Known as “England’s Nazareth”, the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham supposedly originated in 1061 with a noble widow named Lady Richeldis. According to the legend, Mary asked Lady Richeldis to build her a chapel and led her “in spirit” to Nazareth to show her the place where the Archangel Gabriel had greeted her. She directed Richeldis to take measurements of the house so that she could build one like it at Walsingham. In this spot, Mary explained, the people could celebrate the Annunciation, the “root of mankind’s gracious redemption” and would find help in all their needs.
Richeldis did as she was instructed, and over the years, many miracles were attributed to site of the chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Walsingham. But the Protestant Reformation stamped out such Catholic devotions and the shrine eventually fell to ruin.
A wealthy Anglican woman named Charlotte Boyd restored the shrine in the 19th century, including the “Slipper Chapel”, which was a small chapel about a mile away from the shrine where pilgrims traveling from London to Walsingham would stop to remove their slippers before walking the rest of the way barefoot.
The Catholic Church showed little interest in the shrine until 1897 when Pope Leo XIII re-established the Slipper Chapel as a Roman Catholic shrine which is now the National Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham.
Throughout the twentieth century, a trickle of pilgrims became a flood for both the Anglican and Catholic Shrine where there is frequently an ecumenical dimension to pilgrimages to Walsingham. Pilgrims of all faiths stop in the Catholic Slipper Chapel before walking to the Holy House at the Anglican shrine.
Because Walsingham is located just a few miles from the Norfolk coast, she is also known as “The Virgin by the Sea” and her quiet and prayerful sanctuary seen as a metaphor for those suffering from the storms and shipwreck of life who come to find calm waters and safe harbor in her loving arms.
For Reflection:
Read Luke 1: 26-45. As you read, think of Our Lady’s description of the Annunciation as “the root of mankind’s gracious redemption.” What inspirations and insights come to you through this prayerful meditation? Journal them.
