Gone Medieval - Discovering Bury St Edmunds

Episode Date: March 1, 2022

The historic cathedral town of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk may well be familiar to listeners to Gone Medieval - perhaps from our episode 'Saint Edmuntd: England's Lost King' or the town’s mention during our hunt for the 'Viking Great Heathen Army' on Dan Snow's History Hit. In its heyday, Bury St Edmunds served as a significant and life-changing place of pilgrimage. In this episode of Gone Medieval, Cat is on location, exploring Bury St Edmunds’ landmarks, including what was one of the richest and largest Benedictine monasteries in England. She’s joined by archaeologist Adrian Tindall, Chair of the Bury St Edmunds Association of Registered Tour Guides.Don’t forget to leave us a rating and review while you're here!For more Gone Medieval content, subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to the Android or Apple store Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello and welcome to today's episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. I'm Dr. Kat Jarman. Today I'm out on the road again and this time I've headed east to bury St. Edmund to visit the Abbey here and learn more about its remarkable medieval history. This Abbey was one of the richest and most powerful Benedictine monasteries in all of each. England. It was a hugely important site of pilgrimage and has some quite surprising stories attached to it.

I've been lucky enough to get a tour with someone who knows an awful lot about the site. Adrian Tyndall, who has a background as an archaeologist and is now the chair of the Barry St Edmund's Association of Register Tour Guides and he's also the acting chair of Abbey of St Edmund Heritage Partnership Research Group, so I don't think there's much that Adrian doesn't know about this abbey. Some of the eager listeners may remember a bit about Barry St. Edmunds from a previous episode, one with Dr Francis Young on St Edmund himself, and also the Abbey and Edmund cropped up in a crossover episode I recorded with Dan Snow over on Dan Snow's history here a little while ago,

when we went in search for the Viking Great Army across the country. So when you've listened to this, do search out those two to find more about the Viking link especially, and the possibility that St Edmund, whose bones are now lost, may well be buried here. But today it's all about the Abbey, so do come along for a tour. Just to let you know, it's quite a busy town, so there'll be a bit of road noise once I get out of my car, but I'm sure Adrian will guide us all through it very well. Okay, Adrian, so thank you so much for meeting me here today. It's a pleasure, so welcome to Barry St Edmonds.

Thank you. So we're now standing right really in the centre of town, aren't we? And explain to our listeners what we are looking at right now. We are standing in the middle of the town. We're standing on Angel Hill, which is one of the main open spaces in the middle of town. And what we're looking at is the famous Abbey Gate. And the Abbey Gate is one of the most iconic remains of the Benedictine Abbey of St Edmund, which celebrated its millennium last year.

It was founded in 1020, and we've got a whole series of events. to celebrate that occasion which are now taking place this year. So the Abbey Gate itself, people look at it and regard it as perhaps one of the original features of the Abbey, but in fact it was a replacement, a late replacement, because originally there was another gate to the left of the one we see now, and that was destroyed by the townspeople in about 1327, because when the Benedictine Abbey was established, it was essentially to guard the mortal remains of St Edmund.

and that brought pilgrims from all over England, from all over Europe, to worship, to pray at the shrine of Edmund. And of course there needed to be a grand gateway for them to come through. And there were in fact two into the Abbey. There was one which is known as the Norman Tower, which is a Romanesque gate and still survives. And then there's this one, the Abbey Gate. Now, originally that was a twin.

There were two towers. The Romanesque tower was destroyed by the tower. folks, as I say, periodically they would rebel, rise up against the power of the abbey. The abbey was all-powerful in West Suffolk. It controlled the whole of West Suffolk. It had what was known as the liberty of St Edmund, which gave them effectively royal powers. The king ceded power to them and they were able to charge taxes and rents on all the people hereabouts, not only in the town, but in the whole of West Suffolk. So of course there was a huge amount of resentment against the power of the Abbey.

