The story of pilgrimage in Walsingham begins in 1061. A noblewoman, Richeldis de Faverches, had a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In this vision Mary gave instructions that Richeldis should build in Walsingham a replica of the house of Mary, Joseph and Jesus in Nazareth. Water sprung where the house was to be built, as Our Lady said it would, and it was constructed to the dimensions given in the vision.
England’s Nazareth became a place of pilgrimage rivalled in these isles only by Canterbury during the Middle Ages. The stream of pilgrims dried up when Henry VIII – who himself had made devotions here – plundered the shrine, had the image destroyed, and dissolved the many monastic houses in Walsingham and the surrounding area.
Pilgrimage was revived in 1922 by the parish priest, Fr Alfred Hope Patten. A new image was made, set up in the parish church, and subsequently transferred to a new holy house in a new shrine in 1931.
The Holy House in the Anglican Shrine
This was the first of my walks I have undertaken in company. And, as I made pilgrimage to the holy house of the Holy Family, what companions could be more appropriate than Elise, my wife, and our four-year-old son.
We began at St Peter, Great Walsingham. This church replaced an earlier parish church 150 yards away in the fourteenth century, and, save the loss of its chancel and the addition of a porch, provides a wonderful example of a complete church in the Decorated style. The nave and both aisles contain the original benches with poppyhead carvings. While not as intricate or creative as the Wiggenhalls, these benches have their original floor sills. These were designed to keep foot-warming straw in the pews. But their modern advantage – as I have found from worshipping here on a number of occasions – is that they provide perfect enclosures for small children and their toys. And plenty of legroom for the adults.
Interior, St Peter, Great Walsingham
Taking the footpath west of the church, we could see to the north All Saints, Wighton, with its tower rebuilt in 1976, and the shrine and parish church of Little Walsingham to the south. Our route skirted Little Walsingham to what was, before Dr Beeching had other ideas, the village’s railway station. In a county which so often seeks other uses for redundant churches, here is a redundant railway station which is now a church: St Seraphim’s Orthodox Chapel.
A footpath has replaced the railway line as far as the medieval Slipper Chapel where pilgrims would have – and still do – remove their shoes to walk the final ‘holy mile’ to the shrine. This chapel now houses the Roman Catholic image of Our Lady of Walsingham. It is a small chapel, but, on the same site is the Chapel of Reconciliation. This is literally a barn of a church – it was constructed in the style of a Norfolk barn, and consecrated in 1982.
Chapel of Reconciliation
We arrived during the 12 noon Mass, attended by both a diocesan pilgrimage group from the Diocese of Salford, and many people who had arrived early for tomorrow’s Tamil pilgrimage. It felt busy; tomorrow it will be packed.
We crossed the River Stiffkey up to the church of St Giles, Houghton in the Dale. This is a gorgeous, aisle-less church, where we bumped into the equally gorgeous churchwarden and old friend Barry Shipp. A loo is being installed here, and he and Gary, another member of the congregation, were clearing the church of dirt and dust in readiness for tomorrow’s Evensong and Benediction.
Interior, Houghton St Giles
As we left, a group of pilgrims were singing the other side of the vale as they made their way to the Slipper Chapel, their voices mingling with birdsong. Recrossing the river we rejoined the holy mile into Walsingham, passing the ruins of the medieval Friary, not open to the public, and to our next stop, the parish church of St Mary and All Saints, Little Walsingham. This is where Fr Patten, buried by the north door, began his resurrection of the shrine. He would not recognise the interior of his church today. Only the (very fine) seven sacrament font and a few memorials survived a fire which ripped through the church on 14 July 1961.
Laurence King’s sensitive rebuilding creates a light and graceful interior; a new church in its old shell. It holds a very special place in our hearts; we were married here in 2017.
The Friday Market is surrounded by architecture which makes Walsingham feel like a small town rather than a large village. This includes Walsingham Methodist Chapel, which, built in 1793-4, is the oldest Methodist chapel in Norfolk still in use. It is currently closed while the ceiling is restored.
At the other end of the Friday Market is the Church of the Annunciation, the Roman Catholic parish church. I can recall this being completed in 2006. It is, I think, a much better and more prayerful building than the Chapel of Reconciliation a mile away.
