The National Pilgrimage

The churchmanship of St Mary and All Saints became significantly more Catholic in 1882 when the musician-priest George Ratcliffe Woodward was appointed Vicar.

[3] At the end of his incumbency in 1920, Reeves hosted a pilgrimage for the Feast of Corpus Christi during which the Eucharist was celebrated with a procession and incense.

[4] Patten, who arrived in Walsingham as Vicar in 1921, was a firm Anglican Papalist, convinced of the need to restore pre-Reformation devotions.

On 6 July 1922, with great ceremony and the ringing of church bells, a copy of the throned and crowned mediaeval image of Our Lady of Walsingham was revealed in a side chapel.

The pilgrimage began at the London Anglo-Catholic church of St Magnus-the-Martyr on the Tuesday in Whitsundtide,[7] with the Marian hymns Ave Maris Stella, Ye who own the faith of Jesus and Her virgin eyes.

[12] The first episcopal attendance at one of the May pilgrimages was in 1925, by Mowbray O'Rorke, who had resigned as Bishop of Accra (in what was then the Gold Coast) the previous year.

[13] The Bishop of Norwich, Bertram Pollock, was unimpressed by the revival of Marianism, and, in 1930, insisted that Patten remove the image from the church.

Undeterred, and with financial support from the Anglo-Catholic layman Sir William Milner Bt, Patten bought a plot of land elsewhere in the village to build a new Holy House enclosed in a small church.

Bishop O'Rorke, who had led celebrations for the Translation of the image in 1931, blessed the new nave and chapels on 6 June 1938, which was Whit Monday.

[19] War-time travel restrictions had been partially relaxed by the end of that year, and a pilgrimage was organised in January 1942 by the Catholic League.

In 1982 the National was moved to the August bank holiday, in order not to conflict with the visit of the Pope, John Paul II.

[36] In 2021 the National took place in person, but with heavily restricted numbers in order to maintain social distancing, as well as being live streamed.