In the years just before the Norman conquest an event occurred that would alter the face of English Christianity for ever. For in 1061, the Lady of the Manor of a small village in North Norfolk, received in a vision a visit from the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ. Mary appeared with Jesus to Lady Richeldis de Faverches, and asked her to build a copy of the Holy house at Nazareth, in which the boy Jesus had grown up. To help her with her efforts, Mary gave Richeldis the exact measurements. The site was indicated by the springing up of a holy well.
At the reformation, the shrine was swept away in a fit of anger and greed of the king, despite the protests of its guardians at the Augustinian Priory, which had grown up around it. The Prior, Nicholas Mileham was, like many others, cruelly hanged for his faith. He is commemorated today.
Despite the closure of the shrine and the assault on the faith of England, nobody could completely extinguish the fame of what had become known as 'England's Nazareth'. A slow stream of pilgrims still made their way to what was, after all, still a holy place. One of them was John Wesley, who, when he preached in the Methodist chapel (which still stands) lamented the destruction of the shrine linking it with the decay of the national religion that he found all around him.
