ABSTRACT
It is fitting that the ruins of the church of Bury St Edmunds Abbey belong almost exclusively to the great Romanesque structure erected by Abbot Baldwin and his successors in the late 11th and 12th centuries, since this building forms the core of the architectural history of the site, replacing the previous churches of the abbey and in turn providing the matrix for all the additions of the 13th to 16th centuries. In 945 a namesake of the martyr, Edmund, king of England 939-46, donated the town of Beodricsworth to the church of St Edmund, making it one of the richest in the country. The major part of the Romanesque church was therefore erected in the sixty years between 1081 and 1142. Baldwin’s church is an example of the Norman policy of impressing through scale and the quality of design and materials.
