Wikipedia
Walsingham is a village (actually two conjoined villages: Little Walsingham and Great Walsingham) in the English county of Norfolk. The village is famed for its religious shrines in honour of the Virgin Mary and as a major pilgrimage centre. It also contains the ruins of two medieval monastic houses.
The civil parish, which includes the two Walsinghams, together with the depopulated medieval village of Egmere , has an area of 18.98 km² and in the 2001 census had a population of 864 in 397 households, the population decreasing to 819 at the 2011 census. For the purposes of local government the parish falls within the district of North Norfolk.
Walsingham became a major centre of pilgrimage. In 1061, according to the Walsingham legend, a Saxon noblewoman, Richeldis de Faverches, had a vision of the Virgin Mary in which she was instructed to build a replica of the house of the Holy Family in Nazareth in honour of the Annunciation. Her family name does not appear in the Domesday Book.
When it was built, the Holy House in Walsingham was panelled with wood and contained a wooden statue of an enthroned Virgin Mary with the child Jesus seated on her lap. Among its relics was a phial of the Virgin's milk.
Walsingham became one of northern Europe's great places of pilgrimage and remained so through most of the Middle Ages.
Walsingham is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
- Thomas Walsingham, (died ) an English chronicler
- Robert Walsingham (shipwight), coxswain of the Sea Venture and shipwright of the Patience
- Thomas Walsingham (literary patron), a patron of Christopher Marlowe
- Thomas de Grey, 6th Baron Walsingham (1843–1919), British politician and amateur entomologist
- Francis Walsingham, (1532–1590) the spymaster of Queen Elizabeth I of England
- Robert Walsingham (pirate), 17th-century Anglo-Turkish English pirate
- Robert Boyle-Walsingham (1736–1780), also known as Robert Walsingham, English politician, MP for Fowey and Knaresborough
- Any of the Barons Walsingham
- Melusina von der Schulenburg, Countess of Walsingham, an illegitimate daughter of King George I of Great Britain and Ehrengard Melusine von der Schulenburg, Duchess of Kendal and Munster
- Edmund Walsingham ( – 1550), Lieutenant of the Tower of London during the reign of King Henry VIII
Walsingham was a popular Elizabethan ballad tune. There are various versions of the lyrics, which relate to a pilgrimage site, suppressed during the English Reformation. The tune provided inspiration for Elizabethan composers, notably William Byrd. Byrd wrote a set of keyboard variations called Have with Yow to Walsingame ("Be off to Walsingham"). In some sources it is called "As I went to Walsingham", the first line of the following quatrain. As I went to Walsingham, To the shrine with speed, Met I with a jolly palmer In a pilgrim's weed.