Walsingham - England's Nazareth

History of Walsingham

England’s Nazareth

Walsingham has been a place of pilgrimage since the Middle Ages — one of the four great shrines of medieval Christendom, ranking alongside Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago da Compostella.

The Vision

In 1061 the lady of the manor, Richeldis de Faverches, had a series of visions of the Virgin Mary, who showed her the house in Nazareth where the angel Gabriel made his revelation of the forthcoming birth of Jesus. Our Lady asked Richeldis to build a replica of the holy house here in Walsingham.
Founded at the time of the Crusades when it was impossible to visit the Holy Land, English Christians were able to visit ‘Nazareth’ in their own country. Walsingham became the premier shrine to Our Lady and around it grew a large monastery.

A medieval marvel

By 1153 the Augustinian Priory of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary was established next to the holy house. And later, around 1347, the Franciscan Friars, under the patronage of Elizabeth de Burgh, Countess of Clare, established a small friary in the village.

During medieval times, Walsingham was visited by thousands of pilgrims from all over Britain and Europe, including nearly all the kings and queens of England from Henry III (c1226), who really put it on the map with twelve visits. Royal visits continued right up to Henry VIII (1511), who came twice.

Packed with pilgrims

The entire medieval village was dominated by ecclesiastical buildings and fine medieval timber-framed jetted buildings — still visible today — that provided hostelries and shops serving the pilgrims who poured into the village. Walsingham’s highly unusual grid pattern of streets is a direct result of this, an early example of a planning system, for a village catering principally for visitors. Around 1252 a charter was granted to hold a weekly market and an annual fair.
By the fourteenth century, so many pilgrims were visiting the shrine that the priory was enlarged and the little wooden holy house was encased in a larger stone chapel. Only the vast East Window of the priory remains to give us some idea of its scale and magnificence.

The effect of the Reformation

Then came the Reformation in 1538. Walsingham’s principal trade came to an abrupt end. The priory and the friary were dissolved and all property handed over to the King’s Commissioners. The famous statue of Our Lady of Walsingham was taken to London to be publicly burnt. Nothing today remains of the original shrine but the site is marked on the lawn in the Abbey grounds.
Walsingham evolves Walsingham changed course. It became a flourishing market town and legal centre, with quarter sessions held in the Shirehall until 1861 and petty sessions until 1971. Originally a hostelry and part of the Augustian Priory, the Shirehall was adapted into a fine example of Georgian architecture. It is now a museum.
During the same period many of the older timber-framed houses were re-fronted with Georgian facades.

Model prison

In 1787 a John Howard ‘model’ prison was built for eight prisoners, replacing an existing Elizabethan House of Correction. The prison was enlarged in 1822 and five tread wheels were added in 1823. The prison was closed in 1861.

The railway arrives

In the late 1800s, a branch line of the GER railway was built to cater for Walsingham and Wells-next-the-Sea, at a cost of £70,000. It opened in December 1857 and remained until October 1964, falling victim to Beeching’s savage rail cuts.

Pilgrimage awakened

The pilgrimage revival began in the late 19th century, with the first modern pilgrimage taking place on 20th August 1897 to the Slipper Chapel, a mile outside the village in Houghton St Giles. This is now the Roman Catholic National Shrine of Our Lady.
In 1921 Fr Alfred Hope Patten was appointed vicar of Walsingham. He was determined to re-establish Walsingham as a shrine to Our Lady and set up a statue of her in the parish church of St Mary. By the early 1930s, Fr Patten had built a new shrine containing a modern Holy House, just outside the Priory walls.
Pilgrimages increased in popularity throughout the 20th century. Today Walsingham is one of the most significant spiritual places in the country, visited each year by around 350,000 pilgrims of all ages and backgrounds.
The wheel has come full circle.

SOURCE:
http://www.walsinghamvillage.org/about/history-of-walsingham/

In medieval times, Walsingham was one of the most important pilgrimage sites in the world to the Blessed Virgin Mary and a rival to even Rome.In the year 1061, Lady Richeldis, owner of Walsingham manor, had a vision in which she was taken by the Virgin Mary and shown the house in Nazareth where Gabriel had announced the news of the birth of Jesus. The Virgin Mary asked her to build a replica of the house in Walsingham. It was a simple wooden structure and some years later, a priory was built around the house. This became a place of pilgrimage - England's Nazareth - even drawing Kings, unfortunately including Henry VIII, who brought about its destruction in 1538. The priory was wrecked and the Walsingham Madonna was taken to London and burned. Walsingham remained in ruins for almost 300 years.

The Priory of Walsingham

A priory of Augustinian canons was established on the site in 1153, a few miles from the sea in the northern part of Norfolk and it grew in importance over the following centuries. Founded in the time of Edward the Confessor, the Chapel of Our Lady of Walsingham was confirmed to the Augustinian Canons a century later and enclosed within the Priory. From the first, the Shrine of Our Lady was a famous place of pilgrimage and the faithful came from all parts of England and the Continent until the destruction of the Priory by King Henry VIII in 1538. To this day the main road of the pilgrims through Newmarket, Brandon and Fakenham is still called the Palmers' (Pilgrims') Way.

Many were the gifts of lands, rents and churches to the canons of Walsingham and many were the miracles sought and claimed at the shrine. Several English kings visited the shrine, including Henry III (1231 or 1241), Edward I (1289 and 1296), Edward II in 1315, Edward III in 1361, Henry VI in 1455, Henry VII in 1487 and finally Henry VIII, who was later responsible for its destruction when the shrine and abbey perished in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Erasmus, in fulfilment of a vow, made a pilgrimage from Cambridge in 1511 and left as his offering a set of Greek verses expressive of his piety. Thirteen years later he wrote his colloquy on pilgrimages, wherein the wealth and magnificence of Walsingham are set forth and some of the reputed miracles rationalised. Two of Henry VIII's wives Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn made pilgrimages to the shrine.

In 1537 while the last Prior, Richard Vowell, was paying obsequious respect to Thomas Cromwell, the Sub-Prior, Nicholas Milcham, was charged with conspiring to rebel against the suppression of the lesser monasteries and, on flimsy evidence, was convicted of high treason and hanged outside the Priory walls. In July 1538, Prior Vowell assented to the destruction of Walsingham Priory and assisted the king's commissioners in the removal of the figure of Our Lady and many of the gold and silver ornaments and in the general spoliation of the shrine. For his ready compliance the Prior received a pension of 100 pounds a year, a large sum in those days, while 15 of the canons received pensions varying from four to six pounds. With the shrine dismantled and the priory destroyed, the site was sold by order of Henry VIII to Thomas Sidney for 90 pounds and a private mansion was subsequently erected on the spot. Eleven people, including the Sub-Prior of the Abbey, were hanged, drawn and quartered. Gold and silver from the shrine was taken to London along with the statue of Mary and Jesus which was later burnt.

The fall of the monastery gave rise to the anonymous Elizabethan ballad, 'The Walsingham Lament', on what the Norfolk people felt at the loss of their glorious Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. The ballad includes the lines:

Weep Weep O Walsingam,

Whose dayes are nights,

Blessings turned to blasphemies,

Holy deeds to despites
Sinne is where our Ladye sate,

Heaven turned is to helle;

Satan sitthe where our Lord did swaye,

Walsingham O farewell!

SOURCE:  http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=7449627371