Bury Metropolitan
Community
Twinning Association
Community
Twinning Association
In the Millennium year 2000, Bury signed a new twinning agreement with the City of Woodbury, New jersey. The link with Woodbury goes back to the founding of the city by Henry Wood. He was born in Tottington in 1603 and at the age of 80, after a lifetime spent variously as a farmer, a soldier in Cromwell's army and later persecuted for his beliefs as a Quaker, he settled on the banks of the Delaware river in New Jersey near to Philadelphia. Philadelphia means the city of brotherly love and was founded by Quaker merchants before becoming the first seat of government for a new nation.
Henry Wood's birthplace still stands at Brookhouse Farm, Tottington, not far from a street that still bears the name Quakersfield, and in St Anne's Church there is a memorial window celebrating his life.
Woodbury today is a city of 12,000 residents and is the county seat of Gloucester County, which has a population of around 250,000. Nothing remains today of the farm that Henry Wood settled, but his granddaughter's house still stands as a museum in National Park on the banks of the Delaware at the mouth of Woodbury Creek and the site of a battle in the War of Independence.
City Hall sits opposite the County Court House, surrounded by lawyers offices, and next to the High School. At the rear of City Hall is the library which until recently was part of the City Hall building and part of the legacy of the City's Quaker founders but apart from this and the Friends Meeting House there is little else remaining of the reason for the towns foundation.
The first ever dinosaur bone was found on the banks of Woodbury Creek but no one knew what it was until many years later. The town has a freight railway running through it and the old depot has been restored and like Ramsbottom is the home of the local farmers market.
