Our Lady of Walsingham

Part of a pilgrim badge from the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham at Walsingham Priory. This open work badge depicts part of the Holy House – a small chapel built around 1061 in honour of the Virgin Mary at Walsingham. The chapel was built by a lady called Richelde of Fervaques and was meant to be a replica of the house at Nazareth where the Angel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary that she was to give birth to Christ. The design of the house was said to have been revealed by the Virgin to Richelde in a dream. It became the focus of pilgrimage at Walsingham and the priory was built around it to look after it. The house was kept intact for 400 years and contained many treasures of the shrine. Thousands of pilgrims would have filed through to worship there. This badge fragment shows the left-hand side of the two-storey house and the statue of the Virgin Mary inside.

The shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk was a popular pilgrimage destination in the medieval period, especially after Henry III made a series of pilgrimages there in the 13th century.