Patrick Comerford
Pilgrims have been visiting Little Walsingham in Norfolk since the 11th century to visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. Richeldis de Faverches had a series of visions in 1061, in which the Virgin Mary asked her to build a replica of the house in Nazareth where the Angel Gabriel told the Virgin Mary at the Annunciation that she could conceive the Christ Child.
The ‘holy house’ built by Richelda de Faverches at Walsingham became one of the four principal destinations for pilgrims throughout Europe, after only Rome, Jerusalem and Santiago da Compostella. The popularity of Walsingham was boosted because it was impossible at the time for Christians to visit Nazareth, which was then in the hands of Muslim rulers.
An Augustinian priory was built beside the holy house In 1153, and is known today as Walsingham Abbey. Visitors still flock to the priory, but few pilgrims realise that there is another mediaeval monastic site just a few minutes away.
The spectacular ruins of the 14th century Franciscan friary are a short walk south from the abbey grounds, at the entrance to Little Walsingham. Walsingham Franciscan Friary or Greyfriars was founded by Elizabeth de Burgh (1295-1360), Countess of Clare, in 1347.
Elizabeth de Burgh was a wealthy aristocrat with royal connections, a granddaughter of Edward I, and a powerful magnate who managed vast estates in England, Wales, and Ireland. She was widowed three times by age of 26, and spent her final 38 years as an independent administrator, philanthropist, and patron, most notably founding Clare College, Cambridge, where I stayed in 2016.
In 1308, she married her first husband, John de Burgh, Earl of Ulster, who died 1313. She married her second husband, Theobald de Verdun, former Justiciar of Ireland, in 1316, but he died later that year. In 1317, she married her third husband Roger Damory, who died in 1322.
The Augustinian canons of Walsingham Priory objected to the new friary she founded. They fears the Franciscans would divert the pilgrims and so diminish the Priory’s income from Mass stipends, burial fees and pilgrim gifts. In addition, the Augustinians knew the Franciscans had special privileges, including the right to preach outside their friary and to hear confessions.
Their fears were probably well founded, for the site Elizabeth selected for her friary was at the entrance to Walsingham, and would become the first holy site reached by pilgrims making their way from the Slipper Chapel to Walsingham, on the last mile of the pilgrim route.
The Augustinian canons petitioned the countess, King Edward III, Queen Phillipa of Hainault, and even the Pope, asking them to refuse permission for the new friary. They were refused on all sides, and the friary was approved on 1 February 1347. Elizabeth de Burgh received a license to establish a friary with 12 friars under a warden, and over four acres of land. This was later extended by another three acres and still later to just over 13 acres.
The Franciscan friary was built to the south-west of the priory grounds, with its main entrance on the south-west corner of the market place.
Elizabeth died in Hertfordshire on 4 November 1360, and the rivalry between the two religious houses continues in the centuries that followed. When the Augustinians of the priory held a market outside the priory gates in Common Place, King Edward III granted the Franciscan friars the right to hold their own market on Fridays , with each trying to outdo the other to attract merchants to buy from their stalls.
The friary continued for almost another 200 years, until it was suppressed in 1538 during his Dissolution of the Monastic Houses. The buildings were torn down and the contents sold. There is a record that the Guild of the Annunciation of Blessed Mary at Walsingham bought the Great Bell of the friary church, and it is possible that the bell was recast as the large bell now hanging in Saint Mary and All Saints Church, the Church of England parish church in Little Walsingham.
The memory of the friars’ market continues in the name of the Friday Market in the centre of the village. The Methodist chapel in Little Walsingham was built on part of the original friary site in 1793-1794. That connection continues in the name of Friars’ Quire, originally built in 1890 as the Methodist Sunday School Room but is now a private house.
The friary site was excavated in the 1930s and the ruins stabilised. It is estimated that the friary church was 198 ft in length. Finds included mediaeval pottery sherds, carved stone mouldings, mediaeval tiles, and fragments of painted glass. In addition, a large number of 17th and 18th century clay pipes were discovered.
The friary church is almost gone save for a section of the chancel wall, but the friary’s domestic buildings and guest house still stand to almost full height. Together they form the most complete remains of a Franciscan house in Britain.
Only a small part of the chancel wall survives from the friary church, but the finest domestic ruins in Norfolk remain, including the chapter house, the friars’ cloister, the preaching cloister, the kitchen, and a large guest house that provided accommodation for poor and sick pilgrims.
An excavation of the guest hall shows it began as a ground floor hall with two hearths, and later an upper floor was inserted, reached by a grand staircase from the cloister. One of the windows of the original ground floor hall was then used as a cart entrance.
An early Victorian house was built against the south end of the friary guesthouse in 1840. The boundary wall facing Fakenham Road incorporates blocked gateways built of re-used stone and brick.
The Friary stands on the Walsingham Estate but generally it is not open to the public. However, the ruins can easily be viewed through a gate on Fakenham Road, just south of Church Street.
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