tern railway. Pop. (1901) 16,255. It is
pleasantly situated on a gentle eminence, in a fertile and richly
cultivated district. The tower or church-gate, one of the finest specimens
of early Norman architecture in England, and the western gate, a beautiful
structure of rich Decorated work, together with ruined walls of
considerable extent, are all that remains of the great abbey. St Mary's
church, with a beautifully carved roof, was erected in the earlier part of
the 15th century, and contains the tomb of Mary Tudor, queen of Louis XII.
of France. St James's church is also a fine Perpendicular building, with a
modern chancel, and without a tower. All these splendid structures,
fronting one of the main streets in succession, form, even without the
abbey church, a remarkable memorial of the wealth of the foundation. Behind
them lie picturesque gardens which contain the ruins, the plan of which is
difficult to trace, though the outlines of some portions, as the
chapter-house, have been made clear by excavation. There is a handsome
Roman Catholic church of St Edmund. The so-called Moyses Hall (perhaps a
Jew's House, of which there is a parallel example at Lincoln) retains
transitional Norman work. The free grammar school, founded by Edward VI.,
has two scholarships at Cambridge, and six exhibitions to each university,
and occupies modern buildings. The Church Schools Company has a school.
There are large agricultural implement works, and the agricultural trade is
important, cattle and corn markets being held. In the vicinity is Ickworth,
the seat of the marquess of Bristol, a great mansion of the end of the 18th
century. The parliamentary borough, which returns one member, is
coextensive with the municipal borough. The town is governed by a mayor, 6
aldermen and 18 councillors. Area, 2947 acres.

Bury St Edmunds (Beodricesworth, 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 about 870, and owed most of its early celebrity to the
reputed miracles performed at the shrine of the martyr king. 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. Sweyn, in 1020, having destroyed the older
monastery and ejected the secular priests, built a Benedictine