Welcome
to
St Edmund's Church
Dudley!


There has been a church here since 970AD. During the 1640s the church was demolished to stop the Parlementarians taking it. It was rebuilt in 1724, by Richard and George Bradley and despite on or two alterations over the years, the good peoiple of Dudley have worshipped here ever since. We even have our very own Ghost call Croaker who was an 18th Century Jack the lad who still walks the graveyard where he so legend has it, was frightened to death trying to win a bet staying in the graveyard over night.! OUR PATRON St Edmund was the last Anglo-Saxon King of East Anglia who fought against the Viking invaders but was captured by them c.870. The Viking's offered Edmund the chance to live if he ruled as their puppet and abandoned his Christian faith. St Edmund refused to do either and so the Viking's tied him to a tree and used him for archery practice before cutting off his head and throwing it into the undergrowth of Hellesdon Wood near Norwich. After the Viking's left St Edmund's people found his head guarded by a Wolf who had protected the saint's head until his followers recovered it. When the head was placed in a coffin with the body it was reported that the head and the body join together miraculously, leaving only a thin red-line as a mark where Edmund had been beheaded. The body was removed to a small chapel near by before being moved c.918-52 to the town of Bedericsworth where a new timber church was constructed by the people of East Anglia for the shrine of their martyred King. This church was later replaced by a small octagonal stone church by King Cnut c.1020, who staffed it with Benedictine monks and changing the town's name to Bury St Edmunds. Cnut's church was in turn replaced by a massive new St Edmund's Abbey church c.1097 whose ruins can still be seen today. By the end of the 12th century St Edmunds Abbey was one of the most important pilgrimage centres in Europe and thousands flocked to the shrine to of this patron saint of England seeking cures for illnesses or asking for the saint's help.