England’s greatest shrine of Our Lady, one among almost 100 in medieval times when devotion to Our Lady was at its height, began in 1061 as a wooden chapel in the Norfolk countryside. The lady of the manor, Richeldis, felt called to honour Mary, and the result was the building in Walsingham of an exact replica of the house in Nazareth where Mary had lived as a child and where she was asked by the angel to be the Mother of the Lord. It was to be a place where people would remember Mary’s joy at this annunciation, and where those who called on her in distress would find help. The 15th-century ballad describing its beginnings laid emphasis on the Gospel miracles of the Messiah: here “the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised”. It adds that mariners came safe to port. (Walsingham is close to the sea.)