Bury St Edmunds is a historic market town in the county of Suffolk, England and formerly the county town of West Suffolk. It is the main town in the borough of St Edmundsbury and known for the ruined abbey near the town centre. Bury is the seat of the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, with the episcopal see at St Edmundsbury Cathedral.
The town originally called Beodericsworth, is known for brewing and malting (with the large Greene King brewery) and for a British Sugar processing factory. Many large and small businesses are located in Bury, which traditionally has given Bury an affluent economy with low unemployment,[citation needed] with the town being the main cultural and retail centre for West Suffolk. Tourism is also a major part of the economy, plus local government.
History
Bury St Edmunds (Beodericsworth, St Edmund's Bury), supposed by some to have been the Villa Faustina of the Romans, was one of the royal towns of the Saxons. Sigebert, king of the East Angles, founded a monastery here about 633, which in 903 became the burial place of King Edmund, who was slain by the Danes in 869, and owed most of its early celebrity to the reputed miracles performed at the shrine of the martyr king. The town grew around Bury St Edmunds Abbey, a site of pilgrimage. By 925 the fame of St Edmund had spread far and wide, and the name of the town was changed to St Edmund's Bury. In 942 or 945 King Edmund had granted to the abbot and convent jurisdiction over the whole town, free from all secular services, and Canute in 1020 freed it from episcopal control. Edward the Confessor made the abbot lord of the franchise. Sweyn, in 1020, having destroyed the older monastery and ejected the secular priests, built a Benedictine abbey on St Edmund's Bury.
The town is associated with Magna Carta. In 1214 the barons of England are believed to have met in the Abbey Church and sworn to force King John to accept the Charter of Liberties, the document which influenced the creation of the Magna Carta. By various grants from the abbots, the town gradually attained the rank of a borough.
Henry III in 1235 granted to the abbot two annual fairs, one in December (which still survives) and the other the great St Matthew's fair, which was abolished by the Fairs Act of 1871.[2] In 1327, the Great Riot occurred, in which the local populace led an armed revolt against the Abbey. The burghers were angry at the overwhelming power, wealth and corruption of the monastery, which ran almost every aspect of local life with a view to enriching itself.[citation needed] The riot destroyed the main gate and a new, fortified gate was built in its stead. However in 1381 during the Great Uprising, the Abbey was sacked and looted again.[citation needed] This time, the Prior was executed; his severed head was placed on a pike in the Great Market.[citation needed] On 11 April 1608 a great fire broke out in Eastgate Street, which resulted in 160 dwellings and 400 outhouses being destroyed.