A Brief History Of St Edmund's Church

The parish of St Edmund, King and Martyr, Bungay, started life as the "Flixton Mission". A priest of the English Benedictine Congregation, Dom William Walgrave, is recorded as having resided at Flixton Hall, three miles from Bungay, from 1657 until his death in 1665. The owners of the Hall were the Tasburgh family, two of whom became pupils at the monastic School of St Gregory's, Douai. Of these, one later became a monk.

Later in the 18th century, after Flixton Hall had passed into Protestant hands, the "Priest's House" in the village was built by the family for the use of the English Benedictine missioners. The Mission continued in Flixton until, in 1821, some land in the centre of Bungay, which had been part of the site of the mediaeval Benedictine convent there, was donated to the Mission by its owner,the Duke of Norfolk.

The first Catholic chapel in Bungay since the Reformation was opened in 1823. By the last decade of the 19th century it had become too small and the present, larger and much more ornate church was built on the same site, with a presbytery next door and, at the beginning of the 20th century, new buildings for St Edmund's school, which had first been opened in 1872. All this building was the gift of a former pupil of St Gregory's and Town Reeve of Bungay, Frederic Smith. The Mission, or Parish, as it now is, is still served by English Benedictine monks from the Abbey of St Gregory the Great, Downside (formerly at Douai).

For More information regarding Downside Abbey please click here

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