The chequered history of Woolhall Street, in Bury St Edmunds, including its 2010 collapse

Woolhall Street: The Clothiers Woolhall once stood in this location for the business of dealing in wool – another wool-hall was further up the market but owned by the corporation.

Bury St Edmunds had a thriving economy during medieval times, which was not only reliant on St Edmundsbury Abbey but the wool trade as well.

One of the much later exponents of this was James Oakes, who had inherited a yarn making business in St Andrew’s Street South from his wealthy uncle, Orbell Ray.

However, with the decline of the wool industry towards the end of the 19th century, he successfully moved into banking. This had a knock-on effect as John Green, the owner of the deteriorating Clothiers Woolhall, was declared bankrupt in 1823.

Five years later it was decided to demolish the hall to create an access for more traffic to the newly-opened Beast Market (what was to become the Cattle Market) that had moved from near Moyse’s Hall on Cornhill. Until then a narrow lane had been the only means of getting into St Andrew’s Street and into Field Lane (Kings Road) from Cornhill.

The neighbouring Woolpack Inn eventually became Everards Hotel in 1864, when Michael Everard purchased it. His family had connections to The Suffolk Hotel. Everards sadly closed in 1987, the façade being retained but the many architectural delights within disappeared. Clearance of the site at the rear uncovered 17 wells – probably a vestige of when it was the short-lived Buckley and Garness brewery.

At different times in recent years large holes have suddenly appeared in the street, as in September 2010, giving rise to that well-propounded theory that Bury is honeycombed with tunnels.

On the opposite corner to Everards was the Bury Gaol. This was demolished in 1770. Many Quakers had been cruelly treated here – one, a George Whitehead, spoke of the cruel treatment meted out by the gaoler.

“As a punishment, two of them were put into a dismal dungeon that could only be reached by a ladder. It was four yards deep underground, at the bottom, in the midst an iron grate a foot distant from each other and underneath a pit or hole we knew not how deep,” he said.

With the subsequent opening of the new gaol in Sicklesmere Road in 1805, more humane treatment was meted out.

Further up Woolhall Street, on the north side, was the ironmongery business of William Farrow, in the 1920s.