The Langham Madonna

Long before the Norman Conquest, Langham was divided into two parishes: Langham Magna to the east (also called Langham St Andrew, Langham Episcopi and Bishop’s Langham) and Langham Parva to the west (also called Langham St Mary and Little Langham), each with its own church – St Andrew’s being of course in Langham Magna and St Mary’s in Langham Parva.

St Mary’s was situated at the fork of the Binham and Cockthorpe roads. It had stood there for at least five centuries but disappeared between 1535, when Henry VIII ordered a catalogue to be made of all church property, and 1552, when a national inventory of church goods was taken. The dedication to St Mary was folded in with St Andrew’s, which is why our parish church now has a double dedication. No burials have yet been found at the site, nor any other archaeological remains.

A survey of 1602 says this of Langham Parva: ‘The Church there is whollie ruynated and p’faned long since, by Mr. Calthorp, sometyme Lord and Patrone thereof, there are no p’rishners dwelling in the said towne.’ In 1743 the church of St Mary was described as ‘demolished beyond the memory of man’.

In the 16th century there was a movement throughout much of northern Europe for rejection of papal authority. The Catholic Church was seen as idolatrous and corrupt. Protestantism was on the rise; in England this took shape in the first Act of Supremacy of 1534, when Henry VIII rejected Rome and founded the Church of England, with himself as its head. During the next five years the Dissolution of the Monasteries would see church property being seized and much of it distributed to Henry’s allies and cronies among the gentry.

In July 1538 Prior Vowell of Walsingham Priory acquiesced in its demolition and helped the king’s commissioners to remove its treasures, notably the figure of Our Lady. For this he received an annual pension of £100, a hefty sum in those days. The site was sold to one Thomas Sidney for £90. As to what happened to the figure, there is considerable confusion. Some accounts have it taken to London to be burnt, while others say it remained in Norfolk and was destroyed there.

Before the Reformation Walsingham was one of the most revered places in the Catholic world, drawing pilgrims from far and wide, as indeed it does to this day. Its desecration is bewailed in the contemporaneous ‘Lament for the Priory of Walsingham’:

In the wrackes of Walsingam

Whom should I chuse

But the Queene of Walsingam

To be guide to my muse?

Then, thou Prince of Walsingam

Graunt me to frame

Bitter plaintes to rewe thy wronge

Bitter wo for thy name.

Bitter was it, oh to see

The sely [innocent] sheepe

Murdred by the raveninge wolves

While the sheepharde did sleep.

Bitter was it, oh, to viewe

The sacred vyne

Whiles the gardiners plaied [plaited] all close

Rooted up by the swine.

Bitter, bitter oh to behoulde

The grasse to growe

Where the walles of Walsingam

So stately did shewe.

Such were the worth of Walsingam

While she did stand

Such are the wrackes as now do shewe

Of that so holy lande.

Levell, levell with the ground

The Towres doe lye

Which with their golden, glitt’ring tops

Pearsed oute to the skye.

Where weare gates noe gates are nowe,

The waies [pathways] unknowen,

Where the presse [crowd] of freares [friars] did passe

While her fame far was blowen [trumpeted].

Oules [owls] do scrike where the sweetest himnes

Lately wear songe,

Toades and serpents hold their dennes

Where the palmers did throng.

Weep, weep O Walsingam,

Whose dayes are nightes,

Blessings turned to blasphemies,

Holy deedes to dispites [crimes].

Sinne is where our Ladye sate,

Heaven turned is to helle;

Sathan sitte where our Lord did swaye,

Walsingam, oh, farewell!

            — Anonymous

It is not unusual for two churches to be near one another in Norfolk, as at Wiveton and Cley, so what happened to St Mary’s? A possible clue is in the name.

Thanks to Henry’s largesse to the ruling class, much of it was quick to welcome the new Protestant order. Much of the peasantry, however, clung to the comfort of the old religion and its rituals. This was especially true in the countryside, and especially so in the remote countryside of north Norfolk. Matters were not helped in many hearts by a deep-seated resentment of the gentry, a phantom of the hatred of the Anglo-Saxons for their Norman overlords; many of the contemporary gentry could trace their lineage back to France.

Michael Medlar, in his study (pdf) of early sixteenth century Langham wills, finds that bequests were made by villagers to ‘Our Lady of Tofte’. One in particular, the largest, of £45 in land and goods, was made by one Oliver Dawbeney on 27 October 1532, two years before the first Act of Supremacy. Barendina Smedley speculates that there may have been a figure of the Virgin Mary venerated in St Mary’s named Our Lady of Tofte, though she leans more to the idea that there was a now-vanished chapel for the figure next to the present north door of St Andrew’s.

The origin of the name is clouded in mystery and may have a connection with the hamlet of Toftrees, south of Fakenham, which in the past was called ‘Tofte’ or ‘Toftes’.

Stephanie A Mann notes that a wooden statuette of the Virgin and Child at the Victoria and Albert Museum, dated to about 1220-30 and still bearing traces of paint, goes under the name of ‘The Langham Madonna’.

The Walsingham Seal

She also notes that, while the Langham Madonna is said (on no evident authority) to have come from Langham in Essex, it bears a close resemblance to the figure in the Walsingham Seal; and she speculates that Our Lady of Walsingham may have been spirited away to a local but out-of-the-way site of Marian worship – St Mary’s, Langham, Norfolk: for the Calthorpes of Langham Hall (not the Hall by the crossroads, but an earlier one, now lost) were known to be recusants, and the vicar of Langham, John Grigby, was arrested for his part in a conspiracy which tried to resist the dissolution of Walsingham Priory.

We are unlikely ever to know what happened. Could it really be that the ‘ruynation’ of St Mary’s, so expeditiously carried out by ‘Mr. Calthorp, sometyme Lord and Patrone thereof’, included the further spiriting away of that iconic artefact of ‘popery’? And could it be that the arrest of the conspirators persuaded Mr Calthorpe thus to distance himself – and his dangerous reputation as a recusant – from John Grigby and so protect his person, his family and his lands from men of even higher rank and influence?