According to tradition the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to Richeldis de Faverches in the Eleventh Century.

Richeldis was shown the home in Nazareth where the angel appeared to Mary and was asked to build a copy of the Holy House. A small wooden house was built in Walsingham for people to visit and ponder the life of Jesus and his Holy Family.

Huge numbers of pilgrims made their way to the Holy House including Kings and Queens, rich and poor. In later years it would be surrounded by a grander church.

Henry VIII maintained the royal tradition of providing for a king’s chaplain who would celebrate Mass at Walsingham and pray for the monarch. He came on pilgrimage in 1511 and paid for a candle to be kept permanently lit in the shrine. The King’s Candle must have been very large, the accounts record that each time it cost 46s 8d. 

After his break with Rome in 1534 Henry ended all pilgrimage to Walsingham. In 1536 the Holy House was closed and razed to the ground to remove all trace of the shrine. The statue was taken to London to be desecrated and burnt. The King’s Book of Payments pointedly records for 29 September 1538, ‘For the King’s Candle before Our Lady of Walsingham, and the Prior there for his salary, NIL.

The 19th Century saw renewed interest in Walsingham. Miss Charlotte Boyd (at the time an Anglican) bought the medieval Slipper Chapel (1896) which had been used in turn as a blacksmith’s forge, a barn, a poor-house and finally, a cow-shed.

The first modern pilgrimage took place in 1897, they prayed outside the closed Slipper Chapel and visited the site of the shrine.

The Slipper Chapel was finally opened for Mass in 1934 and development began around it to form a new Roman Catholic Shrine. The large chapel of Reconciliation was built in 1981 to accommodate the ever-increasing number of pilgrims.

It is appropriate to think about Walsingham at this time of year as we celebrate the birth of Jesus and on the Sunday after Christmas celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family. We think about the young Jesus being brought up in a very ordinary home.

In Nazareth, the God who made us grew and learnt as we do. Raised by his Mother and Joseph he lived in a loving family setting before us an example of humility for us to copy.