History of Bury St Edmunds, in St Edmundsbury and Suffolk

Place:

Bury St Edmunds Suffolk

Names from historical writing:

The following appear as names for Bury St Edmunds. Follow the links for what the author actually said:

Name	Author	Source
BURY	Charles Wesley	The Journal of the Rev. Charles Wesley (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1849).
	John Wesley	The Journal of John Wesley (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2000).
	Arthur Young	A Tour in Ireland, made in the years 1776, 1777, and 1778 (London: T. Cadell, 1780).
BURY ST EDMUNDS	John Bartholomew	Gazetteer of the British Isles (Edinburgh: Bartholomew, 1887).
BURY ST EDMUNDS	John Marius Wilson	Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (Edinburgh: A Fullarton & Co., 1870-72).

NB: These variant names come from our collections of historical travel writing and descriptive gazetteers:

The above links take you to the first reference to this particular version of the name within a book of travel writing, or to the relevant gazetteer entry.
Some names may derive from research by antiquarian writers such as William Camden and Thomas Pennant into the Roman, Saxon and medieval names of places. Their claims are not always supported by modern place-name researchers.
References by travel writers to the place using its "normal" name are not included. Descriptive gazetteer entries are included only if the name does not appear anywhere else.

Names for administrative units:

These names were used for units associated with Bury St Edmunds. Click on the links for details of the units and their names:

Name	Unit Type	Source
42UF	District/Unitary Authority	Census of Population (2001 Key Statistics)
BURY ST EDMUNDS	1841 Occupation reporting area	1841 Census of Great Britain, Table [1], 'Occupation Abstract'.
	Ancient District (Borough)	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 679.
	Constituency (PBCon)	Richard H.A. Cheffins, Parliamentary Constituencies and their registers since 1832 (London: The British Library, 1998)
	Constituency (CCon)	Richard H.A. Cheffins, Parliamentary Constituencies and their registers since 1832 (London: The British Library, 1998)
	Local Government District (MB)	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 679.
	Parish-level Unit (CP)	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 451.
	Poor Law Union/Reg. District (RegD/PLU)	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 679.
	Registration sub-District	1911 Census of England and Wales, Table 5, 'Registration Counties, Districts and Sub-districts with their constituent civil parishes. - Urban or Rural District in which each parish is situated; Area; families or separate occupiers, and population, 1901 and 1911; and population enumerated in Institutions, large establishments, and on vessels, &c., 1911'.
	Sanitary District (USD)	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 681.
	Urban Labour Market	Great Britain Historical GIS Project
BURY ST EDMUNDS ALL SAINTS	Ecclesiastical Parish (EP)	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 451.
BURY ST EDMUNDS ST GEORGE	Ecclesiastical Parish (EP)	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 451.
BURY ST EDMUNDS ST JAMES	Ecclesiastical Parish (EP)	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 451.
BURY ST EDMUNDS ST JAMES	Parish-level Unit (CP/AP)	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 451.
BURY ST EDMUNDS ST JOHN	Ecclesiastical Parish (EP)	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 451.
BURY ST EDMUNDS ST MARY	Ecclesiastical Parish (EP)	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 451.
BURY ST EDMUNDS ST MARY	Parish-level Unit (CP/AP)	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 451.
E350991	Local Government District (MB)
JAMES ST	Parish-level Unit (CP/AP)	1831 Census of Great Britain, Table [1], 'Population Abstract'.
MARY ST	Parish-level Unit (CP/AP)	1831 Census of Great Britain, Table [1], 'Population Abstract'.
ST EDMUNDSBURY	District/Unitary Authority	Census of Population (2001 Key Statistics)
ST EDMUNDSBURY AND IPSWICH	Diocese	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 784.
ST JAMES	Parish-level Unit (CP/AP)	1871 Census of England and Wales, Table 4, 'Area; Houses and Inhabitants, 1861 and 1871, in the Parishes and Places comprised in each Superintendent Registrar's District'.
ST MARY	Parish-level Unit (CP/AP)	1871 Census of England and Wales, Table 4, 'Area; Houses and Inhabitants, 1861 and 1871, in the Parishes and Places comprised in each Superintendent Registrar's District'.
SUFFOLK BURY ST EDMUNDS	Constituency (PDivCon)	Richard H.A. Cheffins, Parliamentary Constituencies and their registers since 1832 (London: The British Library, 1998)
SUFFOLK BURY ST EDMUNDS	Constituency (CCon)	F.W.S. Craig (ed.), British Parliamentary Election Results 1950-1970 (Chichester: Political Reference Publications, 1971)
SUFFOLK WEST BURY ST EDMUNDS	Constituency (PDivCon)	F.W.S. Craig (ed.), British Parliamentary Election Results 1918-1949 (Glasgow: Political Reference Publications, 1969)
WESTERN SUFFOLK BURY ST EDMUNDS	Constituency (PDivCon)	Richard H.A. Cheffins, Parliamentary Constituencies and their registers since 1832 (London: The British Library, 1998)
WEST SUFFOLK BURY ST EDMUNDS	Constituency (PDivCon)	Richard H.A. Cheffins, Parliamentary Constituencies and their registers since 1832 (London: The British Library, 1998)
WEST SUFFOLK BURY ST EDMUNDS	Constituency (CCon)	Boundary Commission for England, First Periodical Report (London: H.M.S.O., 1954)

NB: These are all the names of all the administrative units which we have associated with Bury St Edmunds, and you must judge whether all or even any of them are variant names for the place. They may well include the names of other locations or areas:

For cities, the associated administrative units will usually include parishes, especially ecclesiastical parishes, one of whose names is the name of the city followed by a saint's dedication, with just the saint's name as another variant. Parish names will sometimes also include "places" within towns.
Districts usually contain more than one settlement, and some districts had their names changed to take the name of a completely different settlement. As we link each administrative unit to just one of our "places", usually the last place the unit was named after, in these cases the name for a completely different place will appear on this page.
Similarly, a unit may sometimes be named after a particular settlement it contains and sometimes to indicate its location within a higher level unit. This was very common among British parliamentary constituencies in rural areas, one name referring to their main town and another indicating that they were in, say, the southern part of the relevant county.

Every name listed here is linked to the particular historical source in which it appears, but we cannot claim that these are all the historical names of Bury St Edmunds, or that our references are to the first usage of the names. Similarly, we have tried to ensure that names included here are not transcription errors by ourselves, but it is possible they are the result of errors made when the historical sources were printed, or the result of visiting authors or census officials mis-hearing local names.

How to reference this page:

GB Historical GIS / University of Portsmouth, History of Bury St Edmunds, in St Edmundsbury and Suffolk | Place names, A Vision of Britain through Time.

URL: https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/832/names

Date accessed: 18th April 2025