Beautiful Bury St Edmunds

Beautiful Bury St Edmunds

As the awful, dismal, record-breaking, wet weather of March left us, April appeared in a benign, sunny frame of mind. In the Spring sunshine, I spent a couple of days in the intriguing West Suffolk market town of Bury St Edmunds.

The town, of some 40,000 souls, grew up around a great Benedictine Abbey which was founded in 1020AD. Previously, there was a monastery on the site from around 633 AD.

An important point in the settlement’s history began when King Edmund of East Anglia was slaughtered by the marauding Danes in 869. He died staunchly defending his strong Christian convictions. His refusal to renounce his faith led to his awful demise.

He was sanctified for his heroic stance and his relics were removed to the site of the monastery in 903. St Edmund did indeed become the first patron saint of England before being usurped by St. George.

The town became an important place of pilgrimage, as visitors flocked to his shrine, bringing wealth and prosperity to the area.

The town grew and thrived around the Abbey, which quickly became one of the richest and most powerful Benedictine monasteries in the land.

Bury itself, now known as St Edmund’s Bury, became prosperous in its own right. It was one of the region’s ‘wool towns,’ heavily involved in making woollen cloth throughout the Middle Ages.

Henry VIII’s programme of the dissolution of the monasteries from 1539 brought about the destruction of the extensive Abbey buildings.

Excavation works were carried out in the 1950s and the remains of the old stone constructions were incorporated into the extensive Abbey Gardens. These magnificent grounds, a major asset to the community, flank the River Lark (which flows into the Great Ouse at Littleport) and are close to the centre of town.

These wonderful and extensive grounds are highly popular with visitors and locals alike. With a rose garden and acres of formal planting, an extensive number of ancient trees, grassed areas and a children’s play area amongst the old ruins and flint walls, it has a lot to offer. In the Spring sunshine, and with children off school for the Easter Holidays, the place had a vibrant feel. Children were charging around, shouting gleefully, birds were twittering and insects buzzing in the warm air.

In 1914, what was the St James Parish Church, built in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the Perpendicular Gothic style, on the abbey site, became St Edmundsbury Cathedral.

Bury St Edmunds Cathedral

The very attractive old centre of town is enfolded by the A14 trunk road. This busy thoroughfare serves as the major route linking the East Anglian ports of Ipswich and Felixstowe with the Midlands and the rest of the country. The A14 effectively acts as a ring road, keeping heavy traffic away from the town centre, which is a great bonus to the wellbeing of residents and visitors alike.

In the middle of the ancient town, narrow, cobbled thoroughfares and buildings in different styles and from different centuries create an extraordinary mishmash of genres, heights, building materials and scales. The streets were largely laid out on an old grid system. Exploration on foot was a real treat.

Bury St Edmunds - a Lovely Range of Buildings

There is an excellent mix of retail, leisure and dining options within the town and an impressive array of local independent businesses. I stopped off for a coffee at ‘Vinyl and coffee hunter’ where I could both enjoy a coffee and flick through racks of old albums evocative of long-gone days.

The relatively new Arc shopping precinct also offers a broad range of chain retailers and local shops. I enjoyed browsing in Waterstones, which I find difficult to resist. 

Today the town is renowned for sugar beet refining with an extensive processing plant for ‘silver spoon’ sugar just off the A14. An older established business is brewing. Greene King, the largest independent brewery in the country, occupies a range of handsome ancient flint buildings in a corner of town to the west.

I enjoyed a leisurely pint of Greene King IPA at the Brewery Shop one lunchtime. Greene King is the country’s foremost pub operator and brewer, and the company goes back to 1799 when it was founded by the nineteen-year-old Benjamin Greene. Before I reached the place, I could detect the abundance of rich, hoppy, malty, and yeasty flavours in the air. So wonderfully evocative, these aromas had me salivating in anticipation of my beer.

After considerable further explorations and perambulations, another pit stop was soon in order. This time I found the Nutshell, another Greene King property, which is purported to be the smallest pub in England. With a dozen customers inside, it would be jam-packed. A charming and quirky little hostelry, it was impossible not to get drawn into conversations once ensconced.

The Smallest Pub In England (Reputedly)

One of these involved the provenance of a manky, mummified cat that was hanging, in pride of place, from the rafters above the bar. This disgusting relic was apparently uncovered after building works were undertaken some while back. The legend was that cats were entombed alive within the walls to keep evil spirits at bay.

Ironically, just up the road from this tiny pub was a fine Wetherspoon establishment housed in the town’s magnificent old Corn Exchange. In direct contrast, this was huge by any stretch of the imagination and was a great example of the company’s imaginative repurposing of some wonderful architectural heritage buildings.

This small town, or even city (it does now boast a cathedral) has a lot to commend it for a short break.