Walsingham

	A mediaeval fraud that still attracts pilgrims today

The oddest things grip the imagination: shortly before the Norman invasion, a Saxon noblewoman built what she claimed was a replica of the house in which Christ had lived as a child. These days, I suppose, we would call it a folly. For some reason, however, the "Holy House of Walsingham" seized the popular imagination and became one of the most popular pilgrim destinations in Britain.

Today it is again a place of pilgrimage - but with two competing shrines. The original Holy House has disappeared and even its foundations, excavated back in the 1960s, are buried beneath a lawn, but a replica of the replica has been erected in an Anglican church in the middle of town. Catholic devotion centres on a huge church a mile outside of town.

I admit to mixed feelings about the place. There was an air of devotion and peace about both shrines, but it always seems sad to me when people appear to believe that God will listen to them more if they pray in a particular place - whether that place is Walsingham, Jerusalem or anywhere else.