Bury St Edmunds
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| Bury St Edmunds | |
  Bury St Edmunds shown within Suffolk |
|
| Population | 35,015 (2001 Census) |
|---|---|
| OS grid reference | |
| District | St Edmundsbury |
| Shire county | Suffolk |
| Region | East |
| Constituent country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | BURY ST EDMUNDS |
| Postcode district | IP28-IP33 |
| Dialling code | 01284 |
| Police | Suffolk |
| Fire | Suffolk |
| Ambulance | East of England |
| European Parliament | East of England |
| UK Parliament | Bury St Edmunds |
| List of places: UK • England • Suffolk | |
Bury St Edmunds is a town in the county of Suffolk, England, and was formerly the county town of West Suffolk. It is also the seat of the East of England Regional Assembly. It is the main town in the borough of St Edmundsbury and is probably most famous for the ruined abbey that stands near the town centre. The town is closely associated with Magna Carta, in 1214 the barons of England are believed to have met in the Abbey Church and swore that they would force King John to accept the Charter of Liberties, the document which influenced the creation of the Magna Carta. It was also the setting for two Witch trials, the first under the direction of the Witchfinder General[1][2] the second used as a reference in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and 1693.[2][3][4] During the Second World War, the USAAF operated an airfield outside the town.[5] The Hereditary High Steward of the Liberty of St Edmund is The Marquess of Bristol.
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[edit] Town
Near to the gardens stands Britain's first internally illuminated street sign, the pillar of salt. When built, it had to be granted special permission because it did not conform to regulations. Bury St Edmunds is the terminus of the A1101, Great Britain's lowest road.
There is an extensive network of tunnels in the town which are evidence of chalk-workings,[6] though there is no evidence of an extensive network of tunnels under the town centre. Some buildings have inter-communicating cellars. Due to their unsafe nature the chalk-workings are not open to the public, although special viewing has been granted to individuals in the past. Some have caused subsidence in living history.
Amongst the other noteworthy buildings is St Mary's Church. The Tudor King Henry VIII's sister, Mary Tudor, was re-buried in Bury's St Mary's Church, after being moved from the Abbey after her brother's dissolution of the Church six year after her death. Queen Victoria had a stained glass window fitted into the church to commemorate Mary's interment.[7]
On 3 March 1974 a Turkish Airlines DC10 jet Flight 981 crashed near Paris killing all 346 people on board. Among the victims were 17 members of the Bury St Edmunds rugby club, returning from a trip to Paris.
The Town Council election on 3 May 2007 was won by the "Abolish Bury Town Council" party.[8] The party lost its majority following a by-election in June 2007 and, to date, the Town Council is still in existence.[9]
[edit] Name
The name borough is an etymological derivative of Bury , which has cognates in other Germanic languages such as the Old Norse "borg" meaning "wall, castle"; and Gothic "baurgs" meaning "city". They all derive from Proto-Germanic *burgs meaning "fortress". This in turn derives from the Proto-Indo-European root *bhrgh meaning "fortified elevation", with cognates including Welsh "bera", "stack" and Sanskrit bhrant- "high, elevated building".
[edit] Abbey
In the centre of Bury St Edmunds lies the remains of an abbey, surrounded by the Abbey Gardens, a park. The abbey is a shrine to Saint Edmund, the Saxon King of the East Angles, who was killed by the Danes in 869 AD. The town initially grew around Bury St Edmunds Abbey, a site of pilgrimage, and developed into a flourishing cloth making town by the 14th century.
The abbey was largely destroyed during the 16th century with the dissolution of the monasteries but Bury remained a prosperous town throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. As would be expected of a town in such a rural area, Bury fell into relative decline with the onset of the industrial revolution and accordingly remains an attractive market town.
The Abbey Gardens which surround the ruins had an Internet bench installed in the late 1990s, which allowed anyone to plug in a portable computing device and connect to the Internet. It was the first bench of its kind, though within the first week of it's being there, two teenagers discovered a flaw: that one could also make free telephone calls from the bench. They phoned the Borough Council (owners of the bench) to notify them, then they attempted to contact Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, in person to tell him about this problem. [10]
[edit] Cathedral
Bury St Edmunds Cathedral was created when the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich was formed in 1914. The cathedral was extended with a new eastern end in the 1960s, commemorated by Benjamin Britten's Fanfare for St Edmundsbury, and a completely new Gothic revival cathedral tower was built as part of a major millennium project running from 2000 to 2005. The opening celebration for the new tower took place in July 2005, and included a brass band concert and fireworks display. Despite this there are still parts of the cathedral that remain uncompleted, including the cloisters Many areas of the cathedral remain inaccessible to the general public due to ongoing building work. The tower makes St Edmundsbury the only recently completed Anglican cathedral in the UK, no other is being built or extended and, indeed, only a handful of Gothic revival cathedrals are currently being built worldwide. The tower was constructed using original fabrication techniques by six highly skilled masons placed the machine pre-cut stone individually, as they arrived on site.
