Today, 20 November, is St Edmund’s Day. Very little is known about Edmund’s life, but we do know that he was crowned King of the East Angles in 855, and died in 869 or 870, aged about 28, at the hands of Danish invaders commonly referred to as ‘Vikings’ or the ‘Great Heathen Army’. In a previous blog post, we looked at what St Edmund’s Day means to us and to our hometown.
This year, however, we went in search of the legend of St Edmund. According to tradition, after battling with the invading army, he retreated to Hoxne, in the Waveney Valley, where he was found hiding under a bridge. When he refused to abandon his Christian faith, he was tied to a tree, shot with arrows and decapitated. His head was thrown into a nearby woodland, where it was defended by a wolf until Edmund’s followers were able to retrieve it. The images of the crown, the wolf and the arrows have since become firmly associated with Bury St Edmunds.
Earlier this month, we visited Hoxne in search King Edmund and his legend…
It is worth mentioning in advance that there is significant debate about the real, historical location of King Edmund’s death, in part due to the scarcity of documentary evidence and changing place names. Other villages have been proposed, including Bradfield St Clare in West Suffolk and Hellesdon near Norwich, but nowhere else has as long-standing a tradition as Hoxne, which seemed like a good enough reason to start our search there!
Hoxne turned out to be a beautiful village, along what felt like a surprisingly steep high street (for East Anglia!) with a number of 15th, 16th and 17th century buildings on either side. A particularly interesting Butcher’s Shop, opposite the Swan Inn, had two beautiful painted glass panels demonstrating its traditional trade.
Our first stop was the Goldbrook Bridge, built in 1878, but on the site of a much older bridge, under which King Edmund is supposed to have hidden from the invading Danish army. According to Suffolk historian Alfred Inigo Suckling (1796–1856) he was found when his golden spurs were spotted in the moonlight by newly-weds, who ‘betrayed their monarch to the Danes’. His subsequent curse of the bridge and newly-wedded couples ensured that wedding parties found alternative routes out of the village for centuries.[i]
Next to the Goldbrook Bridge stands Hoxne Village Hall, built in 1870. A statue of St Edmund, holding a regal sceptre and an arrow, stands at the ridge of the roof, while on the gable end there is a plaque depicting the bridal party crossing the bridge, with Edmund hiding beneath. Below the dramatic lancet windows, an inscription reminds us of the legend surrounding Edmund’s capture and death.
The Village Hall also felt somewhat homely and nostalgic for me, reminding me of my childhood Primary School, a very similar flint-built Victorian building from just 15 years earlier.
Just a few minutes’ walk downhill, and we reach St Edmund’s Memorial. This marks the spot on which an oak tree had once stood to which, according to local legend, King Edmund had been tied and then shot with arrows. In fact, a piece of metal resembling an arrowhead was removed from the tree which was believed to have been from Edmund’s execution, and is now housed at Moyses Hall Museum, here in Bury St Edmunds.
The original tree fell in 1848, and a monument was built in its place: the current monument was erected in 1908 to replace that one, which had been destroyed by a thunderstorm. (The incorrect date – ‘1843’ instead of ‘1848’ – was introduced during the replacement).[ii]
Regardless of the historical evidence, positioned as it is – on its own, in the middle of an otherwise agricultural field – there is something quiet and reflective about St Edmund’s Monument, like a war memorial, that seems appropriate given the circumstances of his early death.
We walked back uphill to the village, noting the many nearby walks and other locations we hadn’t time to explore, and promising ourselves that we would return again, though perhaps during the summer when the weather was a bit better!
[i] Alfred Suckling, 'Introduction', in The History and Antiquities of the County of Suffolk: Volume 1 (Ipswich, 1846), British History Online, accessed 17 November 2024, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/suffolk-history-antiquities/vol1/i-xxxiv.
[ii] ‘The Legend of St. Edmund and his Monument’, Hoxne Heritage Group, accessed 18 November 2024, https://www.hoxnehistory.org.uk/St%20Edmund.php
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