The Old Bakehouse dates back to the Tudor period, with the basement possibly from the 1480's when the street was laid out. Guest accommodation is in the Tudor & Georgian parts of the building from the 1500's & the 1740's, including use of the lofty 18th c drawing room with its stunning inglenook fireplace at one end. Our furnishings are period & reflect the age & style of the building. Many of the figurative oil paintings decorating the walls are by my wife, Charlotte, and some available to buy. Commissions & instalment payment are possible. The Bakehouse has had many incarnations since the medieval use as a guest house for pilgrims visiting the local Shrine. Variously it has been a Custom House, a Corn Exchange, a Barclays Bank, a tea rooms, a restaurant, & for the last number of years a B & B. Originally the building was part of next door's Falcon House, where Erasmus stayed twice in the 1500's on his visits from Cambridge where he was teaching at the University. Divided into separate properties some time in the dim & distant past, the lofty main sitting room at The Old Bakehouse may have originally been the dining room for Pilgrims staying at the Falcon House Hostelry, now with an 18th century facade. A feature of the room is the "hangman's beam" where the grain sacks may have been weighed in its years as a Corn Exchange. The In & Out twin front doors may reflect the time as a Custom House. Elizabeth Fry was a guest in the 19th century - a relative of the Gurney banking family (founders of Barclays) whose descendants own Walsingham Abbey (the main village house) to this day. Walsingham is a historic village with a complex story & many beautiful, period buildings. If you are here to visit the Thursford Spectacular we are 4 miles away; for Pilgrims, we are ideally situated on the High Street, yards from the gates to the Abbey Grounds, Anglican Shrine & the village Catholic church. Pilgrims are welcome to use our chapel. The Rebellion Way passes by our door.

Charlotte & I were B & B hosts in London for a number of years & have been here at the Old Bakehouse since June 2021. We enjoy meeting new people & good conversation: we are both creatives by background & Charlotte's artwork hangs throughout the house & is for sale here as well as online. I'm the Cantor at the local Catholic Shrine & teach piano, conduct & accompany choirs. The house is family friendly & our 5 year old is always up for new playmates. We have a Jack Russell Terrier - she's very good with children, but in case you are bringing a pet & they don't happen to get on, we can keep her in a separate part of the house with a separate yard for guest dogs. Charlotte has been a photographer for a number of years, based in London, & has shot hundreds of weddings in that time, also travelling to numerous overseas destinations to journal events. She was an official photographer at the 2012 Olympics & for the state visit of Pope Benedict XVI in 2010. She took up painting in 2015 & since then her work has sold around the world, particularly since lockdown. She paints figuratively in oil both still life & landscape & trained at Lavender Hill Studios & privately with Anthony Giles & Nick Bashall. Charlotte hails from Cheshire, as do a great number of our guests - sometimes I'm the only non-northerner in the house. Help! We have two lovely lodgers: Sarah (a Bard with a Bardschool) & Marie (a retired actress) - & they may well be around or looking after you if we are away. Disclaimer: just in case you were expecting a TV in your room, we have none. We do offer good conversation though, & there are books in the bedrooms that reflect the interests of the household & local history. As a concession to technology though, all our rooms have a DAB radio &, of course, Wifi. We charge 5.00 surplus per dog per night: please let us know in advance just in case there's not space, with too many dogs already booked in. 2 dogs max per room & 4 dogs max in the house total.

Little Walsingham has been welcoming visitors since 1061, when Richeldis de Faverches, Lady of the Manor, was blessed with a vision of the Holy House of the Annunciation in Nazareth. Setting to work to build what she had been shown the same night, her workmen finding the construction impossible, a further miracle constructed the house by angelic hands and translated it several hundred yards. Make of the story what you will, but Walsingham became the 3rd or 4th biggest pilgrimage site in Medieval Europe after Rome, Jerusalem & Santiago de Campostela. The original shrine was destroyed in 1538 by Henry VIII but the site revived in the late 19th c. Nowadays there are two Shrines in the area, the Catholic Slipper Chapel and Basilica, at Houghton St Giles, a mile outside the village down the Holy Mile, & the Anglican Shrine in the village itself. The original site of the shrine is now in the grounds of Walsingham Abbey, where the Lonely Arch still stands. The local alleyway now named Swan Entry is locally known by it's original name of Martyr's Way. Walsingham Priory was one of the first religious houses to cave to Henry VIII's demands, but that did not stop some of the local community being victims of the religious persecution of the English Reformation. One of my predecessors - a songman of the Priory - (I'm the cantor at the Shrine) was martyred after a night spent in the basement dungeon of nearby Dowry House, a building to whose external design we are the twin . Martyrs Field, where the executions took place, is a few hundred yards away. For those of you who may be travelling for lighter entertainment purposes, the Thursford Spectacular is 4 miles away. A little further afield is the bird watching destination of the North Norfolk coast - Cley Spy is about 6 miles away, & Stiffkey Marshes about 4 miles from us, also Pensthorpe bird sanctuary. Blakeney Point seals can be visited by catching a boat from Morston, 5 miles away. The Rebellion Way passes our door.