How two famous bishops inspired the names of Blomfield House and Gardiner House in Bury St Edmunds

The interesting conversion into apartments of a building in Looms Lane known until recently as Blomfield House takes its new name – Gardiner House – from a former important resident of Bury St Edmunds, Stephen Gardiner, who was born in 1482 not far from nearby Angel Corner, on Angel Hill

His father, a clothmaker, would see his son eventually become Master of Trinity Hall and Chancellor of Cambridge University.

Introduced by the Duke of Norfolk to Cardinal Wolsey, himself born down the road in Ipswich, Gardiner became the Cardinal’s secretary.

The Pope eventually conferred the bishopric of Winchester on to the high-flying Gardiner and as such he came to the notice of Henry VIII, eventually succeeding Wolsey in that capricious monarch’s favour.

At first he supported Henry’s anti-papal policies, but the slow realisation in his heart of hearts meant he was at odds with the doctrine of the much-married monarch’s Church of England.

However, when Henry died in 1547 Gardiner was the celebrant at his Requiem.

But the tide of his new found declaration of Catholic support was to be swept away by Henry’s son, Edward VI, who was vehemently Protestant.

Imprisoned in the Tower of London, Gardiner, was stripped of his Cambridge Chancellorship and Bishopric but was released on Henry’s daughter Mary’s accession in 1553, becoming her Lord Chancellor.

Whether he was instrumental in her attempted suppression of Protestantism by burning heretics (17 in Bury St Edmunds) and reintroduction of the Catholic faith earning her the sobriquet ‘Bloody Mary’, is something only judged by history itself. Suffice to say he died in 1555.

Gardiner’s place of birth was not far away where another Bishop to be, was born in 1786, on the corner of Looms Lane and Lower Baxter Street.

Charles James Blomfield, son of a schoolmaster, went to Bury Grammar School and after a brief stay at Eton became a Fellow of Trinity, Cambridge.

He became one of England’s finest scholars, editing many Greek texts, but as a liberal clergyman had little time for High Church.

Blomfield’s childhood home in Bury, on the corner of Looms Lane, was demolished when the lane was widened in 1965.

A plaque put up on his house in 1907, one of 12 plaques to re-enforce the history and heritage of the town’s amazing pageant that year, then languished inside a new clinic named after him.

Unfortunately, its cladding of white ceramic tiles likened by one observer as ‘looking like a toilet block’ did it no favours and eventually they were removed and a brick ‘skin’ applied.

The plaque, though slightly damage, has been put back near the entrance to the new apartments built in the former clinic’s recent conversion.

A postscript to the name of Blomfield was when houses were built off St Andrew’s Street North, they were named Blomfield Street and Bishops Road.

Recently, a new development of seven properties built at the rear of the latter and facing St Andrew’s Street North car park continued the ecclesiastical connection, being named Crozier Close by yours truly.