Bury St Edmunds Town Council awards ‘exciting’ Abbey of St Edmund heritage project £50,000

A ‘bold’ and ‘progressive’ multi-million-pound heritage project in a town centre has been backed by community leaders who agreed to a £50,000 grant.

The Dean of St Edmundsbury, The Very Reverend Joe Hawes, spoke about the Abbey of St Edmund heritage project at Wednesday’s Bury St Edmunds Town Council meeting.

He said it was ‘the most exciting thing we have done’ since St Edmundsbury Cathedral’s Millennium Tower.

Town councillors voiced their support for the scheme at the meeting and agreed to contribute £50,000 towards it.

The initiative aims to conserve the abbey ruins, build a visitor centre facing onto Angel Hill and a west cloister in the St Edmundsbury Cathedral grounds, expand and improve the footpaths around the site and provide activities for all ages.

It has been granted round one development funding of £729,553 by The National Lottery Heritage Fund. There is then a second round where a final decision is made on the full funding award of £6.7million.

The project team needs to raise around £2.5million themselves as well, and is making good progress.

The Very Rev Hawes told the meeting the project would conserve the abbey ruins and create a network of paths and signage to give a whole new generation of visitors a sense of the abbey as it once was.

He said: “I think the people of this town are excited about this project and what it will deliver.”

The visitor welcome and orientation centre will be in repurposed cathedral buildings between the Abbey Gate and Norman Tower.

There will also be a focus on biodiversity, aiding the work of the Bury Water Meadows Group and other organisations, and the changes will help people to access the site who don’t currently, the Very Rev Hawes said.

Mentioning volunteering, he said the site could become ‘a real place of wellbeing’ and added: “This place has an immense ability to help people who have been bereaved, experiencing mental health issues, anxiety.”

The site is part of the pilgrimage network through the county and the improvements would bring visitors to not just Bury, but Suffolk, with the associated economic benefits, said the Very Rev Hawes.

Cllr Cliff Waterman said this, along with the regeneration of the Greene King brewery site, was a ‘really important’ project that would ‘make a massive difference to the look and the feel of Bury St Edmunds town centre’.

He said: “I think it’s one of these things where we as a town council should really step up and show our support. I think this is going to be really transformational in the town centre.”

Cllr Annabelle Mackenzie said: “We are already a destination, a big destination, but this will change us.

“It will improve even further our standing internationally and nationally and for communities all over the world, religious communities, they will flock to something like this. I think it’s not just religious, it’s historical, it’s everybody.”

Stating a number of reasons why the project was important, Cllr Donna Higgins said without the abbey, it wouldn’t be Bury St Edmunds and the Abbey Gardens wouldn’t have that focus.

Cllr Rowena Lindberg said: “It’s bold, it’s progressive, it’s inclusive, it’s eco – it’s everything we should be aiming for as a town.”

Cllr Diane Hind, Mayor of Bury St Edmunds, said the visitor centre would be ‘state-of-the-art’, conveying the history in a more modern way.

Detailed proposals for the project are considered by The National Lottery Heritage Fund at the second round.

The Abbey of St Edmund project is a partnership project between St Edmundsbury Cathedral, West Suffolk Council and English Heritage (the project partners) who have come together as members of The Abbey of St Edmund Heritage Partnership, comprising 29 organisations and individuals, to develop and deliver it.

They hope it will be a magnet for cultural tourists and an important gathering place for residents.