A Day Out with Elspeth in Bury St Edmunds

Strange that this town should have been so familiar for years without me actually seeing it. I think of the chime of flinty Moyes' Hall clock, telling me that I should be meeting someone (usually outside Marks and Spencer's), or as a summons to work. I think of the smell and cries of the bi weekly open air market, a feature that only this part of England has. I think of the family weekly shop, carparking on the now redeveloped Cattle Market (into a controversial and in my view dull set of shops and restaurants, unfitting for the town). I think of standing outside the 1980s faintly Tudoresque red brick library, awaiting a slow, lurching red double decker to take me across every tiny village in can find on its way to mine, and the rude bus driver who no-one could sack due to his status in the union.

It took me to leave the area to see that this town was actually rather charming. In recent years, the shops and cafes have improved, making this a destination that appeals to the moneyed and classy. Although currently the high street shops are diminutive in both size and range (which the new development will change), Bury offers something else which is to be cherished in the mall-crazed homogenous trends of today. Its grid of streets (dating from Saxon times) holds many independents. Some of the grid is purely residential but very pleasant to explore.

Georgian fronts mask earlier timbered structures, such as the chemists at the top of Abbeygate Street, or the delightful tearooms opposite Mothercare. There's flint vaults under the creeper hewn Angel Hotel, overlooking one of the finest squares in the country. The hotel side represents the Georgian, also found in the Athenaeum and former clock museum; whilst across the road is perhaps the finest medieval gatehouse in Britain, still with its portcullis, threatening sensitive children who pass under on the way to picnic in the delightful floral gardens. It was worth getting over those menacing spikes to see the image of how the ruined abbey may have looked.

This abbey is not celebrated nearly enough. Since the English Heritage Visitor centre closed, there's little to mark these seemingly inconsequential ruins out as being of the top league of churches in Europe. The church would rate with Glastonbury (but without the mystique). It's often surmised that the abbey resembled Ely, though I question why this church would necessarily look similar just because of its proximity. There's little left to be able to judge with, but I think that the nearest standing church is the cathedral at Rouen, Normandy. The façade of Burry Abbey was way wider than any other British church, being as wide as the crossing transepts, with three recessed arches which can still be seen in the houses carved into them. Today's cathedral - the augmented parish church to save its builder having to do a pilgrimage in Spain by making his own shrine to St James - is impressive. For an upgraded parish church, it is perhaps the finest (and most recent) of the newer cathedrals (its tower finished in 2005); but it would have been dwarfed by the abbey which once stood behind it.

For small-ish town, Bury is in many ways a lively one. Café culture, dining and shopping are all good (providing in all cases you have a certain taste). Perhaps this is sweeping but the (for women) Monsoon and Jaeger type customers are best catered for (literally) here, or else Bury is quite towny. Not having a university and missing out (thanks to a Naboth-like 12th Century bishop and Henry VIII having a famous mind change) on having an early major cathedral, Bury has remained both small and in some ways insular. [Naboth's the Old Testament king who wanted something of someone else's in his case, a vineyard - but in this one, it was to make Bury Abbey into a cathedral. Unsuccessful, Herbert de Losinga founded a see that he could control at Norwich instead. And Fatboy Henry lingered over creating Bury Abbey a new cathedral]. Bury's not dissimilar to Canterbury in size, a focal town half of a county but not the country town. But Canterbury attained City status long ago because of its cathedral, and in the 1960s, a university. Whereas once in the Pilgrimage Chart only No 2 to Canterbury (because of Saxon king Edmund's shrine being here), Bury has slipped from a top place as a destination for sacred treasures. This is reflected not only in its lack of abbey and university, but its museums and cultural life.

The Theatre Royal, a contemporary of Austen and owned by the National Trust, has a wide programme and the only writers' group I could find in the county. But culturally, Bury is far behind neighbouring (though larger) cities, Cambridge and Norwich. Now with a long promised multiplex, Bury's cinema offering is still, in my view, lacking. The older cinema in Hatter street is partly carved out as a bingo hall, and was taken over by regional chain Hollywood in the last few years. Although sometimes called a Film Theatre, its programming is very mainstream and its feel is of an old fashioned family run picture house without the historic architecture to match. There's not a major concert hall (although the cathedral hosts concerts and there's a new one coming at the Cattle Market). The Corn Exchange's classical portal looks as if it may offer grandeur, but the hall is relegated to the attic since the 1970s shops were inserted. The Adams-built Market Cross houses the town art gallery - this too and the adjacent fire station has also been made use of for shops, creating a pleasant arrangement and making the Traverse a more delightful street. While the lack of style bars may be an asset to some, there's not any bohemian cafes either, and the gig scene perhaps predictably small. There's a joke among railway staff that Bury is the station without trains, as its grand red brick edifice sees only two slow branch lines pass through, although this has now been connected with London.

Perhaps Bury for me is a case of familiarity breeds... if not contempt, a quickly fading fondness of my natal town which has been replaced by a taste for places on a larger scale. But I still like to visit it as a kind of pilgrimage and stand on the spot of Edmund's shrine (is he still there?) and reminisce. This is my roots: but I have, like most trees, grown away from them.