Just across the busy Thetford to Swaffham road from Hilborough parish church, and a little way along the lane to Cockley Cley, a small plantation of trees covers lumps and bumps in what is otherwise the marshy flatness of the flood plain of a tributary of the River Wissey. This appears to be the site of the fomer chapel of St Margaret, founded in 1207 and endowed with a fabulous hundred acres of land. It became a popular stopping point for pilgrims on their way to Walsingham, and became popularly known as the Pilgrim Chapel.

There was a good living to be had by the Priest attached to the chapel - the late 18th Century General History of Norfolk by John Chambers records it as being as high as the richest living in a parish church - and not surprisingly it was presented to men from families of some consequence. Not to put the local noses out of joint, St Margaret served as a chapel-of-ease to Hilborough parish church as well as being there for pilgrims. It is easy to imagine the noisy, joyous liturgies of a people on the march touching into the sacraments of their Holy Mother Church at such a remote spot on their journey.

As a monastic foundation, St Margaret inevitably fell foul of the Anglican Reformation. At some stage in the 18th Century the building appears to have still been in use as a barn. Richard Le Strange in 1972 has the walls still standing, but Bill Wilson, revising Pevsner in 1999, reported that two ivy-clad crags of flint are all that remain. I could find nothing of the kind, just softening bumps which, while still speaking of something that has survived, will one day merge into the reedy ground around them.