Before the Reformation the centrepiece of Walsingham would have been its vast Priory, towering over the village. The surviving east wall gives the visitor some sense of the scale of what was here. Ruins of the refectory, abutting the eighteenth century house, and the stump of the west tower also remain, as does an undercroft. The Abbey grounds (for which there is an admission charge) is famous for its snowdrop walks in February and March. Their successors in May are no less difficult to identify: the fragrance of wild garlic fills the air.
Priory ruins
You only have to read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to know that a good pilgrimage and good beer go together. The Bull is Walsingham’s iconic pub, and, by providence, our walk coincided with its reopening under new management. Its beer garden, spilling out into the Common Place, was a happy site. Locals, pilgrims, tourists, and shrine staff, all enjoying a pint in the sun. The parish priest here, Fr Harri Williams, has a gift which is increasingly rare in parish priests: he always seems to be around. When I was here a couple of weeks ago in the shrine grounds he appeared with over a hundred children from the local federation of primary schools. He had arranged for them all to have ice cream. Here he was at The Bull, fresh from a confirmation in a church elsewhere in his patch.
It was good here to meet some pilgrims from St Matthew, Westminster. They were delighted when I told them that I knew Fr Gerard Irvine in his latter years in Brighton. Fr Gerard was vicar of St Matthew’s when, like Walsingham's parish church, it was engulfed by fire, in 1977. He was one of the great characters of twentieth century Anglo-Catholicism. I treasure among my possessions his prayer-battered English Missal.
At last, we arrived at the Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, welcomed by Sister Carol SSM, who continues an Anglican religious presence in the village. ‘It is a disappointing building,’ judged Pevsner, ‘looking for all its ambitions like a minor suburban church.’ Yet for us and so many others, it is ‘none other than the house of God and the gate of heaven’. That’s because, at the west end of the shrine, is a church within a church. This is the new holy house, where countless pilgrims have offered countless prayers, believing this to be a place where prayer is answered in a special way.
I know this to be true from my own experience. Many others do too. You can read the stories of many of them, as there are tiny plaques on the west wall of the church thanking Our Lady of Walsingham for her miracles: illnesses cured, exams passed, limbs healed, mercies received. The shrine was quiet. In a few hours' time it will be thronging with Aves at the pilgrim liturgy.
The paths and places of this walk were all very familiar to us. But we reflected as we walked on the joy of walking them in a new way today, and on how we had been delighted by seeing things we had not seen before. One of those occurred as our walk drew to its close. In most Norfolk villages the former Methodist chapel is now a private dwelling or, if you’re really lucky, an antiques shop, but not in Great Walsingham.
Here it is the Orthodox Church of the Holy Transfiguration. I have never seen it open, but we arrived just as they were tidying up after Holy Saturday Vespers. (Easter is as late in the East this year as it was early in the West.) Fr Chris is the priest. He’s an Anglican convert, as is his subdeacon. They could have not been more welcoming. Indeed, they were very keen that we return for their great Easter liturgy at 10 o’clock this evening. ‘Bring a sleeping bag for the boy.’
The Transfiguration, Great Walsingham
We wished them ‘Christos Anesti’, and crossed the Stiffkey one last time, trying to work out where the old parish church of All Saints would have been before St Peter’s was built.
One of the many things I love about Walsingham is that it is a place when the Christian faith feels so alive and so natural. No one blinks an eyelid at the sight of a nun, or a priest in a cassock, or people praying their rosaries. And today was a day when Walsingham shone. Everywhere we went we found people praying, singing, lighting candles, preparing for worship, welcoming others, and, importantly, enjoying themselves. Deeper still, we found people encountering that which is at the heart of this holy place, as it is at the heart of Mary: the mystery of the Incarnation.
May is Mary’s month. On this beautifully sunny first Saturday of May, the words of a hymn often sung this month could not have been more fitting:
The happy birds Te Deum sing,
'Tis Mary’s month of May;
Her smile turns winter into spring,
And darkness into day;
And there’s a fragrance in the air,
The bells their music make,
And oh the world is bright and fair,
And all for Mary’s sake.
Walk: 5 miles https://explore.osmaps.com/route/21399782/walsingham
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