We left Drinkstone today on our way back west and spent the morning in Bury St Edmunds to explore the Abbey and the Cathedral. Edmund the Martyr was King of East Anglia from 855 until 869, when he was slain by the Danes. His lineage is unknown. He became a victim of the Great Heathen Army after providing them with horses in exchange for peace. The Great Heathen Army was a coalition of Scandinavian warriors who landed in East Anglia with the intention of conquering all of Anglo-Saxon England. The army captured York and marched deep into Mercia (England’s midlands) until the Mercian’s sued for peace. The Great Army moved back to York for the winter but then invaded East Anglia, conquering it and killing Edmund. It is not known if he was killed in battle against the Danes, or after capture for refusing to denounce Christ. The latter edition became the stuff of legends and brought about his canonisation. The story went that the East Anglian army attacked the Danes during their wintering at Thetford in 866 and having lost the battle, King Edmund being trapped inside his hall, threw his weapons out, just as Peter the Apostle put away his sword on Christ’s command. This account was given by St Dunstan, the Archbishop of Canterbury in 986 having obtained the ‘facts’ from Edmund’s supposed elderly sword-bearer. He claimed that King Edmund was beaten with rods and whipped, tied to a tree and shot with so many arrows that he bristled like a hedgehog. When he continued to call upon Christ, the Dane Leader, Ivar the Boneless, ordered him to be beheaded and his head thrown into the woods. Later, when Edmund’s followers searched for it, calling out “where are you friend”, his head answered “here, here, here” and his men recovered it from between the paws of a wolf who was protecting it from being eaten by other animals. His remains were taken to Bury St Edmund’s (Bury means Borough and not place of Burial) in 903. A cult in Edmund’s honour built up at Bury St Edmunds but also in Toulouse, France, which claimed to have relics of the King. The legend continues that in 1574, Edmund’s body was exhumed and it was found that all the arrow wounds on his undecomposed body were healed and his head was reattached. A shrine to Edmund was built at Bury St Edmunds, memorial coins were minted and various miracles attributed to him. Until Richard the Lionheart’s (King Richard 1) adoption of St George as his personal patron and protector of his army, St Edmund was regarded as the Patron Saint of England. Even today, there are 55 Parish Churches throughout England dedicated to St Edmund and there have been a number of modern campaigns to reinstate him as England’s Patron Saint.
A church has stood on the site of the Cathedral since 1065 when St Denis’s Church was built within the Abbey grounds. The Abbot Anselm, rebuilt the church and dedicated it to St James. He also built the Abbey Gate Tower, known as the Norman Tower alongside the church, which serves as a Belfry to this day. St James was rebuilt from 1503 in the perpendicular style by John Wastell who was also involved in the building of King’s College, Cambridge. The building became a Cathedral in 1924 and continuous rebuilding programs to modify the Chancel and Tower with additions of transepts, chapels, cloisters and crypt treasury have occurred up to 2012.
The Abbey of St Edmunds dates from 1020 and became one of the wealthiest and most powerful Benedictine monasteries in England. At Henry VIII’s dissolution of the Catholic monasteries, St Edmund’s shrine was destroyed and the Abbey left in ruins, when most of its stone was quarried for other building purposes.
After an interesting morning’s history lesson, we set off for Cambridge where we intended to stay overnight and spend a day investigating the city. We arrived at our stay at Rectory Farm (not to be confused with various farms of the same name in the Cambridge area) Guest House , 2 miles (3.2 km) north of the city centre. A lovely quiet spot surrounded by farmland, and country lanes. The main house, where breakfast is served, was constructed in the 1960’s in the Georgian Style, with 2 acres of formal gardens. On the owners advice, we walked to nearby Coton to have dinner at the Plough. The late afternoon light across the fields and down the tree-lined lane induced a feeling of bucolic peace and beauty. The meal was delicious as was the atmosphere. we need our phone torches to find our way back to our comfortable accomodation and a restful night.
