Walsingham

Walsingham is a civil parish in the North Norfolk district, in Norfolk, England, notable for its religious shrines in honour of Mary, mother of Jesus. The parish also contains the ruins of two medieval monastic houses. Walsingham lies 27 miles (43 kilometres) northwest of Norwich and approximately 26 miles (42 kilometres) north-east of King's Lynn. The civil parish includes Little Walsingham and Great Walsingham, together with Egmere, a depopulated medieval village. It has an area of 18.98 square kilometres (7.33 square miles). At the 2011 census, it had a population of 819. Walsingham is a historically significant Christian pilgrimage site, renowned for its devotion to Our Lady of Walsingham. According to tradition, in 1061, the Anglo-Saxon noblewoman Lady Richeldis de Faverches experienced a Marian vision in which the Virgin Mary commissioned her to build a replica of the Holy Family's house in Nazareth in commemoration of the Annunciation. The Holy House in Walsingham, first constructed in the 11th century, was paneled with wood and housed a wooden statue of the enthroned Virgin Mary holding the child Jesus on her lap. Among its relics was a phial reputed to contain the Virgin's milk. Walsingham became one of England's most prominent pilgrimage sites, thriving throughout the Middle Ages as a centre of Marian devotion until the English Reformation in 1538, when the shrine was dismantled. After centuries of decline, pilgrimage to Walsingham saw a revival in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly with the restoration of the Catholic and Anglican shrines in the 20th century.