English: Cast lead alloy pilgrim badge in the shape of an ampulla dating from the medieval period, that is c. late 12th-14th century. The ampulla had a flat-rectangular neck and a sub-circular body and two handles, but the handles and one side of the neck and body are now missing. One side of the body was decorated with a floral or star motif, the other cast in the shape of the scallop, the sympol of St James of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, a well-known shrine and destination for pilgrimages.

Brian Spencer writes: 'Ampullae or miniature phials were an important kind of souvenir. Generally flask-shaped, but with a narrow, flattish section, they were designed to contain a dose of the thaumaturgic water that was dispensed to pilgrims at many shrines and holy wells. Ampullae were made of tin or lead or tin-lead alloy and were provided with a pair of handles or loops so that they could be suspended from a cord or chain around the wearer's neck. Coming into use in the last quarter of the twelfth century, they were, in England, almost the only kind of pilgrim souvenir to be had during the thirteenth century. They were nevertheless available at a number of shrines, and thanks to returning pilgrims or to local entrepreneurs, probably featured as secondary relics in virtually every thirteenth-century English parish church. Until the early fourteenth century, ampullae took various forms, were frequently inscribed and usually bore representations of the cult figure or relic that they were intended to commemorate...The scallop, besides being the badge of St James di Compostela, was the emblem of pilgrimage itself. Canterbury, therefore, took the instantly and universally recognisable scallo-shell as the decoration for the fronts of some of the earliest ampullae, and the same motif was later adopted at other shrines, including, probably, Walsingham, with its well or wells of healing water [...]."