Bury St. Edmunds is named after St. Edmund, a Saxon king martyred by the Great Heathen Army, led by Ivar The Boneless.

The abbey was built around the shrine of St. Edmund, and was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1539.
Today's cathedral began as the parish church of St. James, designed by John Wastell (who put up the vaults in King's College Chapel, Cambridge). The church survived the dissolution of the neighbouring abbey and was made a cathedral in 1914. Extension work by Stephen Dykes Bower began in 1960, making the transepts and quire remarkable contemporaries of such atrocities as the Barbican in London and Boston City Hall. The magnificent tower, by Warwick Pethers and Hugh Matthew, was completed in 2005. To my mind it is the greatest gothic building of the 21st century so far.