Literary Bury

  

Folio edition of Defoe's A Tour Through The Whole Island of Great Britain, published in three part between  1724 and 1726.

I was idly glancing through a lovely Folio edition I have of Daniel Defoe’s A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain [1724-6] recently when a sudden thought drove me to look up Bury St. Edmunds. Charmingly, the town was then called St Edmundsbury, [as is Bury Cathedral now] which Defoe compares favourably, en passant, to Ipswich, a town where “there are not so many of the gentry here as at Bury.”

The Abbey in its heyday.

He visits St Edmunds Bury “famed for its pleasant situation and wholesome air, the Montpelier of Suffolk, and perhaps of England; this must be attributed to the skill of the monks of those times, who chose so beautiful a situation for the seat of their retirement and who built here the greatest, and in its time, the most flourishing monastery in all these parts of England, I mean the monastery of Edmund the Martyr.…. a house of pleasure in more ancient times; or …. a court of some of the Saxon or East Angle kings.” Defoe attributes the delightfulness of the town’s setting to the decision of the clergy to settle in Bury, “for they always chose the best places in the country to build in, either for richness of soil, or for health and pleasure in the situation of their religious houses.” Defoe believes it was once “a royal village, though it much better merits that name now; it being the town of all this part of England, in proportion to its bigness, most thronged with gentry; people of the best fashion and the most polite conversation.”

Angel Hill by J. Kendall. 1744.
This would be, more or less, Defoe's view. Produced 
before the Angel Hotel was built and when the 
Athenaeum, [far end] was one storey higher.

He describes a notorious murder in the town in 1722; comments on the lack of manufacturing in Bury save for spinning which was the “chief trade” arising from the needs of the local gentry “who cannot fail to cause trade enough by the expense of their families and equipages” and, without actually naming the River Lark, Defoe condescends to describe it as “a very small branch of a very small river” but comments that this stream, as it joins larger waters, has been engineered to be navigable for transport of heavy goods like coal, wine, and iron to the town “to the great ease of the tradesmen.”

The other famous literary name associated with Bury St Edmunds is, of course, Charles Dickens who loved the town and visited it on several occasions, staying at the Angel Hotel which is mentioned in The Pickwick Papers. 

 "Beg your pardon, sir,' said Sam, suddenly breaking off in his loquacious discourse. “Is this Bury St. Edmunds?” 'It is,” replied Mr. Pickwick.

The coach rattled through the well paved streets of a handsome little town, of thriving and cleanly appearance, and stopped before a large inn situated in a wide open street, nearly facing the old abbey.

“And this,” said Mr. Pickwick, looking up, “is the Angel! We alight here, Sam.”

Room 215.

Room 215 at the Angel still contains the four poster bed that Dickens slept in when he stayed over the years and, interestingly, the latest film version of David Copperfield was filmed in Bury St Edmunds while Ruth Rendell’s crime novel, The Brimstone Wedding is also set in Bury, a place she knew well. And my discovery of Suffolk Summer by John Tate Appleby, an American celestial navigator stationed near Lavenham for the last few months of WW2, which enchanted me, is probably the special book which sparked my interest in Bury’s literary touchstones. [See previous blog.] His huge love for Suffolk, especially Bury St Edmunds did, in fact, finance the Rose Garden in the Abbey Gardens through the royalties from his book, and thus made a generous, positive and lasting contribution to the beauty of the town.

"...the sun was just setting and the sky was full of gold and
orange and pink and ashes of roses and blue"
Suffolk Summer p. 99.

There are also writers currently living in, or near, Bury whose works are important and add to the reputation of the town for cultural excellence. Simon Edge, for instance, whose book, Anyone For Edmund is a delightful and inventive comedy based on the possible whereabouts of the Martyr. Martyn Taylor is a favourite writer on Bury St Edmunds itself and has produced a veritable library of books on the history of the town. I have a copy of his Secret Bury St Edmunds given to me by Secret Santa just before I came to live here in February 2022. It is incredibly informative, historically and fascinating to read.

Anyone For Edmund
Simon Edge.

Martyn Taylor, local historian,
Chair, the Bury Society
and author of many books on Bury.

A bench with inscribed quote from The Pickwick Papers sits outside
the Corn Exchange [now Wetherspoons]on Abbeygate Street.

                                                 Bury is awash with literary connections!

P.S.  Almost immediately after the Literary Bury blog was published, I was reminded, as I walked through the Abbey Gardens, of the plaque in part of the Great Churchyard, to Henry Cockton. I had forgotten all about it though had taken a photo of the memorial tablet intending to Google dear Henry of whom I had never heard. 

The memorial stone erected thirty one years after 
his death by "A few admirers of his genius."
Henry Cockton
Born in London 1807.
Died in Bury St Edmunds of consumption 1853.

Henry was indeed a literary gent and achieved quite a level of fame in his short life, sufficient to prompt memorial action by admirers long after his untimely demise. He was a humorous novelist remembered primarily for his Life of Valentine Vox the Ventriloquist, published in 1839/40, although he also wrote Sylvester Sound.  By way of apology to Henry for my ignorance, I am including no fewer than three images in his name!