Our Lady of Walsingham

The Walsingham shrine traces its origin to 1061, when a noblewoman called Richeldis de Faverches is said to have been transported in spirit to Nazareth and shown the house of the Annunciation. Commanded to build a replica in Norfolk, she chose the site by following a miraculous dew path. The resulting Holy House became the centre of one of the most significant Marian shrines in Europe.

Throughout the medieval period, Walsingham drew pilgrims from across Britain and the continent. Henry III, Edward I, Edward II, Edward III, Henry VII, and Henry VIII all visited on pilgrimage — Henry VIII on foot, barefoot for the last stage, before his break with Rome. Erasmus came in 1512 and described the shrine in detail. The town's single main street was lined with stalls selling badges, ampullae of holy water, and the accumulated commerce of five centuries of pilgrimage.

At the Dissolution, Henry VIII ordered the destruction of the shrine. The statue of Our Lady was taken to London and burned. The Milky Way — which in England was sometimes called the Walsingham Way, because pilgrims navigated by it at night — lost its destination. The shrine was rebuilt in the twentieth century, in both Anglican and Roman Catholic forms, and Walsingham today remains one of the most active pilgrimage sites in England, the Milky Way still pointing north toward Norfolk.