Blida of Martham

Saint Blida of Martham (called Blithe in some sources) was an Anglo-⁠Saxon princess, known above all as the mother of Saint Walstan, whose cult was alive in the Middle Ages in the English county of Norfolk. She is linked with the village of Martham, where she is held to have been buried and where a chapel once stood.

She lived in the settlement of Bawburgh, where Walstan was born. She came of royal stock, her husband being named Benedict, and was a kinswoman of King Æthelred and of his son Edmund Ironside. After her death and burial at Martham a chapel was dedicated to her, and bequests were made for her for more than four hundred years. At twelve Walstan left a life of privilege, with his parents' consent, to give himself to prayer, though not as a monk.

Blida is painted, crowned and holding a book and a palm, on a panel of a rood screen formerly in the church of St James the Less at Pockthorpe in Norwich, and in a window of the church at North Tuddenham. No feast day is known for her. In the church at Martham a prayer corner in the south aisle is dedicated to her. She is a saint of the undivided Church, honoured locally.