Bury St Edmunds buildings [8]

Image: © Michael Dibb Taken: 13 Sep 2020

Number 15 Abbeygate Street also has a frontage to High Baxter Street. Formerly a house and shop now a shop with storage above. The front range is late 15th or early 16th century and was extended at the rear along High Baxter Street circa 1600. The building was restored circa 1980 and the shop front dates from that period. The building is timber-framed and stuccoed and is jettied along High Baxter Street. Prior to restoration it was also jettied along Abbeygate Street. Listed, grade II, with details at: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1021958 Abbeygate Street is the principal shopping street of the town. Bury St Edmunds is a market town which is the cultural and retail centre for West Suffolk and is known for brewing (Greene King) and sugar (British Sugar). There is scattered evidence of earlier activity but essentially Bury St Edmunds began as one of the royal boroughs of the Saxons and a monastery was founded which became the burial place of King Edmund. A new Benedictine abbey was built in 1020 which became rich and powerful and the town was laid out on a grid pattern by Abbot Baldwin. After the dissolution the abbey became ruinous. A new church, later the cathedral, was begun in the early 16th century.

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