The beautiful and sleepy North Norfolk countryside on England’s East coast conceals one of Europe’s most glorious, but hidden mysteries. This happening drew people from around the world in huge numbers to the North Norfolk coast for hundreds of years, even Kings and Queens repeatedly came to this place such was its importance. It was said to have rivalled Rome, Jerusalem and Santiago de Compostela as a global pilgrimage location. There are even traces of ancient pathways being discovered stretching across Britian, that organically evolved to take the hordes of people from ports, towns and cities across the land to this place.
The place is called Little Walsingham and almost all of its history was destroyed by the brutal vandalism that was the English Reformation. But little by little, like the pieces of a jigsaw once lost are mysteriously re-appearing.
This story starts with Richeldis de Faverches a resident of Little Walsingham and a virtuous lady. Being virtuous she wanted to honour Mary the mother of Jesus and being a lady of prayer she asked Mary what she could do. To her amazement Mary appeared to her and showed her the house of Nazareth. Some stories say that Richeldis was mysteriously transported at this time, also you may remember that the Nazareth house was the place where the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and announced the coming of human salvation in the conception of Jesus.
In her continuing vision Mary asked Richeldis to build a replica of this Nazareth house in Walsingham in honour of her and she went on to say that all who seek her there she would grant peace and comfort.
Richeldis dutifully took the size, details and design of the small and simple Nazareth house to her heart. This vision also revealed to her the precise location and orientation of the house and that this was to be marked out in the dew on the nearby meadow.
So with the design and the location fixed, this should be simple. What could possibly go wrong?
Richeldis hastily set about the construction and instructed her master craftsmen builders to get on with it. However, when they searched for the dew marked site, they found twenty possible places. This caused much doubt, but from here the challenges increased.
The builders set to work, they were skilled folk and the best in the business, but whatever they did just didn’t work. Their measurements were wrong, the pieces wouldn’t fit, they couldn’t even make their marks on the wood. To put it bluntly, it was a disaster and caused all the team to down tools and march off to Richeldis to complain.
This in turn caused Richeldis much distress, did she imagine everything? Did she fail to remember the precious messages given to her by Mary? Was she that careless?
Richeldis did what any virtuous person would do and turned to Mary in prayer. She prayed earnestly all night her soul tormented, continuing to doubt the messages she was given and humbled by her foolish instruction to her best craftsmen given in haste, to set about this impossible and disastrous venture.
However, Mary didn’t let her down and performed a greater miracle than her earlier appearance and vision. That night while Richeldis was in prayer angels came to the building site. They re-positioned the building 200 feet away from the original site and their heavenly hands constructed the building on this new site.
The builders return the next day, astonished to find their work complete and to such a quality that even they could not have achieved. They even found a holy well next to the house containing springs of heavenly healing water. The place was perfect, a vision of heaven.
They all went home, thanking Mary the mother of Jesus for this heavenly miracle.
True to Mary’s word, all who visited the site from here-on-in found peace and comfort. Great miracles were witnessed in this peaceful, beautiful place. Countless healings were experienced, the blind could see, the dead brought back to life, lepers healed and the lame cured. Manifold blessings over hundreds of years and hence the crowds that thronged from afar came for healing, peace and comfort and they rested their troubles in Our Lady’s immaculate heart.
Over time Walsingham grew in stature with at least eight English kings going on pilgrimage to Little Walsingham. Even Henry VII himself came to seek succour, travelling to the Slipper Chappel located in a hamlet called Houghton St. Giles, leaving his shoes there and proceeding bare foot in humility, walking the holy mile to the Shrine, the place of Our Lady’s Nazareth holy house.
Walsingham grew in buildings and fame. New abbeys with various orders of monks were built, giving the place a lofty spired skyline. Due to Walsingham’s fame all England became known as “Our Lady’s Dowry”, a term first recorded by King Richard II in Westminster Abbey in 1381. This means that England was considered to have been ‘set aside’ as a gift, a dowry, for Our Lady and is under her guidance and protection.
But as the old saying goes “All good things must come to an end”.
