Bury St Edmunds buildings [258]

Image: © Michael Dibb Taken: 9 Sep 2020

Now a funeral parlour, this is the former Elephant and Castle public house which opened in the 1860s and closed in 2012. Built in the early 19th century in white brick with a later rear extension. Listed, grade II, with details at: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1022556 Westgate Street is the southernmost street of the medieval grid and it is mainly about the Greene King Brewery with so many of the buildings constructed for its processes or for its employees. In addition to the brewery there is a rich mix of historic buildings in diverse materials, including white brick, red brick and stucco render. The street has the only surviving intact Regency theatre. 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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