And periodically there would be outbreaks of violence and in 1327 there was a particularly violent uprising and the townsfolk came down and destroyed the original gateway down here. And order was restored, soldiers were brought in, arrests were made and a new tower was built but unlike the original one which was Romanesque dating through the 12th century, this is in Gothic decorated style,

style, which is far more ornate than the original. But you can see, if you look closely, it's almost like a castle gateway, a castle barbican. It's got a portcullis. It's got arrow slits and a crossbow slit up at the top. So it was really ready for action at any stage. And there was a garrison of some 30 soldiers stationed in the Abbey Gate to protect the abbot and his possessions from any further rebellion by the townsfolk. So it's an indication of, although it was hugely...

wealthy and powerful and drew all these people to its gates. It was actually locally quite unpopular with the townsfolk. There was a lot of tension. The Abbey continued for some 500 years and it was one of the most powerful and most influential and wealthiest Benedictine Abbees in the country. And of course Edmund was the star attraction. People, because of the shrine of Edmund, that's why people came here. And until his star was eclipsed by Thomas Abecat, the shrine down in Canter,

he continued to attract visitors from all over the country and beyond and the abbey continued to be powerful for some 500 years and in 1539 Henry the 8th and his commissioners decided to dissolve the abbey as they did with most monasteries and priories and abys up and down the country and they came they descended on the abbey they took all its wealth they took many of its books they destroyed the shrine They threw the monks out onto the streets, as it were. And if you look at the Abbey Gate, you can see a number of empty alcoves in the façade, and almost certainly at that time, those would have held sacred images which were also taken. When we go and look at the ruins of the Abbey, we'll also see that they cause huge damage

by demolishing the fine buildings that were once there, taking away all the facing stones. But we'll go and have a look at those in a little while. Yeah, how we can see what's actually left. Maybe we should get out of this traffic and come inside the gates. Oh, right, okay. So we've come inside, we've come through the gate, and so we're looking at the remains of the gate then now, are we?

We are, we're looking at the inside of the abbey gate. And the first thing that strikes you is you look up on the wall and there's a fireplace halfway up the wall. And of course that indicates that that's where there was originally a timber floor, a wooden floor. and the garrison who guarded the gate would have been up there. But below that, the whole of the interior of the gate is decorated in really fine, beautiful style with wonderful roof vaulting decorating the walls, but they've been destroyed, of course,

we assume when the abbey was dissolved. The vaulting was taken away, chipped down and taken away and presumably disposed from elsewhere. So it's a rather sad sight to see what remains of this fine, masonry that was once here. You can also see along one side there are a series of stone benches and those would have been for visitors to the abbey, those who had business to do with the abbey

because this was essentially, the abbey gate was almost, if you like, the tradesman's entrance. It wasn't where the pilgrims came, it was people who had business to do with the abbey. And so, also, if you were poor and on the street, you would also have come here to get the arms that were distributed by the armena, so wine and bread would have been given to you,

and you'd be sent on your way. So there was a good side to the abbey. They certainly were more benevolent than some. But it was also, this gateway was designed to impress because they had some very, very important, indeed, regal visitors. And kings and queens of England visited the abbey right through to the first, right through to Henry the 7th, who ironically enough, his son, of course,

was responsible for dissolving the abbey. but it shows how important the abbey was at that period and the shrine of Edmund continued to be that it attracted the kings and queens of England for several hundred years and this abbey would have been designed to impress upon the visitor that they weren't entering anywhere ordinary, this was a special, special place. And do we know much about what was here beyond this gate? I mean, are we going to go and have a look at some of the ruins,

but in its heyday, do we have an idea of what this might have... looked like when you come through the gate here? We do have an idea. Unfortunately, over the years, there have been some quite fanciful reconstructions. One of the reconstructions is behind us where we're standing now, and it tends to be a rather romantic view of what the precinct originally looked like. I mean, it was huge. It was something like 10 hectares, 25 acres in area, and it's often referred to as a town

within a town. And there was poor little bury, the town outside, carrying away in the shadow of the abbey. And of course the abbots were the people who laid out the town. It's a Norman planned town. And everybody in the town was completely beholden to the abbey and resentful of it. But it's a different world as you come through the abbey gates. Suddenly it's an area that is not necessarily quieter. It is today, but not necessarily in the medieval period.

