Events & Meetings
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On these pages you will find information about the events taking place in the coming months including talks, visits, activities and research. You will also find reports of prvious meetings should you have missed them. Scroll down to view. For further information please contact us here. Our programme of talks is provided by a variety of local speakers.
Events 2025/26
Andrew Mowbray:
Virtually Colchester.
February 12th 2026
Julie Whittle:
A Bulmer Family During World War II.
March 12th 2026
Pip Wright:
A Picture History Of Margaret Catchpole.
April 16th 2026 NB. 3rd Thursday
Mark Bailey:
The Impact Of Global Climate Change On The East Anglian Coast 100 to 1600.
May 14th 2026
A Summer Outing:
To Be Arranged.
June 11th 2026
A Summer's Evening Function:
To Be Arranged.
July 9th 2026
September 11th 20255
John Miners
Horsehair Tails
October 9th 2025
Annual General Meeting
Committee Reports and Members' Talks.
November 13th 2025
Kate Jewell:
By The Moonlight I Must Go To My Bed.
Schools and Education in Medieval Suffolk.
January 8th 2026
Adrian Tindall:
The Monastery Alone A City
1000 Years of The Abbey Of St Edmunds..
Our November talk given by Kate Jewell was entitled ‘Schools and Education in Medieval Suffolk’. Way back in 1234, Pope Gregory decreed that within Christendom every parish priest should have a clerk who was responsible for bringing boys into education, and this was certainly prevalent in the Suffolk of the late 14 th to early 16 th century when records show that elementary school for the formal education of boys existed in many towns and villages. Education was always linked to religion. Boys from wealthy and well-to-do backgrounds often had to pay a fee to the local employer/landowner before being sent to
schools, the aim being to groom them for future priesthood. Books and documents still in existence show that the teaching, usually done by the local priests, was in both English and Latin and much was achieved ‘by rote’ chanting. Content included early alphabets and basic prayers, although in the grammar schools, which boys transferred to from the age of 12, more advanced primers were introduced containing collects, prayers, psalms, classical texts and lists of the seven sacraments and deadly sins. For these boarding schools, boys took with them an enormous pile of ‘necessaries’(clothes, shoes etc.); they sat on graded ‘forms’; texts were almost exclusively in Latin; discipline was strict and hours were long.
However, the boys did enjoy their food and hated Lent when diets were restricted! Kate concluded her talk by briefly mentioning the life of girls who were essential for the running of households, many, like Alice de Bryene from Acton, becoming more than proficient in management and control of large farming communities.
A dismally, wet and miserable January evening did not deter 41 members and visitors from attending Adrian Tindall’s talk entitled ‘The Monastery Alone a City’ - 1000 Years of the Abbey of St. Edmunds. Early research shows that Bury St. Edmunds was a significant town even in Saxon times, known then as Bedricesworth and by 630 AD Christianity and religious sites were prevalent. The martyrdom of King Edmund in 869/70 AD, set on record by Abbo de Fleury 100 years later, led to a great monastery being established by King Canute c.1020AD built around, and containing , the shrine of the murdered king. This was one of the greatest and wealthiest Benedictine monasteries in all of NW Europe, its wealth and power ever increasing until the Dissolution in 1539. Plans and archaeological digs show where the original buildings would have stood, the majority of them now in ruins showing only the flint-like inner structural core as the outer limestone facing stones have long been taken. Huge buildings such as the Norman Tower, St. James church (now the cathedral) and St. Mary’s church survived as they were all on the Abbey fringe, thus to be shared by the townsfolk. The present Abbey gate is a later addition, as the original one was destroyed by the local inhabitants in 1327- 46. (Angry relationships between town and Abbey were never cordial; the abbots were hated for their wealth and tight rein of town control). Today we can find evidence of the huge Abbey church, its nave, chapter house (with graves of six abbots!), chapels and crypt; some recent reconstructive pictures show how magnificent it would have been. The Great Court which housed stables, bake and brew houses and workshops is now the Abbey gardens, and many will recognise the Abbot’s bridge, still standing. Adrian’s most interesting talk certainly reminded us of what a fascinating
place the St Edmundsbury Abbey was, and still is today.