Suffolk Keyring 3

To visit as many countries as possible. 

The keyring is from a small town (Bury St Edmunds) in Suffolk, United Kingdom.

Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk is a unique and dazzling historic gem. An important market town with a richly fascinating heritage, the striking combination of medieval architecture, elegant Georgian squares and glorious Cathedral and Abbey gardens provide a distinctive visual charm. With prestigious shopping, an award-winning market, plus variety of attractions and places to stay, Bury St Edmunds is under two hours from London and very convenient for Cambridge.

Bury St Edmunds began as an Anglo Saxon settlement called Bedric's worth. Worth was a Saxon word meaning an enclosure such as a farm or hamlet surrounded by a stockade. In 630 Sigeberht the king of East Anglia founded a monastery there.

In the 9th century Edmund was king of East Anglia. He was martyred in 869. At the beginning of the 10th century his remains were brought to the monastery for safekeeping. In the early 11th century King Canute replaced the monastery with an abbey. The abbey soon became rich and powerful.

The Abbey of Bury St Edmunds was once among the richest Benedictine monasteries in England, until the Dissolution of the monasteries in 1539. It is in the town that grew up around it, Bury St Edmunds in the county of Suffolk, England. It was a centre of pilgrimage as the burial place of the Anglo-Saxon martyr-king Saint Edmund, killed by the Great Heathen Army of Danes in 869. The ruins of the abbey church and most other buildings are merely rubble cores, but two very large medieval gatehouses survive, as well as two secondary medieval churches built within the abbey complex