In the rear garden of a private house in the centre of Bury St Edmunds is a grotto constructed of mixed stonework and railway slag ballast, which contains a few pieces of worked Barnack limestone, presumably from the abbey. The grotto takes the form of a shallow rectangular space with irregular stone walls to the N, S and E and a triple opening to the W carrried on roughly conical stone piers. The main entrance is through the central arch, and the flanking openings are overgrown with vegetation.

The house is a timber-framed building of the later 17thc, extensively remodelled with a redbrick Georgian facade a century later. The grotto was overgrown with vegetation before it was revealed by the current occupants of the house, and is presumed to date from the 19thc, after the coming of the railway to Bury in 1846.

The stones described here help to provide a picture of the abbey, much of whose fabric has been dispersed throughout the town or has found its way into the Moyses Hall Museum and the Wrest Park archaeological store. The authors are grateful for the willing and enthusastic assistance offered by the occupants of the house, and to Martyn Taylor whose knowledge of the town and its medieval remains has proved invaluable to our research.