Walstan of Bawburgh

Saint Walstan of Bawburgh was a simple man of Norfolk in England, a farm labourer, known for his charity to all in need. According to tradition he was born around 975 and reposed on 30 May 1016. He is honoured as the patron of agricultural workers and farm animals, and his tomb at the church of Bawburgh was sought out by pilgrims.

Two late sources for his life survive: the Latin Life in the Nova Legenda Angliae, printed in 1516, and the English Life, copied in 1658 from a lost medieval triptych. They do not agree in everything: the English Life makes him born at Bawburgh, the Latin one at Blythburgh in Suffolk. He is said to have been the son of Benedict and Blida of Martham, a kinswoman of King Æthelred. He received a pious upbringing and at twelve renounced a privileged life, with his parents' permission, determined to devote himself to prayer without becoming a monk. He became a farm servant to a man at Taverham near Norwich, and gave his belongings to the needy, even his shoes to a poor man.

When the approach of his death was announced to him, he made his confession, stopped working and ordered that his body be carried in a cart drawn by two bulls, wherever God should will. After his death the hearse left Taverham, passed through Costessey and reached Bawburgh, where he was buried; springs appeared along the way. A small chapel in his name was built at Bawburgh. A lead plaque found in 2002 near the church suggests that devotion to him had taken root there even before the Norman conquest.

In icons he is shown with a crown and sceptre, a scythe in his hand and cattle beside him. Saint Walstan's Day is still kept at Bawburgh on the Sunday nearest 30 May, with a special service. He is commemorated on 30 May as a saint of the West before the Great Schism (a saint of the undivided Church), by the New Calendar.