Bury St. Edmunds

On Saturday we took the train to a town called Bury St Edmunds, a bit less than an hour from Cambridge. St Edmund was the last king of East Anglia (the easternmost region of England); the Danes killed him in 856, and his body was reburied here in 903. A thousand years ago this whole region of England was under pretty much constant attack by rampaging Scandinavians. Why they wanted it I’m not sure, since much of it was under water. But that’s a story for another day. Anyway, the town gets its name from the shrine to St. Edmund; pretty quickly a powerful Benedictine monastery grew up around the shrine, and became a famous pilgrimage site. The abbey is mentioned in the Domesday book.

St. Edmundsbury Abbey was apparently the wealthiest abbey in England by the time Henry VIII got his big idea, so it really took a beating in the 1530s. Henry liked to collect "evidence" of just how bad the abbeys and monasteries were; when he sent one of his goons to Bury in 1535, the report noted "much guzzling, gambling, wine, and women." Much to our disappointment, none of these were in evidence during our visit. Today the abbey is just a picturesque ruin, spread out over many acres, which the town maintains as a huge public park, with lovely flowers, a playground, and so on. The walls themselves are pretty worn down; it turns out that after the dissolution the good townsfolk of Bury used it as a quarry. So the stone is spread all over town; a kind of literal dissolution, I guess, which nicely matches the literalistic tenor of the English Reformation. Anyway, it’s a really great place, and the kids had a terrific time clambering about on the walls.


Henry’s sister, Mary Tudor, the queen of France, had been buried in the Abbey. But when Henry stamped out Catholicism in England, and the abbey along with it, he had to exhume his own sister and then re-bury her in nearby St. Mary’s church. I guess there are some unforeseen consequences when you pick a fight with the Pope.

While Wendy and the kids were romping about in the ruins, I wandered off a bit and happened, quite by chance, on the Greene King Brewery. Greene King is the largest brewer in this part of England, and they’ve been based in Bury St Edmunds since their founding 150 years ago. Beer is made from barley, and apparently the barley in East Anglia is the best in England. There’s a museum at the brewery, so I wandered in. It turns out that beer has been brewed in Bury St. Edmunds for an awfully long time. The monks were apparently going at it full tilt by the 12th century, selling beer to all the pilgrims who came to the abbey and presumably making a nice little profit. But a lot of the product never left the abbey walls. According to the account books, in the 13th century the monks were allowed a ration of a gallon of beer a day. If they were ill, this was increased to a gallon and a half per day.

Now, I’ve long thought that I would be a good candidate for the monastic life. (Wendy, who knows me pretty well, thinks this is preposterous. You be the judge.) But I was never quite sure why it was so appealing. Now I know. A gallon of beer a day! Sure, the poverty and the chastity would be hard, but, sheesh, that’s a lot of free beer.