The refurbished round house has moved from Bury St Edmunds' cattlemarket to the Museum of East Anglian Life

A HISTORIC round house that stood in a Suffolk town’s cattle market has been restored and re-erected at the Museum of East Anglian Life.

The former Bury St Edmunds’ round house, which dates back to the 1860s, has been moved to the Stowmarket-based museum as part of the £3million heritage lottery-funded Abbot’s Hall project.

When construction work started on the new Arc development in Bury St Edmunds in 2006, the round house was carefully dismantled and put into storage. The Bury St Edmunds Society and St Edmundsbury Borough Council worked together to identify a new site for the building and examined many different locations, but concluded that there was no appropriate site in the town centre.

Alan Jary, chairman of the Bury St Edmunds Society, said: “The society welcomes the restoration of this iconic building, which found a place in the heart of the people of Bury St Edmunds.

“Whilst we regret that it no longer stands in Bury St Edmunds, we are very grateful to the Museum of East Anglian Life, who have recognised its importance and have restored it to its former glory.”

The museum came to the rescue by offering to take the structure and rebuild it alongside other market buildings.

Tony Butler, director of the museum, said: “The building symbolises the meeting of town and country, or urban and rural life. It is prescient that the building has been re-erected on a site which looks on to open country but is within a two-minute walk of the town.