Suffolk's shrine city — shrine of a martyred king, Greene King, and Georgian streets
Bury St Edmunds is a handsome Suffolk market town built on the ruins of one of medieval England's richest abbeys. The Norman tower, the great flint abbey gate, and the atmospheric Abbey Gardens occupy the town centre, while Georgian streets lined with independent shops, the Greene King brewery, and one of the best market squares in England fill the grid laid out by Abbot Baldwin in the 11th century. It is a rare English town where the medieval street plan survives almost intact.
The town grew around the shrine of St Edmund, the Anglo-Saxon king of East Anglia martyred by Vikings in 869 CE, whose remains were interred here in 903. The Benedictine abbey became one of the wealthiest in England; it was here in 1214 that English barons met to swear to force Magna Carta on King John. The abbey was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1539 and fell into ruin, though the great Norman tower and two of the abbey gates still stand.