on the
Gainsborough Line, seen here in 1966. On the
left bank is the medieval-core church of St Mary the Virgin housing eight bells with the largest weighing 21 cwt. They were augmented from six to eight bells in 1951 by Gillett and Johnston of Croydon. In terms of the ecclesiastical parish, and thus history before the invention of civil parishes in the 1870s there is no division, save as to county; all falls into Bures St Mary, which extends to a similar distance on each side of the river. in Great Britain at the time. Approximately east of the village, on the edge of the
Dedham Vale (
Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty), is a unique
geoglyph, a chalk outline of a
dragon, which was created as part of the
Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 2012. The shape of a dragon relates to a legend from the
Middle Ages that tells the story of the knight Sir
Richard Waldegrave, whose servants attempted to kill a dragon, but failed due to its tough hide. A viewpoint of the dragon can be accessed on a public footpath, close to St Stephen's Chapel, the oldest building in the parish. The
Archbishop of Canterbury dedicated the site to
St Stephen on
Saint Stephen's Day in 1218. The Chapel of St Stephen, which was the private chapel of the Manor of Tany, or Tauney, contains the effigies of the 5th, 8th, and 11th Earls of Oxford from the
House of de Vere. This chapel had fallen into disuse after the
Reformation, and became, among other things, a
barn. Hence its local name of Chapel Barn. It was restored to its present condition in the 1930s by members of the Probert family, and re-consecrated. It has long been popularly held to stand on the traditional site of the coronation of
Edmund the Martyr, crowned King of the
East Saxons on Christmas Day 855 or 856, as corroboration of which the chronicler
Galfridus de Fontibus described the coronation as having taken place at "Bures, which is an ancient royal hill". The De Veres the Earls of Oxford, 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
Earls Colne at the
Dissolution of the Monasteries, and used the chapel there as their principal burial place until the early 18th century. The village is served by
Bures railway station. Bures United F.C. is a football team with several sides. == Notable people ==