[edit] Culture
The town has the small but enormously significant Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds built by National Gallery architect William Wilkins in 1819. It is the sole surviving Regency Theatre left in the country and even after nearly 200 years remains a vital part of the town's cultural identity. The theatre, which is owned by the National Trust underwent a major restoration between 2005 and 2007. Appeal Patron Dame Judi Dench:
| “ | The Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds holds a unique place in the history of theatre in this country as well as a special place in my heart. The restoration of one of the last Georgian theatres in the country will ensure a vital part of our theatrical heritage will survive for future generations. | ” |
It presents a full programme of performances and is also open for public tours.
Moyse's Hall Museum is one of the oldest (c. 1180) domestic buildings in East Anglia open to the public. It has collections of fine art, for example Mary Beale, costume, e.g. Charles Frederick Worth, horology, local and social history; including Red Barn Murder and Witchcraft.[11]
The town holds an annual festival in May. This including concerts, plays, dance, and lecturers culminating in fireworks. Bury St Edmunds is home to Englands oldest Scout Group, 1st Bury St Edmunds (Mayors Own).
The town's football club, Bury Town, are recognised as the fourth oldest non-league team in England.[12] They are currently members of the Isthmian League Division One North.
[edit] Local economy
[edit] Brewing
The Greene King brewery is to be found in Bury. The other brewery in Bury St Edmunds is The Old Cannon Brewery and public house on Cannon Street near the railway station. The brewing vessels, which were made for an exhibition in Japan in 1997, can be seen in the front room. Just outside the town is Bartrums Brewery, which is situated on Rougham airfield but originally started in the village of Thurston.
Another famous beer-related landmark is Britain's smallest public house, The Nutshell, which is on The Traverse, just off the town's marketplace.
[edit] Sugar beet
Bury's largest landmark is the British Sugar factory near the A14, which processes sugar beet into refined crystal sugar. It was built in 1925 and processes beet from around 1,300 growers. 660 lorry loads of beet can be accepted each day during a processing "campaign", when beet is being harvested. Not all the beet can be crystallised immediately, and some is kept in solution in holding tanks until late spring and early summer, when the plant has spare crystallising capacity. The sugar is sold under the Silver Spoon brand name (the other major British sugar brand, Tate & Lyle, is made from imported sugar cane). By-products include molassed sugar beet feed for cattle and LimeX70, a soil improver. When the wind is in a certain direction a smell of burnt starch from the plant is very noticeable.[citation needed] As of September 2007, persistent local rumours and a report on BBC Radio Suffolk suggest that the site is to be sold in 2012 to Merlin Entertainments Group, the owners of the Staffordshire theme park Alton Towers, with a view to rebuilding half the site as a similar attraction, whilst the rest of the land would be developed into housing and amenities.[citation needed]
[edit] Notable residents
Notable people from Bury St Edmunds include artist and printer Sybil Andrews, actor Bob Hoskins, theatre director Sir Peter Hall , author Maria Lousie de la Ramé (aka Ouida), World War II Canadian general Guy Simonds and the Eighteenth Century English landscape architect Humphry Repton, as well as Thomas Clarkson main fact-finder behind the abolition of the slave trade.
Notable bands from Bury St Edmunds include Jacob's Mouse, Miss Black America, The Dawn Parade and Kate Jackson (of The Long Blondes)
Although not from Bury St Edmunds, the BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel lived nearby in Great Finborough and on 12 November 2004, his funeral took place at the Cathedral.[13] It was attended by over a thousand people including many of the artists he had championed throughout his career. During a peak of local musical activity in Bury St Edmunds in 2002, he referred (tongue-in-cheek) to the town as 'The New Seattle'.[citation needed]
Whilst not resident in the town, the actor Ian McShane was given Freedom of the Borough in 1996 after he played the title role in the popular television series Lovejoy, which was filmed in and around Bury, raising the profile of the town.
[edit] Twin towns
[edit] References
- ^ Notestein, Wallace (1911). A History of Witchcraft In England from 1558 to 1718. New York: American Historical Association 1911 (reissued 1965) New York Russell & Russell. ISBN L.C. Catalogue Card No: 65-18824.
- ^ a b Geis, Gilbert; Bunn Ivan.; … (1997). A Trial of Witches: A Seventeenth-century Witchcraft Prosecution.. New York: Routledge.
- ^ Jensen, Gary F. (2006). The Path of the Devil: Early Modern Witch Hunts.. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
- ^ Bunn, Ivan. The Lowestoft Witches. Retrieved on 2007-12-15.
- ^ St Edmundsbury, Borough Council. America in Suffolk. Retrieved on 2007-12-30.
- ^ The Glen Chalk Caves, Bury St Edmunds. English Nature. Retrieved on 2008-01-22.
- ^ Knott, Simon. Suffolk Churches. Retrieved on 2007-12-30.
- ^ Thewlis, Jo. Uproar at town council meeting. Bury Free Press. Retrieved on 2008-01-14.
- ^ Marais, Kirsty. Plug pulled on displays. Bury Free Press. Retrieved on 2008-01-14.
- ^ BBC, News. Science & Technology. Retrieved on 2007-12-30.
- ^ St Edmundsbury, Borough Council. Moyse's Hall Museum. Retrieved on 2007-12-30.
- ^ History of Bury Town Football Club - Members of the Ryman League. www.burytownfc.co.uk. Retrieved on 2008-03-17.
- ^ Briggs, Caroline. Final send-off for John Peel. Retrieved on 2008-01-14.
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