Sixteen more things you'll only know if you grew up in Bury St Edmunds
Bury St Edmunds is a market town with a big heart.
Many of those who grew up here have, at times, longed for bright lights and a big city.
After completing A-levels it was the done thing to disappear to university to somewhere more buzzing, with better nightlife and buzzing cinema multiplexes.
But after a few years – or sometimes decades – the draw of Bury eventually lured the majority back to their hometown.
So, what is it about the ‘jewel in the crown of Suffolk’ which inspires such affection? For those who grew up in Bury, these memories might provide a nostalgic explanation:
1. In the days when penny sweets could still be bought for a penny, sweet lovers could fill their boots at Woolworths.
Better known as Woolies, the shop – which filled the town centre units now occupied by Sports Direct and Poundland – had an extensive pick ‘n’ mix counter with such favourites as Murray Mints and the occasional Quality Street.
Meanwhile, younger shoppers could pay 35p for a quarter of kids pick ‘n’ mix. Think cola bottles, red laces, shrimps and Blackjacks – all the sugary favourites of the children of the 70s and 80s were displayed in their rainbow hue-d glory.
Scoops and tongs were provided, but let’s face it, everyone knew toddlers would have been thrusting their sticky hands into the sweet containers rather than using the correct implements. In those pre-Covid days it was easier to shrug off that knowledge and still buy the pick ‘n’ mix.
Elsewhere in Woolworths you could find books, children’s clothes, gardening tools, cutlery, crockery and its famous music section.
2. Talking of music, our first look back at Bury memories – Fifteen things you'll only know if you grew up in Bury St Edmunds – failed to mention Andy’s Records due to a memory slip by its author.
But who could forget Andy’s?
The business started as a market stall in Cambridge and Bury in 1974 and eventually its Bury shop was located at the top of St John’s Street, selling vinyl, cassettes, CDs and videos.
In the days before streaming if you wanted to add to your music collection, it was THE place to shop in Bury and you could lose yourself in there for hours, flicking through stacks of records of every genre.
A trip to Andy’s meant you could be rinsed for £3.99 for a CD single (back when CD was the winning format) or peruse the top 50 at the front of the shop.
Did you even grow up in Bury if you didn’t buy your first record from Andy’s?
3. Meanwhile, Bury has hosted some big names in music over the decades, from The Clash and Slade to Mansun.
Back in the 1990s, ‘Thatters’ from across the region raced to Rollerbury as Gary, Robbie, Mark, Howard and Jason visited the Station Hill venue.
With their single It Only Takes a Minute’ riding high in the charts, Take That were a star attraction for the skating rink.
During their short performance the five-piece sang and breakdanced on a tiny stage in front of Rollerbury’s neon-painted cityscape back wall, while surrounded by screaming teenagers.
A few months later Australian actor Scott Michaelson – better known as Brad from Neighbours – visited Rollerbury and received pretty much the same welcome despite a lack of singing or dancing on his part.
4. Moving on from music to monkeys, many 40-somethings who grew up in Bury may have vague memories of the Abbey Gardens monkeys.
Walk down to the Abbey Gardens today and you will see aviaries buzzing with colourful birds, but rewind 40-odd years and you would have seen two monkeys in situ.
A pair of macaques moved into the menagerie in the mid to late 1960s after being given to the menagerie by Wells pet shop, of Risbygate Street – the male macaque was eventually given to a Northamptonshire zoological agent as his mate became aggressive, but Judy stayed in the Abbey Gardens until her death in the mid 1980s.
5. Once upon a time the Buttermarket had its own hotel where Waterstone’s and the Edinburgh Woollen Mill now trade.
The Suffolk Hotel boasted a comfortable lounge – visited by this writer to watch the Euro ‘96 semi-final – and could also be used as a cheeky cut-through from the town centre to High Baxter Street.
At the rear of the building there was a bar colloquially called The Suffolk Shades and a garage at the back.
The Suffolk Hotel closed in 1996 but now, plans are afoot to convert part of the building back into a town centre hotel.
Other long-gone hotels which once stood in the town centre include Everards and The Griffin, while the Castle pub was originally called the Castle Hotel.
6. Now occupied by Adnams and in years gone by Burger King and the Wimpy bar (after its move from the bottom of Abbeygate Street), this Buttermarket building was once Purdy’s.
Originally Palmers restaurant, as Purdys it was the rendezvous place to be.
Looking from the first floor across Cornhill you could enjoy one of their specialties while watching the world go by – pasty and baked beans smothered in oxtail soup, mmm lovely.
When it closed the manager, Mr Coleshill, opened a small restaurant at the rear which closed after his death a few years later.
7. Staying in the town centre, hands up who remembers the bus station being in Brentgovel Street?
It’s hard to imagine now that McDonalds and Game are in situ, but once upon a time the site was populated with buses and coaches chugging out fumes.
