Norfolk shrine marks 950 years of pilgrimage
 The Shrine of Our Lady in Walsingham, North Norfolk,which is visited by around 100,000 pilgrims every year, is celebrating its 950th anniversary with various events being held throughout the year.
The National Roman Catholic Shrine and the Anglican Shrine, together with other Christian communities of Walsingham have planned an attractive and varied programme of events, concerts and celebrations until September.
For June 10 to 12 there is a special exhibition which marks the timeline of the village which survived the Norman invasion, plagues, famines and the Civil War to become the second most important place of pilgrimage in England after Canterbury.
The exhibition marks the centuries since the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared in the dreams of Walsingham widow the Lady Richeldis de Faverches in 1061.
It sparked a religious fervour which brought kings, queens and international fame to the tiny Norfolk village – and still draws over 1000,000 people a year to Walsingham.
In the dream, the Virgin Mary asked Lady Richeldis to rebuild the house in Nazareth where an angel had revealed she was to be the mother of a messiah. The Nazareth house was faithfully built in Norfolk, on land which is now part of the Abbey Gardens at Walsingham.
A spring of water bubbled up from underground and local people began to report being cured of illnesses. Barren women fell pregnant. Pilgrims arrived to pray for cures or to be blessed with children.
The visions were the start of the miraculous rise of a tiny farming community to become one of the great religious sites of Europe.
The exhibition this weekend, charts the story of the shrine village and also take visitors more than 1,000 years further back to a Roman temple and nearby Iron Age camps. It will also celebrate 21st century Walsingham.
Tim McDonald, manager of Walsingham’s Roman Catholic Shrine and chairman of the local history society, said: “We are hugely excited about this exhibition. It presents a significant sweep of the village’s history and shows Walsingham is much more than just a place of pilgrimage.”
The history group has put together a fascinating timeline of Walsingham’s story, taking visitors from the very earliest artefacts and landscape clues of a distant past, up to the present. The anniversary exhibition also links events in Walsingham with what was happening in the wider world.
The Walsingham 950 exhibition is in Little Walsingham Parish Hall, High Street, on Friday, June 10 (10am-6pm,) Saturday, June 11 (10am-5pm) and Sunday, June 12 (10am-5pm.) Admission is £2. Renowned story-teller Hugh Lupton will also be telling a couple of stories during the exhibition.
Read more about this story at on EDP24.
Pictured above is a beautiful cross which marks the 12th Station of the outdoor Via Crucis at the Catholic shrine at Walsingham. The cross itself is one carried by one of the early groups of Student Cross, an ecumenical group of university students who walk to Walsingham every Holy Week. Picture by Lawrence OP.
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