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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Bury St Edmunds
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(31,000 in 1991)
Town in Suffolk which was originally a Saxon settlement. It acquired its name after the bones of St Edmund the Martyr were transferred to a monastery here in about 910. He had been the last king of *East Anglia, killed by the Danes in 870 for refusing to deny Christianity. His shrine brought prosperity as a major place of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages.
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The abbey is now a ruin except for two gateways, one of them set in a superb Norman tower. But two 15C parish churches survive on its periphery. St Mary's has a notable hammer-beam roof with carved angels; St James' has been since 1914 the cathedral of the diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ispwich, and is being gradually enlarged. Moyses Hall, a stone-vaulted domestic building of the 12C, was at successive periods a tavern, a workhouse and a prison before it became in 1899 a museum of Bury's extensive local history.
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Much of 17–18C Bury survives, with striking buildings such as Cupola House and Angel Corner. The Unitarian chapel dates from 1711; the town hall (1774–80) is by Robert Adam; and the Theatre Royal (1819, by William Wilkins, with its interior unchanged ) remains in use as a working theatre.
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