Walsingham, a village in Norfolk, was among the greatest pilgrimage destinations of medieval England, and it is now, unusually, the site of two separate restorations of the same medieval devotion.
England's Nazareth
The shrine originated in the eleventh century when, according to tradition, a noblewoman named Richeldis was granted a vision of the Virgin Mary directing her to build a replica of the house of the Holy Family at Nazareth. The Holy House and its statue of Our Lady of Walsingham drew pilgrims, including kings, for centuries, making Walsingham one of the four great pilgrimage centres of medieval Christendom alongside Rome, Jerusalem and Santiago. The shrine was destroyed at the Reformation and the image burned.
Two restorations
In the early twentieth century the devotion was revived, remarkably, twice within a few years by rival churches. An Anglican shrine was re-established in the village, rebuilding a Holy House, and the Roman Catholic national shrine was set up at the medieval Slipper Chapel about a mile away, where pilgrims had traditionally removed their shoes for the last stretch. An Orthodox presence joined them, including a church in the converted former railway station and a chapel within the Anglican grounds.
Rivalry into reconciliation
The two shrines began as rivals but have converged on shared and reciprocal pilgrimage, so that Walsingham is now one of the few places where the division of the English Reformation is both visible on the ground and actively being worked at through ecumenical cooperation. It remains a major and living centre of Marian pilgrimage in England, drawing Anglicans, Roman Catholics and Orthodox to the same small village.