A PROVINCIAL museum has reopened after a £5.1-million refurbishment, with a central display dedicated to pilgrimage.

The exhibition at Salisbury Museum reveals how the people of medieval Salisbury made pilgrimages to at least 15 English shrines and at least eight Continental ones.

Around 100 pilgrim badges from those locations were found in Salisbury in the late 20th century; the ten best-preserved examples form part of the display. The exhibition gives information about the saints venerated, the pilgrimage routes, and estimates of how long the journeys would have taken. The museum believes that pilgrims from Salisbury would, on average, have needed to set aside about three weeks for each domestic pilgrimage.

The pilgrimage phenomenon was the medieval equivalent of mass tourism. It is estimated that, between the years 1300 and 1450, at least ten million English people made a pilgrimage.

All the pilgrim badges on display were found in Salisbury, and are likely to have been discarded by pilgrims or their descendants. Many are broken.

Of the badges found, there were 27 from the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury, ten from that of Our Lady of Walsingham, six from that of St Edward the Confessor, in Westminster, and five each from those of Richard Caister in Norwich and King Henry VI in Windsor. Other destinations for Salisbury pilgrims included Bury St Edmunds (St Edmund), Ely (St Etheldreda), Chester (St Werburga), Wiltshire (St Edith at Wilton), St Albans, London (St Bridget at Isleworth and St Anthony), and Kent (the Virgin Mary in Eton, and Poulton), besides the “Rood of Grace” — a rare, no longer extant mechanised crucifix — in Boxley, Kent.

Of Continental pilgrimages, Salisbury citizens went to venerate the Virgin Mary at Aachen (eight badges) and St James at Santiago de Compostela (three badges). Other shrines included the Virgin at Tombelaine (northern France), St John the Baptist in Amiens, St Michael at Mont Saint Michel, St Josse in northern France, and St Quirinus near Cologne. Only one badge has so far been discovered from St Peter’s in Rome.

Also included in the display is a series of tiny pewter bottles, for holy water. Decorated stonework, including a Christ’s Head sculpture, which had been used in the construction of Old Sarum Cathedral, is also on display.

salisburymuseum.org.uk