Walsingham
civil parish in North Norfolk, Norfolk, England
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.
The public source identifies “Walsingham” as civil parish in North Norfolk, Norfolk, England. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Walsingham, civil and parish.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q739666. VIAF identifies the subject as 139608779. The Library of Congress control number is n84168335. Authority coordinates are 52.894, 0.874. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2011 and 1061.
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This entry incorporates text from “Walsingham” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.