It probably would have been quite busy, noisy, very active on this side of the abbey. Because the precinct was essentially divided into two. This side, the north side, was the sort of secular. side, if you like, the business side of things. And the southern side, south of the central spine, was the spiritual side. And that's where the pilgrims would have come in. So we can walk round and we can get some idea

of what the precinct would have looked like in its heyday. We know, for example, that there were a whole series of outbuildings, rather like the timber buildings you'd find on the interior of a castle, lean two buildings around the precinct wall. And there were stables and kennels and all. all the everyday buildings you'd expect to find in a busy establishment like this. They were also, we know there was a brewhouse and we know there was a bakehouse. So they were making their own beer, weak beer, or small beer as it was known, because

of course you couldn't drink the water. They were making their own bread. And we know this because there are records of what was destroyed in the riot of 1327, which included all of these buildings. So we know that was going on. So the Great Court, which is this sort of secular area, if you like, would have been quite busy and noisy at that time, very active, lots going on. And probably in quite stark contrast to the spiritual activities going on on the other side.

When we go over and have a look at the Abbey Church, you can see some of the conventional buildings and the Abbey Church itself and the cloister and so on, and it has a rather different atmosphere. Today, the Great Court is now what we call the Abbey Gardens, which is an active park, the locals' corner. at the park, but actually this is a huge magnet for visitors. Two million a year or something like that. And therefore it's got a very tranquil, very manicured look to it today. In the medieval period, it would have been quite a busy sort of area. And we can see some of the remains of

the buildings, we should go across and have a look. Many of the buildings were completely taken to level to the ground simply for the building material. Fortunately in most areas, they were happy to simply take the valuable facing stones away and leave the mortar and rubble core. And of course, that gives us an outline of where the original buildings were. Okay, so let's go through them. Let's get out of this noisy traffic. It feels a bit like that medieval hustle and bustle really, doesn't it?

It's quite appropriate. But let's go through into what is now the public park. So this would all have been part of that sort of business side as it were then. Yeah, this was what's known as a great. great court and if for example there was a royal visitor in residence they'd bring their retinue of perhaps 500 horse or something like that and they would of course have to find somewhere to tether their horses set up camp and so on so it was always actively used it was also presumably almost like a parade ground if you like along one side along the north side were all these outbuildings the very

functional side of the abbey life and then on the far side on the eastern side that we're walking towards now would have been the apartment of state. So you'd have had the Abbott's Palace, for example, you'd have had the royal residences where from time to time royal visitors would have to be accommodated and you'd have some of the ground at the Pryor's house and so on. It was a mixture of the functional and the ceremonial. Do we have any idea of how many people would have worked here? Are we talking hundreds of people? We don't have exact numbers. At Doomsday, there were 120 monks recorded. We think there are about 80 monks at the height of the abbey's activity, but probably as many lay brothers as well, because obviously there were people who had to help out with all the

manual work as well. And there may have been others employed from time to time within the abbey, so there could at any one time have been a few hundred people working here. So it was a big business, considering the population of Beres and Edmunds at the time, it would have dwarfed. It would have certainly been the biggest, as it were, employer at the time. So we're coming up to some definite ruins of a building here. What's this that we're looking at? Well, this is usually known as a Queen's Chamber, but that's, I think, a slight misnomer. This was probably the Abbott's Palace originally, but we know that once the Abbey was dissolved, that some of the buildings continued in use, and this was one of them.

And in 1588, Queen Elizabeth I mean, several years after the dissolution, did a royal progress around Suffolk, which included staying three nights in the Abbott's Palace. And I think, I suspect, that that's where it got the name the Queen's Chamber from. So it was originally, seemed to have been the Abbott's Palace. Yeah, unfortunately, it's the only building that survives of that eastern range, the grand eastern range of buildings, the apartments that stood in that area originally.

