Uncoloured postcard showing a view in the Abbey Gardens, Bury St Edmunds, with floral borders and the church in the distance. Pencil: [personal message] [address in London supplied]. The Abbey of Bury St Edmunds was first established in the 7th century, and the abbey church built in the 11th and 12th; the Abbey was dissolved in 1539, and reduced to ruins. In 1831, a landscaping project was begun, apparently modelled on the Brussels Botanic Gardens, by the Marquess of Bristol; in the early 20th century the gardens were opened to the public as a municipal park