Our Lady of Walsingham

THE TRADITIONAL STORY of Walsingham tells how, in 1061, during the reign of St Edward the Confessor, Richeldis de Faverches, the lady of the manor of Walsingham Parva, saw a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Richeldis was taken in spirit to Nazareth where Our Lady told her to build a shrine in honour of the Holy House of the Annunciation, and to build it near a spring of water which miraculously appeared. Our Lady promised: ‘All who are in any way distressed or in need, let them seek me in that little house you have made at Walsingham. To all that seek me there shall be given succour. And there at Walsingham in this little house shall be held in remembrance the great joy of my Salutation when Saint Gabriel told me that I should, through humility, become the Mother of God’s Son’.

Many other stories were attached to the beginnings of the shrine by later generations, but the fact is that Richeldis built a small wooden shrine and pilgrims started coming to Walsingham. People found that God and the things of God seemed very real to them in that place. They found that they prayed better and prayer was answered. They believed, too, that wonderful healings and blessings came to them when, with faith, they used the waters of the holy well. It was a simple age, but we are told that God gives great blessings to the simple and the humble.

Walsingham was, until its destruction by King Henry VIII, and has been, since its restoration at the end of the 19th Century, the greatest of all the shrines of Our Lord’s Mother in England, which used to be known throughout Christendom as the Dowry of Mary, because of the love of the English people for the Blessed Virgin. All over England pilgrimages were made with great devotion to shrines renowned for their splendour and magnificence. Among all these sanctuaries of Our Lady, Walsingham, a small village in the East Anglian county of Norfolk, was of outstanding importance. It was indeed the most frequented shrine in the whole of the country, not to be rivalled even by St Thomas of Canterbury, which drew pilgrims from all over Europe. Walsingham was popularly spoken of as ‘England’s Nazareth’, and it was looked upon as a little bit of the Holy Land in England. It became a place of prayer, grace, healing, miraculous cures, penance, reparation and reconciliation. Walsingham ranked among the four major places of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, beside Jersualem, Rome and Santiago de Compostella. It was the only one dedicated to the Virgin Mother of God.

Sadly, in 1538, as part of Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries, the great Augustinian priory, which had housed the Holy House and the Image of Our Lady of Walsingham for four centuries since 1153, was desecrated and destroyed. The famous statue of Our Lady was removed and taken to Chelsea and burned. Walsingham was left in desolation and fell into dereliction and anonymity.

It wasn’t until the late 19th century that interest in restoring the honour of Mary at Walsingham was reignited. An Anglican convert, Charlotte Pearson Boyd (1837-1906) purchased the old Slipper Chapel, a mile away from the old shrine. In 1934 it became the National Shrine of Our Lady in England, and Mass was once again offered there. In 1921 Fr Alfred Hope Patten (1885-1958) was appointed Vicar of St Mary’s, the Anglican parish church of Little Walsingham. He had possessed a deep devotion to Our Lady since childhood and he firmly believed that God would use him to help rebuild a holy place destroyed during the Reformation. In July 1922 he placed a replica statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, modelled on the medieval seal of the shrine, in the Guilds Chapel of St Mary’s.

Despite the hostility to Fr Hope Patten’s restoration of the devotion to Our Lady of Walsingham from his ecclesiastical superiors, his strength of faith, prayer and vision never wavered. As numbers of Anglican pilgrims increased over the years it became necessary, in 1931, to translate the image of Our Lady of Walsingham to a newly-constructed Holy House within a shrine church, opposite the ruins of the medieval priory, and on the site of a spring of water, which became the new holy well. Fr Hope Patten intended this shrine to serve as a ‘living act of reparation’ for the sin of disunity of the Church. Embedded in the walls of the Holy House, as an act of reparation, are stones from the major monastic houses, suppressed during the Reformation. The altar was built from stones which formed the original Walsingham priory.

Devotion to Our Lady under this ancient title is dear to members of the Ordinariate. In England and Wales the Ordinariate is named in her honour, and in Canada and the United States, Our Lady of Walsingham serves as our Patroness, with our Principal Church in Houston, Texas dedicated to her, complete with replicas of the Holy House and the remaining western arch of the dissolved Walsingham Priory church.

Please visit the official website of the Catholic National Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham here for further information on the history and spirituality of Walsingham, the latest news and information on the work of the shrine, and opportunities for pilgrimage and retreat.

Fr Kenyon has led four parish pilgrimages to Walsingham from Canada. Pictures from the May 2024 pilgrimage will be available soon!

Prayers to Our Lady of Walsingham

O BLESSED VIRGIN MARY, Our Lady of Walsingham, Mother of God and our most gentle Queen and Mother, look down in mercy upon us, our parish, our country, our homes, and our families, and upon all who greatly hope and trust in thee. By thee it was that Jesus, our Saviour and hope, was given to the world; and he has given thee to us that we may hope still more. Plead for us thy children, whom thou didst receive and accept at the foot of the Cross, O sorrowful Mother. Intercede for our separated brethren, that with us in the one true fold they may be united to the Chief Shepherd, the Vicar of thy Son. Pray for us all, dear Mother, that by faith, fruitful in good works, we all may be made worthy to see and praise God, together with thee in our heavenly home. Amen.