Virtual Tour of Bury St. Edmunds

Our tour starts on Angel Hill, a wide open space opposite the Abbey’s main gate. Abbot Baldwin designed the rectangular street layout of Bury around 1086 and the Angel Hill was the site of the Bury Fair. The fair was an annual event in Bury for some seven hundred years.

At the far end of Angel Hill is the Athenaeum, opened in 1714 as Assembly Rooms and has been a centre for social life ever since. It has a fine ballroom said to have been decorated by the Adam Brothers. Charles Dickens gave two readings here. Charles Dickens was a regular visitor to the town and in Pickwick Papers he calls Bury St Edmunds “a handsome little town, of thriving and cleanly appearance”. During his stays Dickens stayed at The Angel Hotel, located at the top of Angel Hill.

The most striking building that can be seen from the Angel Hill is the Abbeygate. This magnificent Gothic gate still retains lifting machinery for the long destroyed portcullis (current portcullis is not original). The niches on the front face once contained statues of saints and kings. Built in 1347 after the old gate had been torn down in 1327 by the town’s citizens when they plundered the Abbey. It is not quite in line with Abbeygate Street, as the original one was, as the larger much stronger gate had to be built alongside the existing damaged gate. The Abbeygate was also known as The Great or Court Gate, as it led into the Great Court of the Abbey.

Passing through the gate leads you into the Abbey Gardens. Originally the Great Court, a large open area, where much of the business life of the Abbey occurred. Opposite the Abbeygate stood the Abbot’s Palace were the townsfolk could seek an audience with the Abbot. The gardens first came into being in 1831. They are enclosed by what remains of the old Abbey, the Abbeygate, parts of the wall and the river Lark which flows out through the Abbot’s Bridge.

 
To the right of the formal gardens are the ruins of the old Abbey. Along with the Western Front of the Abbey these are all that remain of the once great Abbey church of St Edmund. Built in the later part of the 11^th Century, the church of St Edmund was second only to Canterbury in importance and as a place of pilgrimage. For just off the side to the main alter lay the remains of St. Edmund, England’s oldest and first patron saint before St. George grew in popularity. As a mark of the church’s importance it was selected as the ideal cover for a plot to force King John to grant certain freedoms to his subjects. Here on St. Edmund’s feast day, 20^th November 1214, the then Archbishop of Canterbury and twenty-five of the most powerful Barons in the country met to discuss the content of the Magna Carta and swore on the high alter that they would force the king to sign it or declare war. They succeeded six months later. The church and the rest of the Abbey was surrendered to the crown in 1540 as part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries by King Henry VIII. It soon fell into ruin with much of the stone material being carted off to build properties in the town.

Beyond the ruins can be seen the new Cathedral tower. You can exit the gardens by heading towards the tower and coming into the courtyard beside the Cathedral.

The church of St. James was built on this site by Abbot Anselm in the 12^th Century to replace another church he needed to demolish to make way for the new Abbey church. The present church dates from the 15^th Century. St. James church became Suffolk’s Cathedral church in 1913.

The large gateway bordering the courtyard is the Norman Tower, once the ceremonial gateway of the great Abbey. Steps still remain leading up to the now missing walls built to allow for the Watchers patrolling the walls. Churchgate Street was aligned directly with the opening of the gateway and on the west door of the Abbey church. The tower also acts as a belfry for the Cathedral Church of St. James.

In the centre of the courtyard is a bronze statue of St Edmund produced by Elizabeth Frink in 1976.

A second church sits close by the Cathedral (St Mary’s), but before this lies the ruins of the Abbey’s Charnel House. This was built to house the bones that were disturbed when new graves were dug in the Abbey’s graveyard. After the dissolution it parsed into private hands and over the years has been a pub, a blacksmith’s and a shop.

The place contains a few gravestones of note including that of a 9 year old girl, Mary Haselton, who was struck by lightning in 1785 while she was at prayer and the author Henry Cock who died in 1853.

St Mary’s is Bury St Edmunds oldest church. It was first built in the 7^th Century by the Anglo-Saxon King Sigebert. In the 9^th Century it was used to house the remains of St. Edmund until they were removed in the early 11^th Century by King Canute.

The original church was demolished in the 12^th Century to allow the expansion of the great Abbey church and rebuilt in its current location. The current building dates from the 15^th Century.

St Mary’s is also noted for its fine hammer-beam “Angel Roof” to the nave, wagon roof to chancel and the fact that it holds the tomb of Mary Tudor.

If you turn right when you exit St Mary’s you walk past the entrance of the Cathedral and soon will find your self back on Angel Hill.