Bury St Edmunds

 

The centre of Bury through the Norman Tower of the Abbey

1.     The important things about Bury St Edmunds are, I think, three: It had a big abbey. Somewhat like Abingdon or Lewes, the abbey ruins seem to cast a rather gloomy spell over the place. The abbey gardens are utterly out of keeping with what the abbey represented – no gardens would be better, like Castle Acre.

2.      Secondly, not much happened in Bury  after the Dissolution - apart from a huge sugar beet processing factory that can be seen from anywhere in the town. There are some excellent 18th- and 19th-century houses, but they are tucked away in back streets, where you would hardly notice them.

3.      Thirdly, Bury has a rather grand station, with two towers, but the station doesn't seem to have caused a great transformation in the town. There are no direct trains to London (and probably never were). That should make Bury more interesting (because the lifeblood doesn’t drain away during the day) or perhaps less interesting (because wealthy people wouldn't want to live there). The railway, like the busy A11 bypass, don't seem to have impacted much on the town. The station is about 20 minutes’ walk from the centre, which perhaps prevents it seeming to be a hub of activity.

My hunch is that the relative lack of any development in the centre during the past two hundred years (apart from a shopping centre, which is somewhat self-contained and does not impact on the historic buildings) explains why, unlike other towns of a similar size, Bury does not appear to have big Victorian villas. Even the public buildings, such as the Corn Exchange, are of a single storey and fit within the scale of the existing buildings around. There is plenty of small-scale terrace housing, and the usual modern estates round the edge, but large houses seem to be no later than early 19th-century.

The centre of Bury, with a curious early illuminated road sign

What Bury has gained in the five or so years since we last visited is some independent shops. Unlike, say, Cambridge, where rents are so high that there is very little opportunity in the centre for innovative independent shops, the very fact of Bury’s being slightly off the beaten track means that startups can survive. There was a great new artisan cheese shop, run by a man who told me Bury was much friendlier than the town in Sussex where he used to live, and an excellent chocolate shop where they make their own chocolates.

Perhaps what I remember most as characteristic of Bury, it seems, is rows of very undistinguished small terraced housing – you see a lot of it between the train station and the centre. The restaurant Pea Porridge, claimed to be the town’s finest, is actually three tiny terraced houses pulled together, in a diminutive square (actually a triangle); you don’t eat in one big room, but in tiny rooms as if you are eating in someone’s dining room. Since the abbey ended, Bury lacks any kind of grandeur.

How does it compare with, say, Saffron Waldon, which has a population less than half? Both are small-scale market towns, attracting people from the area around, but almost closing down by four in the afternoon on a Saturday. Both seem to possess the feeling there is nothing to compete with. Nonetheless, Saffron Walden, with a population of little more than a third of Bury, manages to have thriving history societies, a much more interesting museum – and an independent bookshop. To be fair to Bury, the museum featured not one but two artists with local associations: Sybil Andrews and Mary Beale -  but nobody with the reputation of Edward Bawden. But for me, the biggest mystery is why does Bury have not one but three good restaurants, when Saffron Walden has none?

Beale, Mary, portrait of Lady Margaret Twisden, c1699

Like any town, Bury has its less exciting aspects. A drab cathedral that feels largely modern in the worst sense: was built or rebuilt in the last hundred years, but refuses to engage with any modern movements in architecture. It displays money in the new tower but no genuine taste. We couldn’t even get inside St Mary’s Church, which for the second time we visited was closed,  when the website (and the sign beside the door) said it was open to visit. But I shouldn’t complain; five years ago, this was a place that would never have had its own independent cheese shop. Signs of life, after all.