The Norman Tower, a gateway and bell tower in front of the new cathedral towerThe Abbey ruins, Bury St Edmunds
The Abbey of Bury St Edmunds was once among the richest Benedictinemonasteries in England, until its dissolution in 1539. It is in the town that grew up around it, Bury St Edmunds in the county of Suffolk, England. It was a centre of pilgrimage as the burial place of the Anglo-Saxonmartyr-king Saint Edmund, killed by the Great Heathen Army of Danes in 869. The ruins of the abbey church and most other buildings are merely rubble cores, but two very large medieval gatehouses survive, as well as two secondary medieval churches built within the abbey complex.
View of churchyard and (L-R) Norman Tower, St James Church and SW Tower of Abbey, c. 1920
In the early 10th century the allegedly "incorrupt" (i.e. not decomposed)[1] body of the martyred king, St Edmund, was translated from Hægelisdun (a placename long and widely thought - but probably in error[2][3] - to refer to Hoxne)[4] to Beodricsworth, afterwards known as St Edmundsbury,[5] a site that had probably had a monastery founded by St Sigeberht some three centuries earlier.[6] At this time the early shrine was guarded by a group of secular priests, but in c. 1020, under the auspices of King Cnut and Ælfwine, the then Bishop of Elmham,[7] they were replaced by monks from St Benet's Abbey and a Benedictine Abbey of St Edmundsbury was founded. Two of the monks from St Benet's Abbey became Bury's first two abbots: Ufi, prior of Holme, (d. 1044), who was consecrated abbot by the Bishop of London; and Leofstan (1044–65). After Leofstan's death, the king appointed his physician Baldwin to the abbacy (1065–97). Baldwin rebuilt the church and reinterred St Edmund's body there with great ceremony in 1095. The cult made the richly endowed abbey[8] a popular destination for pilgrimages.
North transept of the Abbey
The abbey church of St Edmund was built in the 11th and 12th centuries on a cruciform plan, with an apsidal east end. The shrine of St Edmund stood behind the high altar. The abbey was much enlarged and rebuilt during the 12th century. At some 505 feet long, and spanning 246ft across its westerly transept, Bury St Edmunds abbey church was one of the largest in the country. It is now ruined, with only some rubble cores remaining, but two other separate churches which were built within the abbey precinct survive, having always functioned as parish churches for the town. St James's Church, now St Edmundsbury Cathedral, was finished around 1135. St Mary's Church was first built around 1125, and then rebuilt in the Perpendicular style between 1425 and 1435.
Abbey Gate, rebuilt in the mid-14th century
Abbey Gate, opening onto the Great Courtyard, was the secular entrance which was used by the Abbey's servants.
The Cloisters Cross, also referred to as the "Bury St Edmunds Cross", is an unusually complex 12th-century Romanesque altar cross, carved from walrus ivory. it is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The sculptor is not known. Thomas Hoving, who managed the acquisition of the cross while he was Associate Curator at The Cloisters, concluded that it was carved by Master Hugo at the Abbey. There is no certain evidence to suggest that the cross was even made in England, however, although this is accepted by most scholars, and other places of origin such as Germany have been proposed.
In 1327 the Abbey was destroyed during the Great Riot by the local people, who were angry at the power of the monastery, and it had to be rebuilt. The Norman Gate dates from 1120 to 1148 and was designed to be the gateway for the Abbey Church and it is still the belfry for the Church of St James, the present cathedral of Bury St Edmunds. This four-storey gate-hall is virtually unchanged and is entered through a single archway. Abbey Gate is an impressive 14th-century stone gatehouse, designed to be the gateway for the Great Courtyard. One of the best surviving examples of its type, this two-storey gate-hall is entered through a single archway which retains its portcullis. The Crankles was the name of the fishpond near the river Lark. The vineyard was first laid out in the 13th century. There were three breweries in the Abbey as each monk was entitled to eight pints a day.
Modern inscription within the abbey ruins commemorating events in 1214, leading to the promulgation of Magna Carta in 1215Panorama of the ruins of the abbey church, with the new Millennium Tower of St Edmundsbury Cathedral in the background.The gardens
The Abbey's charters granted extensive lands and rights in Suffolk. By 1327, the Abbey owned all of West Suffolk. The Abbey held the gates of Bury St Edmunds; they held wardships of all orphans, whose income went to the Abbot until the orphan reached maturity; they pressed their rights of corvée. In the late 12th century, the Abbot Adam Samson forced the Dean Herbert to destroy the new windmill he had built without permission. Adam said: "By the face of God! I will never eat bread until that building is destroyed!"
The town of Bury St Edmunds was designed by the monks in a grid pattern. The monks charged tariffs on every economic activity, including the collecting of horse droppings in the streets. The Abbey even ran the Royal Mint. During the 13th century general prosperity blunted the resistance of burghers and peasants; in the 14th century, however, the monks encountered hostility from the local populace. Throughout 1327, the monastery suffered extensively, as several monks lost their lives in riots, and many buildings were destroyed. The townspeople attacked in January, forcing a charter of liberties on them. When the monks reneged on this they attacked again in February and May. The hated charters and debtors' accounts were seized and triumphantly torn to shreds.
