Bury St Edmunds Abbey (The Gatehouse Record)

In the civil parish of Bury St Edmunds.
In the historic county of Suffolk.
Modern Authority of Suffolk.
1974 county of Suffolk.
Medieval County of Suffolk.

OS Map Grid Reference: TL858642
Latitude 52.24358° Longitude 0.71666°

Bury St Edmunds Abbey has been described as a probable Fortified Ecclesiastical site.

There are major building remains.

This site is a scheduled monument protected by law.
This is a Grade 1 listed building protected by law*.

Description

The Abbey Gate at Bury St Edmunds Abbey was built between 1327 and 1353. Built from Barnack stone and two storeys high, the west front of the gate is particularly ornate. The entrance is via a large archway, above which are three gabled niches and a curved gable. Either side of the archway are buttresses with gabled niches in three tiers and to the upper storey are five tall blank niches. The taller, centre niche has a crocketed gable which is flanked by two circles containing six-pointed stars. (Listing Report)

Norman Tower Monastic gate, now used as a belfry for the Cathedral Church of St James. Built under Abbot Anselm between 1120 and 1148; Romanesque. Restored by LN Cottingham in 1846/7. Barnack stone. Rectangular, in 4 stages, with the base now well below the present ground level. Richly ornamented. A large, unvaulted gateway has heavy block capitals to the columns and large roll-mouldings. The west face is the most ornate, with a sculptured inner order and the arch projecting like a porch with a gable and fishscale decoration. To each side of the gateway are 2 tiers of niches with billet decoration; short buttresses above have intersecting arches and pyramid roofs. The 2nd stage has 2 tall blank arches with small 2-light windows within them. The 3rd and 4th stages each have 3 deep window openings, divided by colonnettes and hood-moulds with billet decoration: below the 3rd stage openings are paired blank arches; below the 4th stage blank roundels. The details of the 3 upper stages on the west are repeated on each of the other faces. (Listing Report)

Comments

C14 Great Gate and C12 St James Gate of abbey precinct survive but although impressive probably never meant to be defensive. The Abbey was surrounded by a precinct wall, and some slight sections of the precinct wall do survive. The great gate of the Abbey of St Edmund was begun after the riots of 1327 but before 1346; completed after 1353. Built of Barnack stone. Much is made of the defensive features of this tower, but cannot have been seriously defensive since the rest of precinct not really defensible.
The rioters of 1327 deliberately directed their attack at the gatehouse of the Abbey. They could have easily have broken the precinct wall but the Gatehouse was probably the place where the Abbey took rents and possibly where deeds and other legal documents relating to property were housed.

Sources of information, references and further reading

National Heritage List for England Scheduled Monument Number 1021450, Legacy Scheduled Monument Number 35556
National Heritage List for England Listed Building number(s) 1375545 , 1375555 , and others
Historic England (PastScape) Defra or Monument number(s) 382532; 382615.
County Historic Environment Record (or Sites and Monuments Record) number(s) BSE 010.

