Our Lady of Walsingham - Norfolk, England and

Grace Church, Sheboygan, Wisconsin

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In 1601, the Lady Richeldis de Faverches, lady of the manor near the village of Walsingham, Norfolk, England, was taken in spirit to Nazareth. There, Our Lady asked her to build a replica, in Norfolk, of the Holy House where she had been born, grew up and received the Annunciation of Christ's impending birth. Lady Richeldis immediately constructed a house, 23' 6" x 12' 10", according to the plan given to her. Its fame slowly spread and in 1150 a group of Augustinian Canons built a priory beside it. Its fame continued to grow and for centuries it was a point of pilgrimage for all classes and the recipient of many expensive gifts.

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By order of King Henry VIII, during the Reformation in 1538, the House was stripped of its valuables and its statue of the Virgin taken to London to be burned.

The present statue of Our Lady was enshrined in Walsingham in 1922, beginning an era renewed pilgrimage and cooperation at the shrine between Catholics and Anglicans.

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In 1929 the parish priest, Fr. A. Parker Curtiss, launched the idea of installing the first exact copy of Our Lady of Walsingham at Grace Church. Since that time, there have been daily prayers said at our American Proto-Shrine referencing the prayer requests brought by our parishioners and by the many annual pilgrims that visit every fall when the Grace Walsingham Pilgrimage is held.

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