An Elizabethan ballad
'A Lament for Walsingham,'
Levell, levell with the ground The Towres doe lye, Which with their golden glitt’ring tops Pearsed oute to the skeye. Where weare gates noe gates are new, The waies unknown, Where the presse of freares did passe, While her fame far was blowen. Oules doe scrike where the sweetest himenes Lately wear songe, Toades and serpents hold their dennes Where the palmers did throng. Weepe, weepe, O Walsingham, Whose dayes are nightes, Blessings turned to blasphemies, Holy deeds to dispites. Sinne is where our Lady sate, Heaven turned is to helle; Sathan sitte where our Lord did swaye, Walsingham, oh, farewell!
Our Lady and Walsingham came crashing down after nearly 500 years.
During the English Reformation Henry VII tasked Thomas Cromwell with dissolving the Monasteries. In 1538 the shrine, and the Walsingham abbeys, once towering in the sky were brought to the ground. The priests were disembowelled and the wooden Nazareth holy house and the statues of Our Lady, relics and other devotional items were taken on carts to London and publicly burned so as to prevent any return to the devotion.
This time ended the legend of Walsingham, the miracles, the presence and outpouring of heaven in this little-known part of rural east England. The sleepy rural life of farming, labouring and fishing resume and the Slipper Chapel became a poor house, a forge, a cow shed and a barn.
Does the story end here? Well if it did this article would end here, but it doesn’t and in the words of Charles M. Schulz, “A whole stack of memories never equal one little hope.”.
A New Hope
“When England returns to Walsingham, Our Lady will return to England” Pope Leo XIII 1893
I look’d on that Lady, and out from her eyes Came the deep glowing blue of Italy’s skies; and she raised up her head and she smiled, as a Queen On the day of her crowning, so bland and serene. “A moment,” she said, “and the dead shall revive; The giants are failing, the Saints are alive; I am coming to rescue my home and my reign, And Peter and Philip are close in my train.”
St John Henry Newman The Pilgrim Queen
This prophesised re-awakening of Little Walsingham started to physically materialise when in 1896 Charlotte Pearson Boyd bought the little Slipper Chapel at Hughton St Giles and restored it in 1897.
Then in 1922 the local Anglican vicar, Fr Hope Patten, felt inspired to made a new statue of Our Lady of Walsingham based on an image he found depicted on an ancient seal of the medieval Priory. In this exploratory work in Walsingham Fr Hope also found remnants of a filled-in well, clogged up with Tudor waste, including childrens’ shoes and household items. He lovingly set about restoring this also removing the waste and housing it in a new shrine. This Anglican shrine now also includes a replica of the Nazareth Holy House and you can find more information here: https://www.walsinghamanglican.org.uk/
The restoration work has continued and pilgrims are starting to return and at the time of writing Walsingham attracts more than 150,000 pilgrims a year from the UK and overseas. Even the little old Slipper Chapel (once a rejected stable house) was raised to the status of a minor basilica by Pope Francis and is now called The National Catholic Shrine and Basilica of Our Lady.
The title of ‘Our Lady’s Dowry’ has also recently resurfaced when in COVID lockdown, March 29th 2020, over 530,000 people from across the whole of the UK took part in a rededication of the country as the ‘Dowry of Mary’ in the Dowry Tour.
https://www.walsingham.org.uk/rededication/.
So maybe these prophecies are unfolding in our time and Our Lady is indeed returning to England and the pieces of this complex jigsaw are mysteriously emerging.
Another Walsingham treasure was the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham and Jesus that was taken to London a burned in the Reformation. But was it really taken away and burned? Or was it instead, carefully rescued from the hordes in 1538. There is a claim that the Langham Madonna in London’s V&A museum could be the original Our Lady of Walsingham – see story here: https://livingchurch.org/2019/08/09/original-our-lady-of-walsingham-statue-may-be-in-londons-v-a/.
It is also as though the ancient hedgerows and pathways are calling out and ancient pilgrim routes to Walsingham are being discovered, unearthed and re-used – see story here:
This is not the end of this story, but is goes to show that Olde Chronicles are not just buried in the past, but slowly emerge and continue to influence this generation, the next and generations to come. Will Walsingham grow to become a major pilgrimage like Lourdes or Fatima are today and as it once was? Will England be re-established as “Our Lady’s Dowry” and return to Mary as the prophecies have foretold?
I’ve used a mediaeval song called The Pinson Ballad to tell the story of Our Lady of Walsingham which was written about 1460. You can find The Pinson Ballad in full here:
