Bury St Edmunds features [40]

Image: © Michael Dibb Taken: 13 Sep 2020

On the roundabout where Risbygate Street crosses Parkway is this sculpture of St Edmund in his martyrdom, made from steel wire with steel arrows penetrating Edmund’s heart and body. 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. Brentgovel Street and Risbygate Street was a prosperous area in the fifteenth century but it became neglected and decay had set in. In the 1990s, a Conservation Area Partnership Schemes was introduced to give a new lease of life into the area by repairing and reusing historic buildings. Forty five new residential units and ten new retail units have resulted in the area thriving again. 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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