There are fragments at the north end, but they're not nearly as well preserved as this. And this in itself is not healthy as it might have been. The problem is, of course, that most of the ruins here, and we'll see examples in the Abbey Church, most of the buildings here were originally faced with dressed limestone. Very finely worked, probably with limestone coming locally from Barnac, which is only just over Peterborough away. Some may be coming across from Normandy, from Corn places like that. But it was all that material that people wanted when the abbey was dissolved.

So when the buildings were demolished, very often what was left, the facing stones were stripped away and what was left was the mortar and the rubble core, which gives us an outline of the buildings that were there, an indication, but unfortunately that core was never designed to be exposed to the elements. And of course, now it's a constant battle to conserve and keep them in one piece.

And also it's got this odd appearance, and is this local stone? It looks like flint most of it here. It's mostly flint and lime water. And flint occurs is very prolific. locally. It's very, very commonplace locally. It's about the only building stone that you get locally. If you want anything like limestone, you have to go further afield to Barnac and places like that. So that explains why it's so often taken away then, I suppose, because it is quite rare.

Yes, exactly. The facing stones are rare and a precious commodity. And of course, as you know, in the Middle Ages, people recycled and recycled and recycled. And they weren't as profligate as we are with raw materials. And so there was no way they were going to go to waste. We don't know. where they went, interestingly, because although you can see some of the facing stones reused on buildings in the town, nowhere near enough, though, to account for all the stone that would have come from the abbey buildings. So there is, I have heard it, suggested that perhaps some of these facing stones came down the river lark on barges, so that connects you to the Great Oos and the wash and the coast. In the same way, possibly when the abbey was dissolved,

they may have carted the facing stone in the reverse direction by water and they could have ended up, for example, even in London. So that's a really good point. And actually the river is literally just behind us here, isn't it? So we can almost hear. It is. It is right at the bottom. The abbey effectively sits on the terrace just above the river, which is, of course, a common location for medieval abbeys.

And it did provide a source of a means of transport. We believe that the Sacrist's yard, a bit further down to the east, actually had a sort of wharf so that you could bring some boats with a low draft or sort of barge you could probably bring down at some stages and offload heavy material like the facing stones. So that helps the image of this as actually quite a busy and bustling and connected place, isn't it,

rather than just a sort of secluded out of the place, monastery for monks to hide away? Yeah, it was very much an outward-facing business-like, it was in charge of a large agricultural estate. it was very business-like in its dealings, which of course brought in a vast amount of wealth, but it probably added to its unpopularity, to be perfectly honest. But yes, it wasn't by any means the sort of contemplative space

that you might imagine. It was much more business-like and much more active. So shall we go and have a look at what's left of the actual abbey itself? Indeed, yes. So we're looking at over loads of ruins, lots of different buildings, and at the moment you might just sit here and have a nice little picnic and you sort of get a sense that you're in a little room and you were just telling me that this one here,

especially lots of people in the summer come and sit here. They don't know what that is, do they? They don't, and they sit there. There's a lovely green sward, and you can spread your picnic out and let the kids run around and so on. But in fact, this is the remains of what's known as the Necessarium, which you can probably work out what's purpose that served for the monks. And the Necessarium was nearly always located close to the river

so that the Eflin could wash down to the river and wash away. it certainly would give a different perspective to your summer picnic if you knew what the building originally was. Yes, exactly. So you were in fact sitting in a medieval toilet. Indeed. Excellent. Let's move on. Hi everyone. I'm Jimmy Doherty, TV presenter, farmer and conservationist. I've got a brand new podcast where we discuss all things green, from nature to recycling to foraging to potty training cows. Yeah, I'm not joking. Apparently, it helps with pollution.

