Other outlying sites include:
Saint Edmund’s Church
Dedicated to the King and Martyr, Patron Saint of East Anglia, originally situated on the west bank of the Great Ouse, this church was washed away by the incursions of the sea in 1271 and nothing remains to be seen. Victorian changes to the course of the river to aid navigation put the site on the east bank. It is possible to walk by the Fisher Fleet to the unmarked site, which is now an industrial site.
East Gate
Pilgrims must have streamed through this gate on the way to Walsingham. Probably built about 1300 as a means of defence and protection of the town, it originally had a drawbridge. By 1800, it was a hindrance to traffic and taken down.
St Katherine’s Hermitage and Chapel
It was defaced before 1560, but stood close to the East Gate. The name is recalled in the nearby St Katherine’s Court, a sheltered housing complex, at Dodman’s Close, off Gaywood Road. Prayers for a safe journey to Walsingham were made by the devout travellers.
St Mary Magdalen’s Hospital
Now the site of almshouses on Gaywood Road. It was founded in the 12th century, designed to accommodate a chaplain, twelve brethren and sisters, three of whom must be leprous. The community was not dispersed at the Dissolution, but the Hospital was largely destroyed at the time of the siege of Lynn by Parliamentary troops during the Civil War and rebuilt in 1649.
Saint Lawrence’s Hospital
On the road that would have led to Hardwick Church will be found the Victorian Hardwick Road Cemetery, which is well worth a visit. Close to the present Hardwick Bridge stood the long-disappeared Saint Lawrence’s Hospital with its chapel. It was burned down by 1477. It was one of six or seven local leper hospitals, to which the devout bequeathed money in their wills. In his will of 1432, Stephen Guybon donated 12d to every house of lepers in the Lynn area. The houses were at West Lynn. North Runcton, Setchey, Gaywood, and Cowgate (today’s Common Staithe).
South Gate
No doubt pilgrims walking overland from London would have passed through the South Gate and stayed in the town before walking the pilgrim’s way to Walsingham.
The Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham
27 miles (43 km) by road. Tradition has it that in 1061, Richeldis de Faverches, wife of the Lord of the Manor of Walsingham Parva, had a vision in which the Blessed Virgin Mary asked her to erect a replica of the Holy House in Nazareth, where the Annunciation took place and the Holy Family lived; and a spring of water would be the sign of where it should be built. The small wooden structure was soon enclosed in a stone church, becoming a very popular place for pilgrimage from all over England and northern Europe, saving many in this country from the dangers and cost of travelling to the Holy Land, itself a journey which often took months and even years to undertake. Pilgrims from northern Europe often disembarked at Lynn. Pilgrim badges have been found here, especially in the Purfleet. Many of England’s medieval kings, queens and princes made pilgrimage to ‘England’s Nazareth’, several stayed in Lynn and received hospitality from the Austin Friars. Henry VIII himself made pilgrimage to the Shrine in earlier years of his reign, but later ordered its destruction. Devotion to Our Lady of Walsingham, pilgrimage, and the re-founding of the Shrine (albeit one Anglican and one Roman Catholic) were revived in the last century, and once again flourish.