12 Sep 2010 – Huntingdon & Bury St Edmunds

Huntingdon: a market town in the county of Cambridgeshire in East Anglia.  The town was chartered by King John in 1205. It is known as the birthplace of Oliver Cromwell/1599-1658.  The town has a well-preserved medieval bridge/Old Bridge that used to serve as the main route of over the river. The bridge only ceased to be the sole crossing point to Godmanchester in 1975, with the advent of what is now the A14 bypass.

All Saints Church and Cromwell Museum, where one of the most famous names in British history is located. He became the Lord Protector, the head of a British Republic.

Old Bridge Hotel, High Street and St Mary’s Church

Bury St Edmunds: a historic market town in the county of Suffolk, the main town in the borough of St Edmundsbury and known for the cathedral and the ruined abbey. Sigebert, king of the East Angles, founded a monastery here about 633, which in 903 became the burial-place of King Edmund, who was slain by the Danes in 869.

In the centre of Bury St Edmunds lie the remains of an abbey, surrounded by the Abbey Gardens. The abbey is a shrine to St Edmund, the Saxon King of the East Angles where it was sacked by the townspeople in the 14th century and then largely destroyed during the 16th century with the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Bury remained prosperous throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, falling into relative decline with the Industrial Revolution.

Knowledge of other people’s beliefs and ways of thinking must be used to build bridges, not to create conflicts – Kjell Bondevik