A reprieve came on 29 September 1327 when Queen Isabella arrived at the Abbey with an army from Hainaut. She had returned from the continent with the intention of deposing her husband, King Edward II. She stayed at the Abbey a number of days with her son the future Edward III.
On 18 October 1327, a group of monks entered the local parish church. They threw off their habits, revealing they were armoured underneath, and took several hostages. The people called for the hostages' release: but monks threw objects at them, killing some. In response, the citizens swore to fight the abbey to the death. They included a parson and 28 chaplains. They burnt the gates and captured the abbey.[9]
In 1345, a special commission found that the monks did not wear habits or live in the monastery.[10] Already faced with considerable financial strain, the abbey went further into decline during the first half of the 15th century. In 1431 the west tower of the abbey church collapsed. Two years later Henry VI moved into residence at the abbey for Christmas, and was still enjoying monastic hospitality four months later. More trouble arose in 1447 when the Duke of Gloucester died in suspicious circumstances after his arrest, and in 1465 the entire church was burnt out by an accidental fire. Largely rebuilt by 1506, the abbey of Bury St Edmunds settled into a quieter existence until dissolution in 1539. Subsequently stripped of all valuable building materials and artefacts, the abbey ruins were left as a convenient quarry for local builders. A collection of wolf skulls were discovered at the site in 1848.[11]
The ruins are owned by English Heritage and managed by St Edmundsbury Borough Council.
Abbey Gardens
The Abbey Gardens are currently owned and managed by West Suffolk Council in conjunction with English Heritage. The maintenance of and improvements to the gardens are carried out by the council as well as support from volunteers.[12]
The Abbey Gardens surrounding the ruins had an "Internet bench" installed in 2001, which people could use to connect laptops to the Internet. It was the first bench of its kind.[13] There is a sensory garden for the visually impaired.[14]
Burials
Graves of abbots of the abbey, 1903 (from front to rear): Edmund of Walpole (1248–1256); Henry of Rushbrooke (1235–1248); Richard of the Isle of Ely (1229–1234); Samson (1182–1211); and Ording (1148–1157).
Mary Tudor, Queen of France, Princess of England (d. 1533), (daughter of King Henry VII), whose remains were removed to nearby St Mary's Church at the Dissolution five years later.
In the late 19th century, a manuscript discovered in Douai, France revealed the burial location of eighteen of the Abbey's abbots. The antiquary and author Montague R. James, an authority on the Abbey's history, published an account of the Abbey that made extensive use of the Douai Register.[15] He oversaw an excavation of the chapter house, and on New Year's Day 1903 the coffins and remains of five of the abbots were shown to the public.[16][17][18]
St Benet's Abbey, also known as St Benet's at Holme or St Benet Hulme, was a medieval monastery of the Order of Saint Benedict situated at Cow Holm in Horning, Norfolk, England. It lay on the River Bure within the Broads. St Benet is a medieval English version of the name of St Benedict of Nursia, hailed as the founder of western monasticism. At the period of the Dissolution of the Monasteries the abbey's possessions were in effect seized by the crown and assigned to the diocese of Norwich. Though the monastery was supposed to continue as a community, within a few years at least the monks had dispersed. Today there remain only ruins.
Buckfast Abbey forms part of an active Benedictine monastery at Buckfast, near Buckfastleigh, Devon, England. Buckfast first became home to an abbey in 1018. The first Benedictine abbey was followed by a Savignac, later Cistercian, abbey constructed on the site of the current abbey in 1134. The monastery was largely demolished after its dissolution in 1539. In 1882 the site was purchased by French Benedictines who refounded a monastery on the site. New monastic buildings incorporated the remaining Gothic house. Buckfast was formally reinstated as an abbey in 1902. Work on a new abbey church, which was constructed mostly on the footprint of the former Cistercian abbey, started in 1907. The church was completed in 1938. As of 2020, the abbey has 13 monks.
Edmund the Martyr was king of East Anglia from about 855 until his death.
Bury St Edmunds, commonly referred to locally as Bury is a cathedral as well as market town and civil parish in the West Suffolk district, in the county of Suffolk, England. The town is best known for Bury St Edmunds Abbey and St Edmundsbury Cathedral. Bury is the seat of the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich of the Church of England, with the episcopal see at St Edmundsbury Cathedral. In 2011 it had a population of 45,000. The town, originally called Beodericsworth, was built on a grid pattern by Abbot Baldwin around 1080. It is known for brewing and malting and for a British Sugar processing factory, where Silver Spoon sugar is produced. The town is the cultural and retail centre for West Suffolk and tourism is a major part of the economy.
The Abbey Church of the Holy Cross is an ancient foundation in Shrewsbury, the county town of Shropshire, England.
Glastonbury Abbey was a monastery in Glastonbury, Somerset, England. Its ruins, a grade I listed building and scheduled ancient monument, are open as a visitor attraction.
West Suffolk was an administrative county of England created in 1889 from part of the county of Suffolk. It survived until 1974 when it was rejoined with East Suffolk. Its county town was Bury St Edmunds.
