Where Suffolk Packs a Punch ; There's a Buzz to Bury St Edmunds with Cool Crafts and Bars Cosied Around Its Ancient Stones

Summary

---

AND this," said Mr Pickwick, looking up, "is the Angel. We alight here." Like so much that Charles Dickens wrote about in his novels, this Angel was taken from his own life. The venerable 15th century coaching inn at Bury St Edmunds was where Dickens stayed several times in the 1850s during readings at the nearby Athenaeum Rooms.

The great man would still recognise much from his stay: a cheque he wrote hangs in the bar; the Abbeygate Restaurant, where Mr Pickwick enjoyed a "fine dinner", is still serving them amid comfortable Victorian splendour; and Dickens's old room (now 215) remains little-changed right down to the dark-green wallpaper and period loo. And there's a definite frisson as you snuggle down in the same four-poster as one of the greatest novelists in history.

See the full content of this document

Extract

---

Where Suffolk Packs a Punch ; There's a Buzz to Bury St Edmunds with Cool Crafts and Bars Cosied Around Its Ancient Stones

But monks, rather than writers, made Bury famous. For five centuries, one of the most powerful abbeys in northern Europe stood a stone's throw from the Angel. It was a shrine to St Edmund, patron saint of England before George, and its ruins - grey stone...

See the full content of this document

---