At Bury St Edmunds, in Suffolk, the present cathedral was originally the parish church of St James. Rebuilt in the early sixteenth century by one of the greatest masons of his time, it stood in the shadow of the formidable abbey of Bury — one of the most powerful monasteries in England, which the Reformation would reduce to ruins.
The work of John Wastell
The church of St James was largely rebuilt from 1503, in Perpendicular style, by the master mason John Wastell — the same architect who completed the famous fan vault of King's College Chapel at Cambridge. Its elegant nave, exactly contemporary with his works at Cambridge, bears witness to the apogee of English Gothic on the eve of the Renaissance. Built to serve the town, it was one of the two great parish churches set against the abbey — neighbours of the monastic colossus that dominated Bury.
The shadow of the dissolved abbey
For St James lived in the shadow of the powerful abbey of Bury St Edmunds, sanctuary of the martyr-king St Edmund and one of the richest and most influential monasteries in the realm. At the Dissolution, in 1539, this immense abbey was dissolved (its last abbot, John Reeve, died shortly after) and given over to demolition: today only spectacular ruins remain of it. The parish church of St James, for its part, survived — and was promoted to cathedral in the twentieth century. The contrast is striking: on one side the colossal monastery reduced to sections of wall, on the other the modest church that outlived it. To see: Wastell's Perpendicular nave (early sixteenth century), the Susanna Window, and, beside it, the ruins of the dissolved abbey.
Did you know?
The man who rebuilt St James at Bury, John Wastell, is also the one who laid the sublime fan vault of King's College Chapel at Cambridge — two almost simultaneous masterpieces, around 1503-1512. The same hands, the same genius of late Gothic, thus worked a few dozen kilometres apart, at the very hinge where medieval England was about to tip into the Renaissance.
Notes
St Edmundsbury Cathedral lies at Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk; a working cathedral (Grade I), open to visits, beside the abbey ruins. Hours to check.
Quiz
- Which master mason rebuilt St James from 1503?
- John Wastell (also King's College Chapel)
- Christopher Wren
- Inigo Jones
- What became of the great abbey of Bury in 1539?
- It was dissolved and reduced to ruins
- It was enlarged
- It became a palace
- Which other masterpiece did Wastell complete?
- The vault of King's College Chapel, Cambridge
- The Tower of London
- Salisbury Cathedral