Registered Charity No 1120335
St Seraphim’s Trust
Station Road
Little Walsingham
Norfolk NR22 6EB
Saint Seraphim’s Appeal.
The small church of Saint Seraphim’s in Little Walsingham, has opened its’ doors daily to pilgrims and tourists for 40 years.
St Seraphim’s has provided an vital experience of the Christian faith to many pilgrims and tourists and has been a ‘beacon of light’ for many Orthodox people, a place where, in the spirit of St Seraphim himself, people have been helped to know what they should do in their lives.
The early desert Fathers carved knots on their crosses, to symbolise movement that never ends, a journey, not an instant conversion. Pilgrimage was important to Celtic Christianity.
The property was originally owned by British Rail, who then sold to Norfolk County Council because at that time there were plans to build a bypass, which have been postponed indefinitely.
St Seraphim’s Trust was set up in 2005 to help maintain the church and to purchase the property for it to continue as a place of missionary, pilgrimage and prayer. Since then negotiations have been ongoing with the owners, Norfolk County Council, who in May this year agreed to sell the property to us for £160,000.
In his book, ‘Travelling Adaptables’, John Timpson wrote of St Seraphim’s, ‘Perhaps the most striking station Adaptable is at Little Walsingham in Norfolk, familiar to thousands of pilgrims who flock there each year. But they no longer arrive by train-the line closed in the 1960’s.Even so, the railway station still sees a great many pilgrims because it is now the orthodox chapel of St Seraphim of Sarov, much visited by Orthodox Christians from other parts of Britain, as well as abroad. The only clue to its new identity, from the outside, is the little golden dome on the roof, but inside, it has been quite transformed. The old waiting room is divided by the Iconastasis, the screen which separates what is now the chancel from what is now the nave’.
Archimandrite David who was a priest, monk and founder of St Seraphim’s Church quoted in the introduction to the Saints of Britain and Ireland:
‘We should be proud of the fact that our Christian forefathers first received the light of Christ only a few short years after our Lord’s Ascension, and from the mouths of those who had known and spoken with the Saviour and the Apostles themselves. We should devotedly study the lives and witness of our forebears of these islands-those magnificent, God-pleasing bishops, anchorites and missionaries, and lay men and women-that through their prayer and example we may be found worthy to inherit the joys of the everlasting kingdom and sow the seeds of salvation in our islands’.
The Icon of All Saints of Britain and Northern Ireland was painted in Walsingham by Archimandrite David at the request of Metropolitan Anthony, who said that when he and his Mother arrived in England the Saints of these islands were waiting to greet them.
St Seraphim’s has become a centre for pilgrims in a village to which pilgrims have journeyed continuously for almost a thousand years.
Please help us to keep this church open as a permanent pilgrim centre for Orthodox and all pilgrims.
St Seraphim’s Trust,
St Seraphim’s Church,
Station Road,
Little Walsingham,
Norfolk.NR22 6EB.
Cheques payable to: St Seraphim’s Trust
To download a form for gift-aid or for regular donations please
click here