Bury St Edmund's Abbey: including the monks' cemetery and outer precinct and vineyard walls

Heritage listing

Details The scheduling includes the precinct wall and all the open ground and upstanding remains of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds within the Abbey precinct to the north and east of St James' Cathedral, as well as the area to the south-east of the abbey church containing St Andrew's Chapel and the monks' cemetery. It also includes part of an outer precinct to the north-east, south of Eastgate, the wall around the abbey vineyard to the east of the River Lark, and isolated sections of the precinct wall to the north and west, as well as two entrances, St James' Tower to the west and St Margaret's Gate to the south. Most of the upstanding remains of the Abbey, including the surviving gatehouses, several sections of inner and outer precinct walls, as well as the ruins of the church, claustral ranges and associated structures are also listed at Grade I. These are identified in the scheduling documentation. The Abbey is on the east side of the historic centre of Bury St Edmunds, with the town centre immediately outside its west precinct wall. The main precinct is to the west of the River Lark, which forms its east boundary, with the outer precincts, including the vineyard, to the east. In c.633 a small religious community was founded by the Anglian king, Sigebert, in a settlement then known as Bedericsworth. This settlement, thought to have been centred on what is now the west side of the Abbey precinct, developed in the later Saxon period into a place of pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Edmund, king and martyr, killed by the Danes in c.869. His body was brought to Bury St Edmunds in 903, and the name of the town was changed to Bury St Edmunds in the course of the C10. In the early C11 Cnut re-founded what was by then a community of secular priests as a Benedictine monastery, a

From the Historic England List Entry under OGL v3.