5 Things to Spot at The Angel

You cannot miss the blue plaque at the front of The Angel Hotel, installed on the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’s birth to commemorate his visits to Bury St Edmunds.

Dickens first stayed at The Angel in 1835 as a journalist for the Morning Chronicle, staying in what was then room 11, now room 215 and known as the Charles Dickens Suite.

A wolf appears in the newly decorated bar at The Angel, a nod to this special creature's place in the story of the town.

Feathers appear when angels are near. It wouldn't be The Angel without some angel feathers and if you look up in the hotel's restaurant you will see them!

An inn has stood on this site since medieval times. Names with a religious slant often indicate that the inn is located in close proximity to a church. Opposite The Angel is the ruins of the Abbey of St Edmund and St Edmundsbury Cathedral. Just down the road is St Mary's Church.

You cannot miss the caricature of Dickens in The Angel's restaurant. It is the front page of the L'Eclipse newspaper. In 1859 and 1861 he returned to The Angel to read to a captive audience at the next door Athenaeum. He read from The Pickwick Papers on 13 October 1859 and from A Personal History of David Copperfield on 30 October 1861. Both novels feature Bury St Edmunds.

In 2018, a film crew for a new movie The Personal History of David Copperfield arrived to film The Angel, which was to double for London. They turned the exterior of the hotel back to look like its former coaching inn days with horses and carts filling Angel Hill.

The distinctive Virginia Creeper which covers the front of The Angel is a glorious sight in all seasons.

The original Virginia Creeper was planted in 1906 and it turns from green to bright red and orange in autumn.