Each week you'll be hearing from some recognisable faces off the telly and eco-experts who will tell us how they try and sometimes fail to live a greener life. People like the founder of the Eden Project, are Tim Smith. It is only people who don't know what they're doing that can do marvelous things in some areas because received wisdom will sometimes you'll talk yourself out of it if you've got lots of people who've done it before. Ecopreneur, Ashita Cabri-Davis on why renting our clothes might be the future. you might feel great about yourself because you did a wardrobe clear out and you donated things

to charity shops. But 90% of those donations are completely worthless and they're sent to landfills in Asian and African countries. And my old pal, Jamie Oliver, on how to eat in season. I think I was stupid enough, naive enough and unspoiled enough about the world that we're living. Tune into on Timmie's Farm from History Hit, follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Oh wow. Okay. So, Adrian, so looking at some really quite spectacular ruins, tell me where you've taken me now. Well, we're standing next to the chapter house. And the chapter house was a very important building in any monastic house.

Effectively, the chapter house was a sort of boardroom, if you like. Every morning the abbot and the monks would meet in convent here. They would first of all listen to a chapter of the rule of Benedict to give them there, as it were, their moral compass for the day. and that's how the name chapter house arose. So the abbot would sit at one end and the monks would sit on stone benches around either side and they'd go through the business of the day so they'd say which important visitors were coming,

who was doing what job, if anyone had broken the rules, they'd decide on the punishment, so it was a sort of court, as it were, at the same time, and then everybody would go on their way and do the jobs of the day. It's a slightly sorry sight because those of you who have seen chapter houses around the country, Durham and Worcester and Ely and places like that, will be used to seeing something that a bit more grandiose than this.

It does appear to have suffered particularly from Henry the 8th commissioners. Maybe they saw it as symbolic of the wealth of the abbey. I don't know. The treasury was right next door and it was the kind of fiscal heart of the abbey, so maybe that's why it suffered so much. However, it did have some secrets to give up. and the antiquarian and ghostwriter M.R. James, who was brought up locally and was always hugely interested in the Abbey of St. Edmund, he came across an abbey register in Douai in France in the 1890s, which made reference to the location of some of the abbot's graves. So he came back to

bury and he organised an archaeological dig in the floor of the chapter house because the record suggested that several of the abbots were buried in the floor and they duly dug some trenches across the floor and they found the graves of six abbots five of whom were in coffins and they were actually identifiable by some of the goods that was survived in their graves and then it was possible to identify all of them so although they were dug up the original grave slabs were destroyed or lost the replacements were put in this was in 1903 so it's very much that sort of vintage. They were replaced, and each of the grave slabs has the name of the abbot,

the dates of their abyssey and so on, and they're replaced in their original positions. So that's what we're looking at now. We're looking at these grave slabs and the floor in the middle of the chapter house. A whole row of them, yes. Fantastic. And what sort of date are they from? Well, they're right the way through, mostly in the earlier period.

I mean, the most significant one, I suppose, the most famous of the abbots who's buried, whose grave was found doing the excavations, was Abbott's Samson. Now, Samson had, shall we say, a very mixed reputation. On the one hand, he was a very assiduous builder. He was one of the builder abbots here, and he was responsible for much of the west front of the abbey church, for example. And he was also, it was during his abbey,

that justly in Brackland, one of the monks, produced a well-known chronicle, and it's almost a unique document that is still in print today, telling you the daily life, describing the daily life of the abbey during the abbey. of Samson and it's quite interesting from a personal perspective because it's a lot about not just about the business of the Abbey but it's about the rivalries and the competition between the various officers the obedientries and so on and it's

quite an insight into human character at the time you know much the same as we'd get in any institution today but Justinin was very much a fan of very much an advocate and admirer of Samson but Samson although he did many good things. He was also probably the man responsible, reputedly the man responsible for the massacre of the Jewish population of Barry in 1190. The Unpalmed Sunday in that year, the townsfolk turned on the Jewish population. There was always tension between the two, but particularly focused, of course, at Easter. They attacked and chased the local Jews down to the abbey, and so the story goes, they sought sanctuary in the abbey and Samson allegedly said

this is not the king's abbey and these are not St Edmund's men and close the gates against them and 57 men, women and children were massacred outside the gates of the abbey so Samson has a lot to answer for and in the Abbey gardens here today we've got a Holocaust Memorial Garden which records the massacre of Berri's Jewish population in 1190 So that's quite an important part of the story there that that needs to be told as well, perhaps not the traditional story that people would get from visiting the site?

