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"BURY ST. EDMUND'S, is a market town, municipal and parliamentary borough, comprises the two parishes of St. Mary and St. James, and is the county town of county Suffolk, 14 miles to the E. of Newmarket, 26 miles to the N.E. of Ipswich, 43 miles S.W. of Norwich, and 71 miles by road from London, or 942 miles by railway viā Ipswich, and 86 viā Cambridge. It is a station on the Great Eastern an Eastern Union railway. Bury, the principal town in West Suffolk, is situated in an open and highly-cultivated country, on the banks of the river Larke, a branch of the Ouse, and is a place of very high antiquity. It is not ascertained by whom or at what time it was founded, but from the number of Roman antiquities found, and from the quantity of Roman bricks and tiles employed in the building of the abbey church, it is considered to have been an important place under the dominion of the Romans, probably the station Villa Faustini. It was subsequently named by the Saxons Beodrics-worthe, i.e. "house of Becdric," to whom the manor belonged in the early part of the 9th century. It was a royal burgh at that period, and was bequeathed by Beodric to Edmund, who succeeded Offa as King of East Anglia. Here Edmund was crowned in 856. During an irruption of the Danes, in 870, he was captured and barbarously slain. The device of the corporate seal commemorates a miraculous circumstance attending his death. The remains of the martyr and king, after being interred at Hoxne, where miracles were reported to have been wrought by them, were removed and deposited at this town in 903, which thenceforth bore the name of St. Edmund's Bury. A church was erected to his memory, which was made collegiate by King Athelstan about the year 925, who also incorporated the six secular priests, who had founded a monastery, at the same time. The town and monastery having suffered greatly from the Danes under Swegn, were rebuilt by Canute, about 1020. The secular priests were expelled, and monks of the Benedictine order were then established in their place. Bishop Aylwin took part in the foundation of the new abbey, which was richly endowed, and subsequently attained a degree of magnificence and privilege unrivalled by any monastery in Great Britain, with the exception of the abbey of Glastonbury."
From The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland (1868)
Transcribed by Colin Hinson ©2003
Description of Bury St. Mary.
See also Bury Abbey, Bury All Saints, Christ Church Moreton Hall, Bury St Edmund, Bury St George, Bury St John, and Bury St Peter.
You can search for churches in the local area that are recorded in the GENUKI church database.
"The Bury Rentals 1526 and 1547" by Anthony Breen. The content predates the Parish Registers and has been specially translated from the original Latin. It will enable readers to readily access material they might otherwise have been unable to decipher and serves to illustrate how much material is available from this and even earlier periods. The content will be of interest to anyone searching for C16 ancestors in the Bury St. Edmunds area, house historians and those studying the history of the Abbey.
OS Grid reference TL850640 - Bury St Edmunds
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