Winchcombe Abbey is a now-vanished Benedictine abbey in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire; this abbey was once in the heart of Mercia, an Anglo Saxon kingdom at the time of the Heptarchy in England. The Abbey was founded c. 798 for three hundred Benedictine monks, by King Offa of Mercia or King Coenwulf of Mercia. In its time, it was the burial place of two members of the Mercian ruling class, the aforementioned Coenwulf and his son Cynehelm, later venerated as Saint Kenelm.
Abingdon Abbey was a Benedictine monastery in Abingdon-on-Thames in the modern county of Oxfordshire in the United Kingdom. Situated near to the River Thames, it was founded in c.675 AD and was dedicated to Mary, mother of Jesus. It was disestablished in 1538 during the dissolution of the monasteries. A few physical remnants of the Abbey buildings survive within Abingdon-on-Thames.
St Edmundsbury Cathedral is the cathedral for the Church of England's Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich. It is the seat of the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich and is in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. Originating in the 11th century, it was rebuilt in the 12th and 16th centuries as a parish church and became a cathedral in 1914; it has been considerably enlarged in recent decades.
Fleury Abbey (Floriacum) in Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, Loiret, France, founded in about 640, is one of the most celebrated Benedictine monasteries of Western Europe, and possesses the relics of St. Benedict of Nursia. Its site on the banks of the Loire has always made it easily accessible from Orléans, a center of culture unbroken since Roman times. In 2010, the abbey had over forty monks led by the abbot Etienne Ricaud.
Muchelney Abbey is an English Heritage property in the village of Muchelney in the Somerset Levels, England. The site consists of ruined walls showing the layout of the abbey buildings constructed from the 7th to 16th centuries, and the remaining intact Abbot's House. It is next to the parish church in which some of the fabric of the abbey has been reused.
St John's Abbey, also called Colchester Abbey, was a Benedictine monastic institution in Colchester, Essex, founded in 1095. It was dissolved in 1539. Most of the abbey buildings were subsequently demolished to construct a large private house on the site, which was itself destroyed in fighting during the 1648 siege of Colchester. The only substantial remnant is the elaborate gatehouse, while the foundations of the abbey church were only rediscovered in 2010.
Amesbury Abbey was a Benedictine abbey of women at Amesbury in Wiltshire, England, founded by Queen Ælfthryth in about the year 979 on what may have been the site of an earlier monastery. The abbey was dissolved in 1177 by Henry II, who founded in its place a house of the Order of Fontevraud, known as Amesbury Priory.
In the Middle Ages, from the 11th century, the Cluniac order established a number of religious houses in England, Wales, and Scotland.
Bonneval Abbey, also known as St. Florentinus' Abbey, is a former Benedictine monastery in Bonneval, Eure-et-Loir, in France.
Hoxne Priory was a Benedictine priory at Hoxne in Suffolk, England.
St Augustine's Abbey was a Benedictine monastery in Canterbury, Kent, England. The abbey was founded in 598 and functioned as a monastery until its dissolution in 1538 during the English Reformation. After the abbey's dissolution, it underwent dismantlement until 1848.
The Chronicle of the Abbey of St Edmunds is a chronicle concerning the history of the Benedictine abbey at Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, England, between the years 1173 and 1202. It was written in 1198 by Jocelin of Brakelond, a monk at the abbey.
The Norman Tower, also known as St James' Gate, is the detached bell tower of St Edmundsbury Cathedral, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. Originally constructed in the early 12th century, as the gatehouse of the vast Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, it is one of only two surviving structures of the Abbey, the other being Abbey Gate, located 150 metres to the north. The Abbey itself lies in ruins, approximately 200 metres to the east. As a virtually unaltered structure of the Romanesque age, the tower is both a Grade I listed building and a Scheduled Ancient Monument. The tower is considered amongst the finest Norman structures in East Anglia.
References
↑ Gransden, A. "The Alleged Incorruption of the Body of St Edmund King and Martyr" in The Antiquities Journal, Vol. 74, March 1994, pp. 135-168
↑ Evans, Margaret Carey "The Contribution of Hoxne to the Cult of St Edmund King and Martyr in the Middle Ages and Later" in Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology & History, Vol. XXXVI, Part 3 (1987), p. 182
↑ Briggs, Keith "Was Hægelisdun in Essex? A New Site for the Martyrdom of Edmund" in Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology & History, Vol. XLII, Part 3 (2011), p. 278
↑ Young, Francis (2018) Edmund: In Search of England's Lost King London: I B Tauris ISBN 978-1-78831-179-3, pp. 61 - 66
↑ Schoch, Richard W. (June 1999). "'We Do Nothing but Enact History': Thomas Carlyle Stages the Past". Nineteenth-Century Literature. 54 (1): 27–52. doi:10.2307/2902996. JSTOR2902996.
↑ "William Gower, Groom of the Chamber, grant of a Corrody in the Monastery of St. Edmund's Bury vice Hugh Denys deceased. Greenwich, 4th Jan. 1512". Letters & Papers, For. & Dom. Henry VIII, vol 1 (1920)
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