In the centre of York is a park known as the Museum Gardens. It has the ruins of an Abbey in it, St Mary's Abbey (1006-1539). Above, this section of the ruins makes a nice setting for one of the paintings in The Grand Tour. When I took this photo, a big sound system erected right next to the ruins was playing Gregorian chants (don't know if that's the right term; it was monks singing in Latin).
In the centre of Bury St Edmunds is a park known as the Abbey Gardens. It has the ruins of an Abbey in it: The Great Abbey of Bury St Edmunds (1020ish-1539). Like St Mary's in York, it was pillaged for building materials after Henry VIII's dissolution of the monastaries in 1539. But this abbey had a flint and rubble core, so when the stone cladding blocks were taken off (few remain), these weird and wonderful shapes were left. One of my Bury St Edmunds blog readers who used to play in the Abbey Gardens as a child called this part shown above "The Chicken and the Kettle."Ruby is in Bury St Edmunds for the week, where she formerly lived and blogged. This post is part of a series to run until her return to York, comparing the two towns.
