We’ve been at the Old Bakehouse since 2021: we’re both creatives by background and Charlotte's artwork hangs throughout the house. I was the Cantor at the Catholic Shrine for 5 years, and now teach piano and do some accompanying. The house is family friendly and our 8 year old loves new friends. We have a Jack Russell Terrier - good with children, but in case you are bringing a pet and they don't get on, we can keep her in the back of the house with a separate yard for guest dogs. Charlotte has been a photographer for a number of years and has shot hundreds of weddings in that time, also travelling to overseas destinations to journal events. She was a photographer at the 2012 Olympics and for the visit of Pope Benedict XVI in 2010. She took up painting in 2015 and her work has sold around the world. She paints in oil both still life and landscape and trained at Lavender Hill Studios and with Anthony Giles and Nick Bashall. Charlotte is from Cheshire, I’m from London and we have two wonderful lodgers: Sarah (a Bard with a Bardschool) and Alex. Robert is our duty manager as and when necessary; Team Bakehouse also includes Annmarie, Flavia, Zolya and Alyona, who are here most days helping out. We have no TV’s here but aim to offer good conversation: there are books in the bedrooms that reflect the interests of the household and local history. As a concession to technology though, all our rooms have Wifi. We charge a surplus per dog per night: please let us know in advance in case there's not space, with too many dogs already booked in. 2 dogs per room and 4 dogs max in the house.

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. The Bakehouse has had many incarnations since the medieval use as a guest house for pilgrims visiting the 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 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 buildings. The Thursford Spectacular is 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. The Rebellion Way passes by our front door: we have room for any cycles indoors.

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 that to build what she had been shown, her workmen found the construction impossible, but 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 and 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 National Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, based around the site of the medieval Slipper Chapel - dating from about 1300 - and its Basilica, built in 1982, at Houghton St Giles, a mile outside the village down the Holy Mile. There is also the Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in the village, as begun by Rev Hope Patten in 1922. The original site of the medieval Shrine is now in the grounds of Walsingham Abbey, where the Lonely Arch still stands, a plaque on the Abbey lawn indicating the spot where the Shrine once stood. 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 musical predecessors - George Guisborough, a songman of the Priory - was martyred after a night spent in the basement dungeon of nearby Dowry House. Martys Field is a few hundred yards out of the village. 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, and 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.