No, absolutely. It's something that perhaps people are unaware of, and we try and make sure that people are aware of that, that there was a dark side to the abbey. It wasn't a wholly benevolent institution, and that some of the anti-Semitism that was pretty well endemic to medieval England, was apparent in Beres-ed-Edmonds as well as everywhere else. And interestingly enough, the massacre in Berry took place, I think, a matter of two days, after this mass suicide that took place in York, the infamous deaths in Glyford's Tower in York. So it was almost like a copycat crime, if you like.

Okay, so now we've moved on, we walked around, I can see a little sign saying North Transept over there, but what exactly am I looking at, these vast big structures here? Well, we're looking at the ruinous remains of the North Transept, and it's flanking chapels on the east side, and this is a very well-known, low. site for both residents and visitors. The way that the north wall of the north transept has been eroded, some of it has survived and it is created what's locally known as the chicken

and the kettle. When you look at them carefully, you can see a kettle or a teapot on the left hand side and you can see a chicken on the right. And when we have our American visitors, we have to say we call these the coffee pot and the rooster. Of course. I can see that. This is, yeah, definitely sort of thing you have to come down here and have a look, see if you can find the kettle and the chicken. And the chicken, absolutely. So we're standing at the crossing, that's to say the point at which,

at the intersection between the nave, the east-west nave, and the north and south transeps. The church itself, the abbey church, was one of the largest churches in north-western Europe. At one point it was bigger than St Peter's in Rome. It was that's spectacular. It was about 150 metres long,

and if you stand at the crossing here, you can see we're close to the eastern end, but the western end is barely visible behind us, and we'll go and see the western front a bit later on. But he was about 150 metres long, which would have placed it certainly significantly longer than Norwich Cathedral, and that was highly important,

because the abbot and the Bishop of Norwich and indeed the Bishop of Ely were in constant competition with each other. And the fact that you could boast that you had a bigger church than anyone else's was huge, how you'd a brownie point for you it was at point of status so there was something about that it was about showing off and about status but it was also about inspiring awe in the eyes of the pilgrims who had made a journey sometimes that had taken weeks to get here it's difficult to imagine this space that we're standing in as it would have looked like in the medieval period there were four surviving peers forming this great crossing here some of which survived to quite a height and you can see the beginning of a springing arch coming over to one side

and recent research current research being carried out by English Heritage is beginning to piece together what this tower, this central tower, might have looked like because the Abbey Church had two towers it had this central one were standing in and it had the great Western tower what the research seems

to be showing is that originally perhaps this tower was something like 20 metres high to the clear stories. So there was a trefoorium and a clear story above that. But then that was only part of the story because above that you'd have the roof space of the nave. Above that, you would have the ringing chamber and above that the bell chamber. And above that would probably have been a steeple. So on top of that 20 odd metres, you might have another 15, 20 metres above that.

So if you had a structure that was 40 metres high, that would have been a tremendous statement in the landscape. It would have been visible for miles around, but not just in the landscape, also in the townscape, because it would have dwarfed any other building in the medieval period. The buildings we see in Derry today, some of the buildings from the Georgian period and later, obviously much taller than anything that would have existed in the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages, you'd have had a single story or at most a two-story, building and this church would have stood out monumentally in the townscape so again it was about status without a statement about how significant not just spiritually but temporarily and in terms of

its power how it reflected the status of the church as well as its spiritual power and do we know where the money comes from to build something like that the money came from a number of sources first of all of course you had pilgrims coming through here and the pilgrims would process along one of the aisles and they'd go down to the shrine of edmund and i'll have a look at that in a moment they'd process around it they'd have their moment of eternity where they prayed to edmund and they would crucially of course make a contribution before they were ushered out through the south aisle so there was a constant stream of money coming from the pilgrims and some of them would not just contribute here but they would contribute around the town.

They would stay in local lodgings. The rents from those came to the abbey. So there was a huge business around the pilgrimage aspect of the abbey church. But also, of course, it was a big landowner. It owned woodlands, farmlands and estates, not just in West Suffolk, but further afield. So there was all that money coming in. They also had, for example, they had a corn mill on the site.

