Welcome to the Website
of the
Bury St Edmunds Past and Present Society

Registered Charity Number 1079823

The Society was founded in 1960. Its aim is to advance the education of the public in the history of Bury St Edmunds and the surrounding area. In pursuing this aim the Society organises each year a series of lectures and from time to time excursions are also arranged.

The annual lecture programme commences in October and concludes in the following March; our meetings are held on the first Monday of the month in the Hunter Club in St Andrews Street South, Bury St Edmunds, commencing at 7.30pm. Membership of the Society is open to all on payment of a subscription and non-members are also welcome to attend lectures on payment of a small fee (please see here for details). The lecture programme is published here. Please note that the first meeting of 2010/11 will be in St Mary's Church as noted below.

The Society undertakes the preservation and promotion of the Spanton Jarman collection of some 4000 photographic glass plate negatives of Bury St Edmunds and the surrounding area, taken over the period 1860 up to the Second World War. With the help of grants, including a grant from the "Awards for All" lottery grant aiding organisation, members of the Society have undertaken, on a voluntary basis, the cleaning and re-packaging of the negatives in archival quality packaging material, and these are in safe keeping in the Suffolk Record Office in Bury St Edmunds. With a team of volunteers the Society is now cataloguing and captioning some 1000 images of Bury St Edmunds, all of which, with grant aid from The Lottery Heritage Fund, have been digitised and most can be viewed here.

This year, we are marking the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the Society. To celebrate this milestone we have organised the following events:

• On 16 June, a trip on a Thames barge from Ipswich down the Orwell - a good way for our members and friends to enjoy a day out together. For more details, please click here
  
  
• For our first meeting in the 2010/2011 lecture programme (on Monday 4 October at 7:30 pm in St Mary's Church, Bury St Edmunds) we are delighted to announce that Dr. Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of Church History at Oxford University, will be speaking to us and his subject is "Foxes, Firebrands and Forgeries: a grandson of Bury fools the historians". It should prove to be an intriguing evening. Non-members are invited to attend at a fee of £5 per head.
  
  
• We are holding a celebratory lunch at The Athenaeum, Bury St Edmunds on Friday 8 October, when our guest speaker will be Dr. John Blatchly MBE, Vice President of The Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History.
  
  

We shall be pleased to welcome visitors to these events and suggest, in the first place, you contact us at for further information. The Society is a Registered Charity (registration number 1079823) and to support the continuing digitising, captioning and cataloguing of the remaining images in the Spanton Jarman collection further grants, donations and legacies would be most welcome.

The Committee

The committee is elected at the Annual General Meeting. Committee meetings are held in the homes of various members, about 5 times a year, to plan the programme of lectures and other activities, including the Jarman project.

Committee Members 2009/10
President: Margaret Statham
Chairman: Richard Stewart
Treasurer: Stephen Cook
Secretary: Eric Humphreys
Betty Milburn MBE
Anne Sutton
Chris Austin
Patricia Mackie
Paul Deane

We also have two Honourary Members:
Mr Michael Jarman and
The Mayor of St Edmundsbury