Bury St Edmunds features [17]

Image: © Michael Dibb Taken: 9 Sep 2020

On the roundabout at Southgate Green stands this sculpture of the wolf from the legend of St Edmund. The sculpture is carved from oak and it guards a steel crown resting on stones from Bury St Edmunds Abbey. The Legend of St Edmund and the Wolf Edmund, King of East Anglia, fought against the Danes but was captured. When he refused to give up his Christian faith the Danes tied him to a tree, shot him with arrows until he ‘bristled like a hedgehog’ and then decapitated him. The King’s men came to find his body after the battle, but they could not find his head. Hearing a cry of ‘Here, here, here’ from a nearby wood, they discovered a wolf protecting the head of the King. The wolf allowed the men to take the head and, when placed with the body, a miracle occurred and the head fused back on. This was felt to be a sign of sainthood and many miracles were then attributed to Edmund and his shrine in the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds became a place of pilgrimage. Sparhawk Street runs from Honey Hill via the open space of St Mary’s Square to Southgate Street which leads to Southgate Green, the site of the town’s Southgate and where St Petronella’s Hospital was located, established in the 12th century for the treatment of female lepers. The area is rich in history and has a great variety of buildings. 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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