Bury St Edmunds

Bury St Edmunds is a town in the county of Suffolk, England. It is the main town in the borough of St Edmundsbury and is probably most famous for the ruined abbey which stands near the town centre. The abbey is a shrine to Edmund, the Saxon King of the East Angles, who was killed by the Danes in 869 AD. The town initially grew around the abbey, a site of pilgrimage, and developed into a flourishing clothmaking town by the 14th century. The abbey was largely destroyed during the 16th century with the dissolution of the monasteries but Bury remained a prosperous town throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. As would be expected of a town in such a rural area, Bury fell into relative decline with the onset of the industrial revolution and accordingly remains an attractive market town.

Next to the abbey is the cathedral, created only relatively recently in 1913.

For a later important service at the new cathedral in the 1960s Benjamin Britten wrote his Fanfare for St Edmundsbury, a work for three trumpets which is now well-known.

The abbey gardens had an Internet bench installed in the late 1990s, which allowed anyone to plug in a portable computing device and connect to the Internet.

The town has a small Theatre Royal which is still in use.

Britain's smallest public house, The Nutshell, is in the town marketplace.