In Bury St Edmunds - Look Up!

Look up and you can find four wonderful carvings of muses on the side of The Market Cross in The Traverse, facing The Cornhill.

Markets have been held in Bury St Edmunds for more than a thousand years and still thrive today, with markets on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Even today, the street names recall their history (for example Buttermarket, Cornhill, Woolhall and Hatter Street) describing the goods traded there - butter, corn, wool, hats.

In June 1725, the first floor of The Market Cross became Bury St Edmunds’ first permanent theatre, The Grand Theatre before Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds was founded. In 1774 the famous Georgian architect, Robert Adam was commissioned to re-clad the south end of The Market Cross. The scheme was later enlarged to include the other three sides and work was finally completed in 1780, although the town had been using the first floor as a theatre for four years. Now it is home to a performing arts and arts centre!

Tucked away within the green dome on top of The Athenaeum is one of only two astronomical observatories in Suffolk complete with a Victorian Troughton & Simms 4-inch refracting telescope.

The observatory was built after an inspiring astronomy lecture at The Athenauem by Sir James Airy, 7th Astronomer Royal, in October 1858, at the same time the impressive Donati’s comet was looming large in the night sky.

Unfortunately the observatory is not currently open to the public as it is in need of restoration but The Athenaeum Astronomy Association has started fundraising to restore the observatory to its former glory.

If you look closely at the front of Abbey Gate at the entrance to the Abbey Gardens you will see a number of arches with empty plinths.

It is believed that these were once filled with statues to various saints but they were taken during the dissolution of the Abbey.

Academic Montague Rhodes James (known more widely as M.R. James the ghost writer) put forward a theory in his book 'Suffolk and Norfolk', that the three niches immediately above the portcullis in the centre of the gate may have contained St Edmund and two archers. Look carefully, and you will see the one in the centre is raised slightly higher than the other two, possibly indicating the significance and importance of the central statue!

A trip to St Edmundsbury Cathedral is a must do in Bury St Edmunds. When you go inside be sure to look up at the magnificent gilded fan vaulted ceiling of the Millennium Tower.

The fan-vaulted ceiling, made of oak, gilded and painted in blue, green and red, weighs about 6 tonnes and was hoisted in large, rib structure components 45 metres from the crossing floor. When hoisted and in its final position under the tower roof, craftsmen climbed up onto scaffolding to fix moulded frames and panels into the rib structure to make the finishing touches.

The base of the tower is adorned with 42 Diocesan shields, each bearing their coat of arms.

If you stand facing the entrance of 2 Abbeygate Street, now Boosh Bar, and look up you will see a niche above the entrance which contains a statue of St Edmund. The statue dates from around 1887 but previous to St Edmund another saint was celebrated here.

Up until 1969 this building was the premises of Thomas Cross, seedsman, nurseryman and florist. The saint that was originally in the niche was that of St Phocas, patron saint of gardeners.

The hanging sign above Lloyds Bank in Buttermarket is rather special. It features two pineapples which heralded from a time when pineapple was an expensive and rare fruit and to offer it to your guests showed your prosperity and generosity. On top you will see an oak tree for the Oakes family. James Oakes founded a successful banking business in the late 18th century. There's also a beehive with a bee argued to stand for Bevan of the Rookery in Rougham, which later became Ravenwood Hall (now Ravenwood Hall Hotel). But it is more likely that when Lloyds formed in 1765 they chose a beehive to represent industriousness.

In 1865, Lloyd & Co took over another bank in 1884 that had a black horse as a symbol. So why all these symbols combined in one sign? In 1918, they acquired the Bury firm Capital & Counties Bank, which had a few years earlier combined with Oakes, Bevan and Tollmache & Co.