Bures straddles the county border, a sizeable civilised place, but this chapel is not easily found, and is not particularly welcoming. The best kinds of surprises are those you feel led on to seek out and discover, but that isn't the case here. If it hadn't been for the nice lady at St Mary in the village centre then I might have spent much longer looking for it, and consequently I would have been rather more fed up when I discovered it was locked without a keyholder. However, since the chapel is not an Anglican parish church I suppose I have no divine right to go inside, but it was still disappointing.

The lady explained that I had to leave town on the Assington road. At the top there is a sandy lane off to the right that I had assumed was the way to St Stephen's chapel, but apparently not; you go on another 50m or so, and there is a farmyard on the right, looking distinctly unpromising with sheet metal buildings and concrete hard-standing. She told me not to be put off by the sign that said no cars. I had to go straight through the farm yard, and then follow the track for about half a mile, which I did. And there, beside a cottage, I found this long building.

The original chapel forms the easterly two thirds of the building. Text books will tell you that the chapel marks the spot where it was believed St Edmund was crowned king of East Anglia. I could find no evidence for this story - not the one about him being crowned here, which is clearly nonsense, but that it had ever been a tradition. But in 1218 Archbishop Steven Langton consecrated the chapel here, so it must have been an important enough reason. It was on the Feast of St Stephen, December 26th, and in the manner of all medieval churches and chapels the building took on the dedication of its feast day. On balance, I think that the link with St Edmund probably came later, perhaps a result of 15th century piety.

At the Reformation, the need to blow apart any devotion to the former King of East Anglia meant that sites associated with St Edmund had to be dealt with particularly rigorously. The chapel was sacked, and once derelict was converted for use as cottages, and then as a barn. For the next four hundred years it was used for agricultural storage. The north wall was breached to allow access to large farm vehicles, and later the building was extended westwards.

In the 1930s, the family who owned it restored it as a chapel, and it provided a home for some of the tombs of the de Veres that had been at Earls Colne priory, just over the border. The three tombs here are amalgams of perhaps eight that were there. The bodies may or may not be former de Veres. Simon Jenkins thought that the tombs were good enough for him to include this chapel in his book England's Thousand Best Churches, but in reality there is nothing here as exciting as many that he missed in Suffolk, including Badingham, Redgrave, and, inconceivably, Westhall.

I suppose that what is exciting is that anything has survived at all.

St Stephen, Bures, is located about half a mile off of the road out of Bures towards Assington. I found it locked, but I am told there is a key at Bures post office, and possibly another at the cottage next door to the chapel. See MAP

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