There’s something a little tacky about this fascinating item in the collections of Norwich Castle Museum. It’s a special piece, it’s the pre-cut mould for pilgrim badges that were sold at Walsingham’s shrine before the Reformation.
This is obviously how they were made, but perhaps the pilgrims who went there didn’t realise just how mass produced this whole arrangement was. Or, maybe they did, but even the museum notes that this method was designed to be “quick and cheap” rather than something produced to a high standard. And maybe there was a choice of pilgrim badges, from rather more decadent ones to cheap and cheerful. It seems though that some pilgrimage sites were selling over 100,000 badges a year, this truly was the Great Yarmouth of its day.
King Henry III made a pilgrimage to Walsingham and the shrine of the Virgin Mary in the thirteenth century and then King Edward I, King Edward II, King Henry IV, King Henry VII and King Henry VIII all went afterwards during their reigns. That’s some destination and it’s clear why it also became desirable to pilgrims. King Henry VIII couldn’t have been entirely surprised and delighted by his visit as he later approved it being pulled down during the Reformation.
I haven’t been able to find any badges in museums or for sale that look similar to this, I had hoped to see what one would have looked like.