St. Mary's Church, Bury St. Edmunds

St Mary's Church is the civic church of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, and one of the largest and most magnificent parish churches in all England. It claims the second-longest nave of any parish church in the country — surpassed only by Christchurch Priory — and what is believed to be the largest west window of any parish church in the land. Once part of the great abbey complex of Bury St Edmunds, it is famous above all as the burial place of Mary Tudor, Queen of France and favourite sister of King Henry VIII, and for its breathtaking medieval hammerbeam roof, guarded by ranks of carved angels. Its official dedication is to the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and it remains one of the supreme parish churches of England.

The present church is far from the first to stand on this hallowed ground. The earliest was built in the seventh century, founded by King Sigeberht of the East Angles, and a second church was raised in the early twelfth century by Abbot Anselm, to replace an older church of St Mary that had been demolished to make way for the south wing of the vast Abbey Church. Nothing of that Norman building survives, however; the oldest part of the present church is the Decorated Gothic chancel of about 1290. The great rebuilding that gives St Mary's its present form took place between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the soaring nave, its aisles, and the tower were all constructed — financed, in the manner of the great East Anglian "wool churches", by the wealth of the medieval cloth trade and the generosity of pious benefactors.

It was during this period of rebuilding that the church gained its most famous occupant. Mary Tudor, the younger sister of Henry VIII — briefly Queen of France through her marriage to the aged King Louis XII, and not to be confused with her niece Mary I of England — died in 1533 and was buried in the Abbey Church at Bury. When the abbey was destroyed at the Dissolution of the Monasteries, her body was removed and reburied here in St Mary's, where her tomb lies in the sanctuary, directly to the north of the altar. The church is, of course, dedicated to Mary the mother of Jesus and not, as some mistakenly believe, to Mary Tudor herself; a memorial tablet was erected to the queen in 1758, and at the suggestion of King Edward VII, who visited the church in 1904, a marble kerb was placed around her gravestone. That a sister of Henry VIII should lie in a parish church, rather than a royal abbey or cathedral, is a poignant reminder of the upheavals of the Reformation that swept away the great abbey beside which she had first been laid to rest.

The church owes much of its splendour to the bequests of wealthy local benefactors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, chief among them John Notyngham and Jankyn Smyth, whose generosity is still remembered in Bury to this day. Their funds paid for the building of the north and south quire aisles — now the Lady Chapel and the Royal Anglian (formerly Suffolk Regimental) Chapel — together with two chantry chapels and the north and south porches. The fine north porch, known as the Notyngham Porch, was built in 1437 in accordance with John Notyngham's will, while the south porch of 1523 was removed during a restoration in 1831. St Wolstan's chapel, on the north-west side, once held the Suffolk Regimental cenotaph before it was moved to the end of the north aisle. The great west window, the church's proudest boast, measures over thirty-five feet high and eight and a half feet wide, and is believed to be the largest of any parish church in the country.

But it is the interior, and above all the roof, that takes the breath away. The writer Simon Jenkins, who awarded the church three stars in his England's Thousand Best Churches, described the nave as one of the largest and most exhilarating in the country, its arcades of ten majestic bays marching towards the chancel, rising on continuous mouldings with only the tiniest of capitals. Above spreads the unusually wide hammerbeam roof, a marvellous survival of medieval carpentry: eleven pairs of carved angels guard the space below, attended by lesser angels on the wall-plates and by saints, martyrs, prophets and kings — forty-two figures in all — while along the frieze a whole medieval menagerie of carved creatures takes over. It is one of the finest angel roofs in England, in a region — East Anglia — that is famous for them, and it alone would make St Mary's worth a long journey to see.

For centuries St Mary's has been one of the three great churches of Bury St Edmunds. The others were St James's, which became St Edmundsbury Cathedral, and St Margaret's, which has since vanished, so that St Mary's now stands as the largest medieval parish church in the town, the civic church where the life of Bury is marked. It continues today as a busy and active Anglican parish church, its vast nave and glorious roof drawing worshippers and visitors alike.

The church stands within the historic precinct of the abbey, in the heart of one of the most attractive towns in East Anglia. The ruins of the once-mighty Abbey of St Edmund — burial place of the martyr-king St Edmund and one of the greatest monasteries of medieval England — lie in the beautiful Abbey Gardens beside the church, together with the imposing medieval Abbey Gate and Norman Tower. St Edmundsbury Cathedral, with its modern Gothic tower, stands close by, as do the Georgian streets, the Theatre Royal, the Greene King brewery, and the elegant market square of this fine Suffolk town.

From a Saxon church founded by King Sigeberht, through the great medieval rebuilding financed by the wool merchants and benefactors of Bury, the burial of Henry VIII's sister Mary Tudor, and the creation of its incomparable angel roof and vast west window, St Mary's Church gathers more than a thousand years of Suffolk history into one magnificent building. One of the largest parish churches in England and a three-star treasure, it remains the proud civic church of Bury St Edmunds — a monument to the wealth, faith and artistry of medieval East Anglia, and the resting place of a queen.