ABSTRACT
The anthropologist Simon Coleman comments that Walsingham is both tourist trap and sacred shrine. Two accounts, published on the same day in June 2010, of the Anglican National pilgrimage epitomize something of these opposed understandings of Walsingham. Walsingham is widely experienced as an unusual and special place, not only by Christian faithful, but by many who come with some other or no particular religious commitment. Alongside and often interacting with the nostalgic and traditional at Walsingham can be encountered various expressions of skepticism, sometimes in the same person. The Walsingham window is a lonely but defiant vulvic symbol, and among its eroded and faded decorations one can indeed pick out mandorla or almond shapes. The authorities of medieval Walsingham would probably regard interpretations as foolish nonsense. Such an argument may remind one of Agnes Strickland's attempts to control the rampant but seductive sexuality of Anne Boleyn, but it also points to the tension, that lay at heart of medieval Walsingham.