Websites (Gatehouse is not responsible for the content of external websites.)
- CastleUK.net
  CastleUK.net
Books
- Fergusson, Peter, 2011, 'Abbot Anselm's Gate Tower at Bury St Edmunds' in Zoe Opacic and Achim Timmermann (eds) Architecture, Liturgy and Identity (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers) p. 29
  Goodall, John, 2011, The English Castle 1066-1650 (Yale University Press) p. 274-5, 352
  Pettifer, A., 1995, English Castles, A guide by counties (Woodbridge: Boydell Press) p. 233
  Pevsner, N. (Revised Radcliffe, Edna), 1974, Buildings of England: Suffolk (London, Penguin) p. 138
  Cox, J.C., 1911, 'The Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds' in Page, Wm (ed), VCH Suffolk Vol. 2 p. 56-72 online copy
  Turner, T.H. and Parker, J.H., 1853, Some account of Domestic Architecture in England (Oxford) Vol. 2 p. 191-2 online copy
Periodical Articles
- Drewett, P.L. and Stuart, I.W., 1975, 'Excavations in the Norman Gate Tower Bury St. Edmunds Abbey' Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History Vol. 33.3 p. 241-50 online copy
  Whittingham, A.B., 1951, 'Bury St. Edmunds Abbey: The Plan, Design and Development of the Church and Monastic Buildings' The Archaeological Journal Vol. 108 p. 168-87 and plates XIX-XX online copy
  W.S.W., 1859, 'Heraldy within the Abbey Gate at Bury St Edmunds as Evidence of its Date' Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History Vol. 2 p. 90-4 online copy
Guidebooks
- Whittingham, A.B., 1992, Bury St Edmunds Abbey, Suffolk (London: English Heritage)
Antiquarian (Histories and accounts from late medieval and early modern writers)
- Camden, Wm, 1607, Britannia hypertext critical edition by Dana F. Sutton (2004)
  Celia Fiennes, 1888, Through England on a Side Saddle in the Time of William and Mary (London: Field and Tuer, The Leadenhall Press) Vision of Britain online transcription
Other sources: Theses; 'grey' literature; in-house reports; unpublished works; etc.
- English Heritage, 2013, Heritage at Risk Register 2013 East of England (London: English Heritage) p. 70 online copy
  Shapland, Michael, 2012, Buildings of Secular and Religious Lordship: Anglo-Saxon Tower-nave Churches (PhD Thesis University College London) passim online via UCL Discovery
  English Heritage, 2012, Heritage at Risk Register 2012 East of England (London: English Heritage) p. 77 online copy
  English Heritage, 2011, Heritage at Risk Register 2011 East of England (London: English Heritage) p. 69 online copy

Most of the sites or buildings recorded in this web site are NOT open to the public and permission to visit a site must always be sought from the landowner or tenant.
It is an offence to disturb a Scheduled Monument without consent. It is a destruction of everyone's heritage to remove archaeological evidence from ANY site without proper recording and reporting.
Don't use metal detectors on historic sites without authorisation.

The information on this web page may be derived from information compiled by and/or copyright of Historic England, County Historic Environment Records and other individuals and organisations. It may also contain information licensed under the Open Government Licence. All the sources given should be consulted to identify the original copyright holder and permission obtained from them before use of the information on this site for commercial purposes.
The author and compiler of Gatehouse does not receive any income from the site and funds it himself. The information within this site is provided freely for educational purposes only.

The bibliography owes much to various bibliographies produced by John Kenyon for the Council for British Archaeology, the Castle Studies Group and others.

Suggestions for finding online and/or hard copies of bibliographical sources can be seen at this link.
Minor archaeological investigations, such as watching brief reports, and some other 'grey' literature is most likely to be held by H.E.R.s but is often poorly referenced and is unlikely to be recorded here, or elsewhere, but some suggestions can be found here.

The possible site or monument is represented on maps as a point location. This is a guide only. It should be noted that OS grid references defines an area, not a point location. In practice this means the actual center of the site or monument may often, but not always, be to the North East of the point shown. Locations derived from OS grid references and from latitude longitiude may differ by a small distance.
Further information on mapping and location can be seen at this link.

Please help to make this as useful a resource as possible by contacting Gatehouse if you see errors, can add information or have suggestions for improvements in functality and design.
Help is acknowledged.

*The listed building may not be the actual medieval building, but a building on the site of, or incorporating fragments of, the described site.

Data >	PastScape	County HER	Scheduling	Listing	I. O. E.
Maps >	Streetmap	NLS maps	Where's the path	Old-Maps
Data/Maps >	Magic	V. O. B.	Geology	LiDAR	Open Domesday
Air Photos >	Bing Maps	Google Maps	Getmapping	ZoomEarth
Photos >	CastleFacts	Geograph	Flickr	Panoramio