Monk statue unveiled for Bury St Edmunds saint's day

Blacksmith Kevin Baldwin made the monk sculpture

A sculpture of a monk has been unveiled at an abbey to mark a saint's day.

The steel monk has been placed in the crypt in the abbey ruins in Bury St Edmunds, in Suffolk, where the shrine of St Edmund would have stood.

The 2.3m (7ft 6in) tall sculpture was designed by Nigel Kaines and made by blacksmith Kevin Baldwin.

The 2mm thick steel monk, weighing 250kg (550lb), was "certainly the most unusual project I have worked on" and "quite tricky", Mr Baldwin said.

The monk is only on public display until Sunday but will be back on show next year, when the Abbey of St Edmund will be celebrating 1,000 years since it was founded.

The monk is briefly on public display at the abbey

Mr Baldwin, who was tasked with creating the sculpture, said: "It means a great deal to me because I am from Bury St Edmunds, and generations of my family are from the town, and I love its history.

"It was quite tricky to create the look of a flowing monk's robe in steel, so I used a pattern for the robe, much as a dressmaker would use for a costume.

"It was then a case of using traditional methods to create the monk, the same methods that would have been used 1,000 years ago."

St Edmunds Abbey became home to the remains of the martyred King Edmund in 903, making the monastery a place of pilgrimage.

The Benedictine abbey was established there in 1020.

Original plans to celebrate the 1,000th anniversary in 2020 were shelved because of the coronavirus pandemic, and instead a number of events are planned for next year.