And if you were producing corn, there was what they called a suit of mill so that you had to grind your corn there and you would give 10% to the abbot to the privilege of that. So there are all sorts of revenue streams coming in, particularly from the town because the town belonged to the abbey and all the rents and all the dues

and all the taxes came flooding into the Excheca. So it was a hugely wealthy establishment. But let's just, I just wanted to get back to Edmund, sort of one of the reasons why it's all here, or St Edmund, Where exactly was that shrine then of his? The shrine of Edmund was originally in a circular, what's known as a rotunda, a circular church or chapel

just outside the Abbey Church. But as soon as the east end of the abbey was completed, his body was moved to the eastern end of the Abbey Church, to the chancel. What we're looking at from here is we're looking into the crypt which has been excavated in the last century. But if we're actually standing on the medieval ground surface, and if you project that out,

A few yards away from us would have been the high altar, and then behind that in traditional style, you would have had the shrine of Edmund. And it was quite a spectacular shrine. It was raised on a stone pediment, perhaps so that it was visible from the rest of the church, from the nave. And on top of that, the shrine itself was covered in gold and silver and encrusted with precious jewels.

It would have been a fabulous sight for pilgrims who'd come all this way to see it. and the commissioners who had the task of demolishing it referred to it being very cumbrous to deface so they had to get their hammers and chisels out to actually take the thing apart. So that must have been quite a place to come to you as a pilgrim to visit? I think it was. I think if you'd made the effort to come all this way,

either you'd walked or you'd come on horseback or whatever, it was a great privation to come here and to eventually find yourself confronted by the shrine would have been a life-changing moment for you, without a doubt. It was unfortunately also a life-changing moment because when, in times of plague, when you've got this collecting together of vast amounts of people, it was a terribly effective way of spreading plague as well. So some people, ironically, who came here to pray for good health,

ended up very far from in good health. So that idea, so we're now in the pandemic still, and we all know about social distancing, places closing down. So that sounds like a very familiar story for us really, doesn't it? It does. It certainly chimes with our recent troubles and the fact that Edmund was actually one of his attributes was he was a plague saint. He was a saint who was particularly noted for his power to withhold and to protect against the plague. Ironically, of course, as I say, it was at his shrine that some of the plague was occasionally transmitted.

Ah, yes, that's a bit of an issue. Right, so you've taken me outside, and now we're actually looking at the man himself. This is Edmund, is it? Yes, this is a bronze statue of St Edmund, depicted as a young and quite vulnerable-looking Christian, as he was. He, of course, was martyred for refusing to renounce his Christianity. This sculpture is actually by Dame Elizabeth Frink,

who as well as being a world-famous sculptorist was a local girl as well. So it was unveiled in the 1970s and I have only one criticism and that is a very good visual aid on Angel Hill if we could move him down the road. But he's a wonderful, I think a very stirring symbol of not just him as a martyr

but him as a human as a person. He's standing in front and what we're looking at behind Edmund is the west front of the great Abbey Church And again, it's very difficult you have to use your house of imagination to visualize what this would have looked like in the medieval period. The whole of this area has been raised by about a metre and a half because it was so boggy here. So it would have had greater height, as it were, originally. But we can see before us this rather odd mosaic of old walls and new houses. And the new houses are 18th century houses built into the rear façade, western walls.

front of the Abbey Church. So if you look very carefully, if one looks carefully, it's possible to see the three archways of the central nave aisle, the central doorway into the nave, and the north and the south aisles on either side. If you're a pilgrim, you'd go in the north aisle, you'd go down to the shrine, all that distance that we've just walked to the far end, and then you'd come back and you'd come back out the South Isle here. If you were a crowned prince, you would go through the central nave. We know at least the central doorway, if not all three, were covered in beaten bronze. So the site that would have met you as a pilgrim would have been absolutely astonishing, breathtaking.

