virgin Mary. She wanted to reproduce this image for pilgrims.
A priory was founded in 1150 and King Henry III became the first Monarch to visit the shrine in 1226. Fast forward to 1534 and Walsingham was one of the first religious houses to sign the Oath of Supremacy recognising Henry VIII's marriage to Anne Boleyn and accepting Henry as head of the Church of England. Three years later Sub Prior Nicholas Mileham and layman George Guisborough were executed at Walsingham for planning to rebel against Henry VIII. Just a year later the shrine and priory were destroyed on the orders of Henry.
Pilgrimages stopped for 400 years but that wasn't the end of the Walsingham story.
In 1921 the Rev Alfred Hope Patten was appointed vicar of Walsingham and two years later organised pilgrimages began to visit Walsingham. In 1931 the Holy House was built.
That in a very quick nutshell is the history of the shrine which has adapted to the modern age with a refectory, a café, an area for picnics, a welcome centre and a shop. It is certainly somewhere I would like to return to for a more leisurely perusal, now that I know some of the facts. I hope you enjoy some of the photographs taken on the trip.
From there we popped to Burnham Overy Staithe and did the long three mile walk to the beach and back and then onto Morston for a quick visit followed by refreshments at Cley and then on to Cromer for an overnight stay. I will have photographs from the rest of day one and day two of the trip in tomorrow's blog.