Only lightly spoiled
This agreeable open space, Angel Hill, looks as though it must have been the market place of Bury St Edmunds, although the market is now held a few hundred yards away in the higher part of the town. Bury was a monastic foundation and a planned town, which accounts for the grid pattern of the streets. The Great Gate, on the left, is a little out of alignment with Abbeygate Street, which joins from the right just behind the ice cream van; the structure we see today replaced an earlier building destroyed by the mob in 1327 and it is conjectured that the original would have been in a straight line with the street. Note the "pillar of salt" concrete road sign in the centre, put up in the 1930s probably as a deliberate affront, much like the ghastly multi-storey car parks and hotels erected to spoil cherished views of Bath. Facing us at the far end is the Athenaeum, a kind of assembly room, reduced from three storeys to two in 1789. Apart from the road sign, the only modern intrusion here is the chimney of the Greene King brewery; its Abbot Reserve is obtainable everywhere, but since moving away I have missed some of its more obscure brews, which seem unavailable outside the locality. Outside this barley-growing region the ale-supper can't be quite so choosey.
Only lightly spoiled
This agreeable open space, Angel Hill, looks as though it must have been the market place of Bury St Edmunds, although the market is now held a few hundred yards away in the higher part of the town. Bury was a monastic foundation and a planned town, which accounts for the grid pattern of the streets. The Great Gate, on the left, is a little out of alignment with Abbeygate Street, which joins from the right just behind the ice cream van; the structure we see today replaced an earlier building destroyed by the mob in 1327 and it is conjectured that the original would have been in a straight line with the street. Note the "pillar of salt" concrete road sign in the centre, put up in the 1930s probably as a deliberate affront, much like the ghastly multi-storey car parks and hotels erected to spoil cherished views of Bath. Facing us at the far end is the Athenaeum, a kind of assembly room, reduced from three storeys to two in 1789. Apart from the road sign, the only modern intrusion here is the chimney of the Greene King brewery; its Abbot Reserve is obtainable everywhere, but since moving away I have missed some of its more obscure brews, which seem unavailable outside the locality. Outside this barley-growing region the ale-supper can't be quite so choosey.