Richeldis de Faverches

Richeldis de Faverches, also known as Rychold, was a devout English Christian noblewoman credited with establishing the original shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, following a purported apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

One night, Richeldis heard singing and went out to her garden where she found that the little house had been completed about two hundred yards from the site of the original construction.

Before leaving to join the Second Crusade, Lord Geoffrey de Faverches had left the Holy House and its grounds to his chaplain, Edwin, to establish a religious order to care for the chapel of Our Lady of Walsingham.

As travelling abroad became more difficult during the time of the Crusades, Walsingham became a place of pilgrimage, ranking alongside Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago de Compostela.

[5] The historian Henrietta Leyser also rejects the date of 1061, arguing that Richeldis flourished around 1130 and the family is not recorded in the Domesday Book as landowners in the area.