Bury St Edmunds is a town in the county of Suffolk, England. It is the main town in the borough of St Edmundsbury and is probably most famous for the ruined abbey which stands near the town centre. The abbey is a shrine to Saint Edmund, the Saxon King of the East Angles, who was killed by the Danes in 869 AD. The town initially grew around Bury St. Edmunds Abbey, a site of pilgrimage, and developed into a flourishing clothmaking town by the 14th century. The town is closely associated with Magna Carta, in 1214 the barons of England met in the Abbey Church and swore that they would force King John to accept the Charter of Liberties, later known as Magna Carta.

The abbey was largely destroyed during the 16th century with the dissolution of the monasteries but Bury remained a prosperous town throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. As would be expected of a town in such a rural area, Bury fell into relative decline with the onset of the industrial revolution and accordingly remains an attractive market town.

Next to the abbey is the cathedral, created only relatively recently in 1913. It was extended with a new eastern end in the 1960s, and a completely new Gothic revival cathedral tower was built as part of a major millennium project running from 2000 to 2005. The opening celebration for the new tower took place in July 2005, and included a brass band concert and fireworks display. The tower makes St Edmundsbury the only recently completed cathedral in the UK; only a handful of Gothic revival cathedrals are still being built worldwide. The tower was constructed using original fabrication techniques. Six highly skilled masons cut and placed every stone individually.