We don't know how high it was, this facade. We know, obviously, we've got the same problem here that all the facing stones have been taken away, So we're seeing the rubble core into which these houses rather incongruously have been inserted. But we suspect, and certainly the work, the research that English Heritage is currently doing, suggests that this might have been originally perhaps 40 metres high matching the central tower. So the great western tower, a bit like Peterborough or Ely or a place like that. So it might have been that sort of scale. So it would end an incredible sight to pilgrims.

And then if we turn around, swing around and look in the opposite direction. We're looking at the Pilgrims Way. Churchgate Street, as it's now called, would have come straight down towards us. And this is known as the Norman Tower. And this originally was one of the two towers. Its counterpart was destroyed, but this one is a wonderful survival of Romanesque architecture,

dating to the second quarter of the 12th century. And it's a fabulous surviving piece of architecture. It was heavily restored in the 1840s, but it had to be because it was the bell tower of what is now the cathedral, what was then St James's Church. It's often known as St James's Tower. And of course the action of all the bells, 12 or 13 bells being rung here every day,

would have had a huge and damaging effect and was having a damaging effect on the foundation. So all of that work had to be done. Otherwise we would not have that building we have today. It was over-restored, as the Victorians used to do. thank goodness they did. So what we've got is really an outstanding example of Norman Romanesque architecture.

And there's one more thing we were going to look at before I go now. So where are you taking me now? We're in the middle of the great churchyard. And the building we're looking at now is the chapel of the charnel, which was originally a two-story chapel, built about 1,300. And there was a monk or a priest, I should say, permanently here, to tend to the mortal remains of those people who were dug up from the great churchyard because of course over the centuries you get more and more burials

and every time you put in a new burial you're disturbing an older one and rather than throw away the bones it was thought reverent to treat them with respect and to bring them to a house like this and they were kept here rather like an ossuary you see a lot of osiris in mediterranean countries for example and the bones would be kept here respectfully. It was believed that in fact you only had to keep two of the long bones and a skull to ensure the resurrection of the soul.

And that's enough for it, so little bones weren't so important. No, that's right. It was a sort of token. And some people believe that that was the origin of the skull and crossbones symbol. So what we see today is the remains of the charnel house and it's quite a rarity. It's a quite rare survival in this country. But set into the walls of it are some of the grave memorials that have been saved from elsewhere across the graveyard.

So does this still have the bones inside it? It hasn't, no, because there was briefly became a shop and a tavern. Yes. And a tavern, yes. Nothing was wasted. There was an archaeological... Well, I say an archaeological... There was a speculative bit of digging went on inside it.

And I think since then, all the bones and so on have been cleared away and who knows where. Right, so maybe they're here for us to discover one day. No, quite possibly. I think if you stuck up, spade in anywhere where we're standing here, you would find a lot of human remains. Yeah, I can imagine. Adrian, that's been absolutely brilliant. Thank you. I wish we could talk all day, and not everyone could come with us, but I think they definitely should visit.

Now, you mentioned right at the start that there was an anniversary that was sort of slightly delayed because of COVID, but you've got lots of things planned for this summer. Is that right? That's right. Through the whole of the summer, we're going to have spectacles of light. We're going to have pilgrimages, concerts, events in the park,

and of course the tour guides are going to put on six special tours, Abbey tours. So there'll be lots to see in Boise and Evans this summer. So everybody must rush down and enjoy it. Fantastic. So yeah, if you've enjoyed listening to this and you want to actually see these things for yourself

when it's a little bit warmer. We're freezing here today. Do have a look. I'm sure people can find it online. they search for events in Barry St Edmunds, I'm sure they'll all come up. And Abbey Thousand, if they go on to Abbey Thousand, they'll find everything they need to know. Fantastic. Indian, thank you so much.

This has been brilliant. It's my pleasure. Thanks for coming. That brings us to the end of this episode. I really enjoy that tour. I hope you did too, and that if you do get an opportunity that you make a trip yourself to Barry St. Edmonds, perhaps next summer. This has been an episode of Gone Medieval by History Ahead. If you want more medieval information in your life, do subscribe to our newsletter.

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