Book excerpt: Bury St Edmunds Abbey was one of the greatest abbeys in East Anglia and one of the richest in England. It derived its name from King Edmund of East Anglia, who was martyred by the Danes in 870 and whose relics were enshrined at the abbey in 903, making it a place of pilgrimage. After the Norman Conquest a new church was built on a grand scale, and a large complex of buildings constructed to serve the needs of the monastic community.This guidebook describes the remains of the abbey as they can be seen today and gives visitors a brief history of the abbey from its earliest days until the Dissolution.