" One of the stories told about this place is that it was the site of the coronation of Edmund, one of the last kings of an independent East Anglia. Edmund was crowned in AD 855, when he would have been about 14 years old. The kingdom of East Anglia and the neighbouring kingdom of Essex were both already under attack by Viking raiders by this time, and both would eventually succumb, so it is not unlikely that the royal palace had been moved inland from the coast away from Rendlesham, the previous capital, and Ipswich, by then one of England's largest towns. However, there seems no evidence that this was the site of the coronation other than a 13th Century medieval legend, and nothing survives to tell of what might have been here in the 9th Century. By AD 869 Edmund was dead, slaughtered by Vikings at either Hoxne (Suffolk) or Hellesdon (Norfolk), depending on the county to which you owe allegiance. His remains eventually ended up at Bedricsworth, the modern Bury St Edmunds, and he was canonised by the early medieval church as St Edmund. The shrine at Bury was sacked at the Reformation, and the remains today are believed to lie in the crypt of Toulouse Cathedral in south-west France.

As I say, there is no evidence to show whatever might or might not have happened here, but intriguingly, this remote Suffolk field was considered important enough in 1218 for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, to consecrate this chapel. Canterbury did hold land in this area, as well as the patronage of the important nearby parish of Hadleigh, but whatever the reason for Langton's presence it must have been significant. At the time, Edmund was considered the patron Saint of England, a situation which would change a century later when Edward III associated St George with the Knights of the Garter. Edmund's star would set as George's rose, and the Reformation which destroyed his shrine would see St Edmund largely forgotten, but he remains today the patron Saint of East Anglia and is vigorously championed in some quarters as the true patron Saint of England.

The original chapel forms the easterly two thirds of the building. It was consecrated on the Feast of St Stephen, December 26th 1218. 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. This extension is still used as a barn."

" In the 1930s, the Badcock and Probert families who owned it restored the eastern part of the building as a chapel, and it provided a home for some of the tombs of the De Veres, the Earls of Oxford, which had previously been at Colne Priory, just over the border. The De Veres were the great family of this border region, their star and boar decorating such great churches as those of Dedham, East Bergholt, Castle Hedingham and Lavenham among others, including Earls Colne itself. They inherited Colne Priory at the Dissolution, and used the chapel there as their mausoleum until the early 18th Century. The three tombs here are amalgams of perhaps eight that were at Earls Colne. Simon Jenkins thought that the tombs were good enough for him to include this chapel in his book England's Thousand Best Churches, and there is certainly a drama about finding them here in this lonely spot.