Long after the bus terminus closed and fast food replaced it, the bus station moved to new premises in St Andrew’s Street North in the 1990s – where it is still located today.
8. Opposite the old bus terminus, on the site of the derelict Cornhill Walk Shopping Centre, once stood the art deco Odeon cinema.
The 1,289-seat cinema opened in July 1937 with 867 seats in the stalls, 422 seats in the circle, a 20ft-deep stage and two dressing rooms.
After changing its name to Focus in the 1970s the cinema eventually closed in October 1982 and was demolished in 1983, with the site a wasteland until Cornhill Walk was built a few years later.
9. These days Mountain Warehouse is at 19 Cornhill and before that Stead and Simpson shoe shop, but the address was once that of Liptons
Liptons was situated next to Bell Arcade – alongside the former Post Office – in a building which has since been redeveloped into the shops and bank we see today.
The tea specialists eventually merged with Maypole, Home and Colonial and similar provision and grocery stores, but with the growth of supermarkets the firm could not compete and the chain disappeared from the high street.
10. Talking of supermarkets, Sainsbury’s may have stood in Bedingfeld Way for about 35 years but once upon a time the supermarket was on Cornhill, on the site now occupied by Iceland.
After the departure of Sainsbury’s the Cornhill site was initially developed into an ill-fated shopping precinct called St Edmund’s Fayre, however the precinct’s units were never filled to capacity, while a stylish jazz bar called Blue Note on its first floor also failed to flourish.
Eventually the site was taken over by Iceland and redeveloped into the shop we see today.
11. As for the 'new' Sainsbury’s, when it initially opened in Bedingfeld Way there was a buzz of excitement which rippled through my middle school.
“I’ve been to Sainsbury’s after school and my mum bought me some colour changing glue,” I overheard on the school bus.
The concepts of going grocery shopping after school and colour-changing glue were revolutionary for Bury in the late 1980s so my brother and I nagged until mum took us on a trip to Sainsbury’s.
We were wowed by its size and the store’s café, which was then located in a separate unit at the front of the shop.
12. While a trip to Sainsbury's might have been almost the epitome of excitement, in the 1980s the police disco was the hottest ticket in town.
Held at the leisure centre – which had been rebuilt from a devastating fire in the spring of 1980 – it attracted youngsters from every school.
Wearing fleck trousers from Fosters (then located at the top of St John’s Street) and skinny leather ties, boys flocked to the event to join girls with permed hair and wearing puffball skirts on the dance floor.
Before the police disco, the Corn Exchange (now a Wetherspoon pub) was a popular spot for a bop.
13. In the days pubs closed at 11pm and drinkers were unceremoniously booted out at 11.20pm, the only places to get late-night drinks – or have a dance – were the town’s nightclubs.
Station Hill was home to Reflex. Its blue neon sign was a beacon drawing clubbers into its sweaty and smoky interior, or attracting the older skaters from the neon-red signs of Rollerbury next door after it closed for the night.
There you could bop to the latest chart hits before the obligatory slow dance and the chance of a smooch at 1.55pm.
Up in the town centre it was Taps that tempted the night owls to Devonshire House, on the corner of King’s Road.
Taps was later to become Viennas and then Chicago Rock Café on the ground floor and The Avenue on the first floor – where I worked on the cloakroom in the late 1990s.
14. In the early 1980s, one of Bury's other licensed premises was the scene of great excitement as three national radio DJs visited Bury for a record attempt.
In 1984, Radio 1 Roadshow DJs attempted to beat the number of people they could cram into the Nutshell, one of Britain’s smallest pubs.
Thanks to e from DJs Richard Skinner, Mike Smith and John Peel – who lived in Great Finborough – the previous record was beaten by two, when 102 people and a dog managed to squeeze inside.
15. If you grew up in Bury before the turn of the century then you probably remember St Edmundsbury Cathedral before it had a tower.
Formerly St James' Church before it became Suffolk's cathedral in 1914, the church was extended with the gothic tower seen today thanks to a £2 million bequest from diocesan architect Stephen Dykes Bower.
When the plans were mooted it was feared the tower would block out television signals for those living in Crown Street, but the 'Millennium Tower' project went ahead, starting in 2000 and completed in 2005.
16. And finally, it's hard to imagine now the arc shopping centre and car parks are in situ, but once upon a time the children of Bury learned to swim at an outdoors pool just off King's Road.
The borough swimming baths – or lido – opened in 1931 on what was known as The Playfields.
For many years Bury Corporation plumber Frank King was superintendent at the baths and when on duty he taught hundreds of children how to swim.
Though an unheated outdoor pool, it was well-used, but with the opening of the town’s sports centre in 1975 the lido closed and it was subsequently demolished.
Many thanks to Martyn Taylor for his assistance writing this feature.
