Highlight: The pilgrim town of Ware
Many a weary pilgrim has found rest in Ware. What is now the High St was known in medieval times as Walsingham Way, and the many former inns that housed those pilgrims can still be identified from the archways leading to their stable yards.
The London to Walsingham Camino route has led me to Ware, bringing me the 30 miles from London via riverside paths along the Lea Valley, to collect another pilgrim stamp at the church of St Mary the Virgin.
Here, the 14th century font provides a physical link with those many pre-Reformation pilgrims.
Among the saints carved into it is St James, carrying his pilgrim staff and leather water bottle. In reaching out to touch the figure, I reach out also across the centuries. Back to the time when medieval pilgrims entered this church, saw this font, and perhaps touched this very same figure.
St Mary’s started life as the chapel of Ware Priory, but today’s flint church, its 14th-century tower topped by a stiletto-sharp spire known as a Hertfordshire Spike, has been much altered over the centuries.
Ware Priory was probably beside the church, between Church St and West St. But, confusingly, the handsome, white-rendered building I can see across the High St from St Mary’s, and which is now called Ware Priory, is not that institution. It is actually on the site of a later Franciscan friary, of which more in a moment.
First, I walk along Church St to No. 9, and a trace of the original priory. Here a blue plaque reads: ‘The Manor House, formerly known as the Rectory Manor. Once part of the Benedictine Priory of Ware.’
This house may have stood at the south-eastern corner of the cloister. There is a theory that the upper floor, with its heavy medieval beams, was the monks’ dormitory, but Historic England now considers this unlikely.
I walk back past St Mary’s, to what is now called Ware Priory, but was actually Ware Friary. The friary occupied a seven-acre site on the north bank of the River Lea, and consisted of a chapel, cloister, a great hall, and accommodation for friars and pilgrims. It was seized by the Crown at the Reformation, and became a private house.
In 1919 it was given to the people of Ware. The surviving buildings, some of which date from the 14th century, are a venue for weddings and other events, with the present Priory Hall in what was the cloister; the open archways glazed to create a room.
The path from Ware takes me via Much Hadham, and you can see some furgther highlights in the video above.
Find out more
For all you need to know in order to follow the London to Walsingham Camino, check out the guidebook
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