Bury St Edmunds History Tour


Book Description

A guided tour of the historic town of Bury St Edmunds, showing how the areas you know and love have transformed over the centuries.




Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds


Book Description

This is the first English translation for forty years of a medieval classic, offering vivid and unique insight into the life of a great monastery in late twelfth-century England. The translation brilliantly communicates the interest and immediacy of Jocelin's narrative, and the annotation is particularly clear and helpful.




A History of Bury St Edmunds


Book Description

Bury St. Edmunds has an extraordinary history. The ancient Saxon settlement of Bedricesworth was transformed when the body of Edmund, the martyred King of the East Saxons, was brought to the town in the early 10th century. Around his tomb grew one of the largest abbeys in England, together with a planned new town, the grid pattern of which still survives. In the Middle Ages, Bury had an importance out of all proportion to its size: Parliaments were held here and many Kings of England were visitors.After the abbey was dissolved, Bury remained the heart of West Suffolk and was formally county town between 1888 and 1974. This new book combines archaeological evidence with documentary research to create a vivid picture of the town at every stage in its development and of the lives of its people; how they made their livings, their health, housing, religion, culture and entertainments. Famous townspeople are discussed, but the emphasis is on the ordinary inhabitant. The story is brought right up to the present day, including the effects on Bury of the great conflicts of the 20th century, in the second half of which it enjoyed rapid growth, with new light industry and tourism supplementing the traditional agriculture-based trades.In this, his seventh book on the history of East Anglia, the author, a professional historian and teacher of local history, has provided a much-needed account of Bury's entire past, richly illustrated and very readable, which will appeal to everyone who knows the place ... one of the most beautiful towns in England.




A History of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, 1182-1256


Book Description

Definitive history of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds during a crucial period in its history. St Edmund's Abbey was one of the most highly privileged and wealthiest religious houses in medieval England, one closely involved with the central government; its history is an integral part of English history. This book (the first of two volumes) offers a magisterial and comprehensive account of the Abbey during the thirteenth century, based primarily on evidence in the abbey's records [over 40 registers survive]. The careers of the abbots, beginning withthe great Samson, provide the chronological structure; separate chapters study various aspects of their rule, such as their relations with the convent, the abbey's internal and external administration and its relations with itstenants and neighbours, with the king and the central government. Chapters are also devoted to the monks' religious, cultural and intellectual life, to their writings, book collection and archives. Appendices focus on the mid-thirteenth century accounts which give a unique and detailed picture of the organisation and economy of St Edmunds' estates in West Suffolk, and on the abbey's watermills and windmills. Dr ANTONIA GRANSDEN is former Reader atthe University of Nottingham.




Secret Bury St Edmunds


Book Description

Explore Bury St Edmunds’ secret history through a fascinating selection of stories, facts and photographs.




Bury St Edmunds and the Norman Conquest


Book Description

Responses to the impact of the Norman Conquest examined through the wealth of evidence provided by the important abbey of Bury St Edmunds. Bury St Edmunds is noteworthy in so many ways: in preserving the cult and memory of the last East Anglian king, in the richness of its archives, and not least in its role as a mediator of medical texts and studies. All these aspects, and more, are amply illustrated in this collection, by specialists in their fields. The balance of the whole work, and the care taken to place the individual topics in context, has resulted in a satisfying whole, which placesAbbot Baldwin and his abbey squarely in the forefront of eleventh-century politics and society. Professor Ann Williams. The abbey of Bury St Edmunds, by 1100, was an international centre of learning, outstanding for its culting of St Edmund, England's patron saint, who was known through France and Italy as a miracle worker principally, but also as a survivor, who had resisted the Vikings and the invading king Swein and gained strength after 1066. Here we journey into the concerns of his community as it negotiated survival in the Anglo-Norman empire, examining, on the one hand, the roles of leading monks, such as the French physician-abbot Baldwin, and, on the other, the part played by ordinary women of the vill. The abbey of Bury provides an exceptionally rich archive, including annals, historical texts, wills, charters, and medical recipes. The chapters in this volume, written by leading experts, present differing perspectives on Bury's responses to conquest; reflecting the interests of the monks, they cover literature, music, medicine, palaeography, and the history of the region in its European context. DrTom Licence is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History and Director of the Centre of East Anglian Studies at the University of East Anglia. Contributors: Debbie Banham, David Bates, Eric Fernie, Sarah Foot, Michael Gullick, Tom Licence, Henry Parkes, Véronique Thouroude, Elizabeth van Houts, Thomas Waldman, Teresa Webber




Lost Bury St Edmunds


Book Description

Fully illustrated description of Bury St Edmund's well-known, and lesser-known, places that have been lost over the years.




Suffolk Summer


Book Description




Joan, Lady of Wales


Book Description

The history of women in medieval Wales before the English conquest of 1282 is one largely shrouded in mystery. For the Age of Princes, an era defined by ever-increased threats of foreign hegemony, internal dynastic strife and constant warfare, the comings and goings of women are little noted in sources. This misfortune touches even the most well-known royal woman of the time, Joan of England (d. 1237), the wife of Llywelyn the Great of Gwynedd, illegitimate daughter of King John and half-sister to Henry III. With evidence of her hand in thwarting a full scale English invasion of Wales to a notorious scandal that ended with the public execution of her supposed lover by her husband and her own imprisonment, Joan’s is a known, but little-told or understood story defined by family turmoil, divided loyalties and political intrigue. From the time her hand was promised in marriage as the result of the first Welsh-English alliance in 1201 to the end of her life, Joan’s place in the political wranglings between England and the Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd was a fundamental one. As the first woman to be designated Lady of Wales, her role as one a political diplomat in early thirteenth-century Anglo-Welsh relations was instrumental. This first-ever account of Siwan, as she was known to the Welsh, interweaves the details of her life and relationships with a gendered re-assessment of Anglo-Welsh politics by highlighting her involvement in affairs, discussing events in which she may well have been involved but have gone unrecorded and her overall deployment of royal female agency.