Bury

Bury St Edmunds grew around the shrine of Edmund, the East Anglian king killed by the Danes in the ninth century and honoured as a saint. His relics drew pilgrims to a great and wealthy Benedictine abbey, one of the richest and most imposing monasteries in England. The town developed beside its precinct, under the authority of the abbot.

Relations between abbey and townspeople were often troubled. During the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 the abbey became a target of attacks, reflecting long-standing grievances against its authority. Its wealth and royal connections could not save it from Henry VIII's dissolution: Abbot Reeve surrendered the house in 1539, and its buildings were subsequently dismantled. The surviving ruins testify to the former grandeur of Edmund's shrine.