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bury st edmunds |
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Appealing BURY ST EDMUNDS started out as a Benedictine monastery,
founded to house the remains of Edmund, the last Saxon king of East
Anglia, who was tortured and beheaded by the marauding Danes in 869.
Almost two centuries later, England was briefly ruled by the kings of
Denmark and the shrewdest of them, King Canute, made a gesture of
reconciliation to his Saxon subjects by conferring on the monastery the
status of abbey. It was a popular move and the abbey prospered, so much
so that before its dissolution in 1539, it had become the richest
religious house in the country. Most of the abbey disappeared long ago,
and nowadays Bury is better known for its graceful Georgian streets, its
flower gardens and its sugar-beet plant than for its ancient monuments.
Nonetheless, it's an amiable, eminently likeable place, one of the
prettiest towns in Suffolk, and, with good transport connections on to
Cambridge, Colchester, Ipswich and Norwich, it demands at least half a
day of anyone's time.
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