Bury St Edmunds abbey: One thousand year celebrations delayed

The abbey would have towered over the town of Bury St Edmunds according to this artist's impression by WK Hardy

Stories of battles between townsfolk and monks and a saint buried under a tennis court are part of the 1,000-year history of a Benedictine abbey, which anniversary organisers had been hoping to celebrate this year.

Founded in 1020 the abbey, now in ruins, towered over Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, which it "controlled".

Throughout its history, pilgrims came from around the world to see the shrine of martyred East Anglian king St Edmund.

Many of the events to celebrate the anniversary have been postponed due to the Covid-19 lockdown.

Parts of the ruined abbey were turned into homes

But historian Dr Francis Young, author of Edmund: In Search of England's Lost King, was able to give a talk about it which is available on Facebook and he spoke to the BBC afterwards.

He said the abbey, which was dissolved by Henry VIII during the Reformation, was an "incredible engineering feat".

"It was generally considered the fifth-largest monastery in England and the cult of St Edmund had a European reach," said Dr Young, who is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Churches throughout the country were named after St Edmund

St Edmund's body

Dr Young believes St Edmund was buried by the monks within the grounds of the monastery.

"We have this one source which is from the 17th Century and written down by the great grandson of one of the monks who hid the body when the abbey was dissolved. According to a family story the body of St Edmund was put in a iron chest and buried," he said.

He said because the chest must have been very heavy it is likely to have been buried nearby.

"They probably buried it at the monk's cemetery which is where tennis courts were put up later," he said.

He said St Edmund was the first patron saint of England from about the 10th to 14th Century.

St Edmund, who ruled the Anglo Saxon realm of East Anglia (covering modern day Norfolk, Suffolk and parts of The Fens in Cambridgeshire) in the 9th Century, was killed in AD869 by Viking raiders who shot him with arrows when he refused to turn away from Christianity.

Dr Young said it is possible Canute founded the abbey on 18 October commemorate the Battle of Assandun, when Canute beat an English army led by King Edmund Ironside, which took place in Essex in 1016, four years earlier

He also became a patron saint of pandemic, partly due to the association of arrows with plagues in medieval times.

Dr Young said: "It's important to emphasise how far the reach of St Edmund's was - Ireland, France, Italy and Egypt had churches to St Edmund. Richard the Lionheart dedicated his crusade's fleet to St Edmund."

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He said one of the things that made Bury "so interesting" was the conflict between the abbey and the rest of the town's population.

In 1020 King Canute founded a stone abbey to house a shrine to St Edmund in the town

"The abbey was very wealthy, but it tried to control the town completely. It wouldn't allow the townsfolk any control over their own trade or let them have a town council," he said.

"So while you have successful towns growing up nearby - such as Norwich and Ipswich - Bury was developing as an urban centre but its townsfolk had no rights. It was owned by the abbey and its abbot had power of life or death over its citizens.

"It all boiled over in 1327 when the abbot refused to repay a debt to the townsfolk and they stormed the abbey and the monks armed themselves.

"It became effectively a civil war which carried on for one and half years."

The monestery was disolved by King Henry VIII in 1539

Making of Saint and Abbey

• 850s: Edmund becomes King of East Anglia

• 869: The Danes ravage East Anglia. Edmund is martyred after losing battle of Thetford

• 890: King Edmund recognised as a saint

• 903: Edmund's body is moved to Beodericsworth, which will become Bury St Edmunds

• 1020: King Canute founds the Abbey of St Edmund

• 1065: Abbot Baldwin lays out the town on a grid pattern

• 1081: The building of the great Abbey Church is started

• 1539: Dissolution of the Monasteries. The shrine is broken up

At one point the monks installed siege engines in their fight against the Bury citizens.

"It ended after the townsfolk kidnapped the abbot at one of his manors and they shaved him and stuck him in a sack and abducted him to the Netherlands in an attempt to extract a ransom, but in the end that did not work and the abbot - Richard de Draughton - returned," said Dr Young.

The town eventually gave in after "the pope threatened a complete excommunication of the townsfolk, which would mean they could not be buried in consecrated grounds".

A major conflict between the citizens of Bury St Edmunds and the abbey was only resolved after the pope threatened excommunicate the town

The Reverend Canon Matthew Vernon, of St Edmundsbury Cathedral, said: "St Edmund and the abbey have a great significance for the town and indeed the county.

"He is key to the identity of Bury St Edmunds and I think it is because people can relate to him on different levels - for someone like me, from a religious point of view; for other people he is significant as a national figure in history and a local hero.

"St Edmund is someone who died for his people and for his beliefs and that is a compelling story. People relate to that."

Postponed events

A statue of St Edmund stands in the grounds of the cathedral

A number of celebrations for the 1,000th anniversary have been postponed until next year:

• The Bury Bach Choir performing Handel's Messiah at the cathedral accompanied by Norwich Baroque and soprano Fae Evelyn

• A pilgrimage walk from St Benet's Abbey in The Broads, in Norfolk, to Bury St Edmunds. King Canute founded St Benet's in 1019 and Bury's first abbot was from St Benet's

• Some 100 Benedictine monks and nuns from communities across Britain, including the Isle of Wight, and possibly from abroad, are to gather in Bury St Edmunds for the first time in 500 years since the Dissolution