The Ipswich Book of Days E-Book

Rachel Field

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Serie: Book of Days
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 404

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Taking you through the year day by day, The Ipswich Book of Days contains quirky, eccentric, amusing and important events and facts from different periods in the history of one of England's oldest towns. Ideal for dipping into, this addictive little book will keep you entertained and informed. Featuring hundreds of snippets of information gleaned from the vaults of Ipswich's archives and covering the social, criminal, political, religious, industrial, military and sporting history of the town, it will delight residents and visitors alike.

Leseprobe

With many thanks to Paul Field, Sheila Hardy – who gave me my chance – Cathy Hunt, Sarah Rixon, and my sister, Linda Appleby.

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

JANUARY 1ST

JANUARY 2ND

JANUARY 3RD

JANUARY 4TH

JANUARY 5TH

JANUARY 6TH

JANUARY 7TH

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FEBRUARY 1ST

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MARCH 1ST

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MARCH 31ST

APRIL 1ST

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MAY 1ST

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MAY 31

JUNE 1ST

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JULY 1ST

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AUGUST 1ST

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SEPTEMBER 1ST

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OCTOBER 1ST

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NOVEMBER 1ST

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COPYRIGHT

JANUARY 1ST

1904: On this Friday a 20hp Mercedes car, owned by William Pretty of Fonnereau Road, was given the registration number DX1 – the first car number plate to be issued in Ipswich. (John F. Bridges, Early Country Motoring)

1989: Sergei Baltacha became the first Soviet footballer to play professionally in Britain when he joined Ipswich Town from Ukrainian club, Dynamo Kiev.

Sergei came to England knowing just two phrases. The first was ‘fasten your seat belts’, which he had mastered on the flight over from Moscow, and the second was ‘no problem’, which he used in all circumstances, and which was why his team-mates ended up calling him ‘Sergei No-Problem’. (Mark Gilbey, Never Mind the Bolsheviks)

1997: An all-day protest party marked the beginning of a sit-in which became known as the ‘occupation of Ipswich airport’. Ipswich Borough Council owned the airport and wanted to close it to build a housing estate. Businesses and other airport users were given notice to quit and issued with writs when they refused to move out. Several protest marches followed, and there was a lobby at the House of Commons. But, by June, the Pitts Bar had closed, and the occupation ended early in 1998 when the very last aircraft left. (Ipswich Airport Association website: www.ipswichairport.info/)

JANUARY 2ND

1794: By January 2nd of this year the Royal Mint had nearly stopped producing coins. Coppers in particular were in short supply, so to help trading to continue the Government allowed some commercial firms around the country to mint and circulate their own tokens.

In Ipswich, James Conder, draper and haberdasher, seized the opportunity and issued several varieties of halfpenny and penny. Some showed Cardinal Wolsey’s profile, while others featured the market cross or St Mildred’s church. On the obverse were Conder’s initials and an indication of where the tokens could be used (which was usually at Conder’s warehouse).

James Conder was also an avid collector of trade tokens in general and was the first person to collect and catalogue them. Hence they became known as ‘Conder’s Tokens’, especially in the United States.

Strangely, nearly seventy years later, a hoard of ancient coins was found buried deep under the doorstep of Condor’s house in the Buttermarket. No one ever worked out why they were there. (William Conder, Conder Family Ipswich)

1824: On his walking tour of Suffolk, the antiquarian David Elisha Davy noted a pungent agricultural smell and wrote: ‘I this morning walked from Martlesham to Waldringfield church, … I found a farmer near the church manuring his land for barley with sprats and was a good deal annoyed by the smell.’ (David Elisha Davy, Journal of Excursions)

JANUARY 3RD

1794: The Ipswich Journal reported that cold, dry, windy weather in the previous summer had led to a poor harvest of peas and beans – one of the main field crops in Suffolk and a staple of the local diet:

Cold north winds in June brought swarms of green and black lice, which destroyed great quantities of beans and peas all over the county.

Where the lice did not destroy them, the drought that followed prevented them in general from being more than one fourth of a crop. In many parts of Suffolk no rain fell for 11 weeks.

(Ipswich Journal, 1794)

2013: Mick Sanderson, Rolling Stones fan extraordinaire, went into Ipswich to get his latest ‘tongue and lips’ tattoo done. His body was already pretty much covered in tattoos – a shrine to his favourite band of all time. Nothing, though, could beat the portrait on his right leg of former Stones bassist, Bill Wyman, which he would proudly show to anyone interested enough to ask.

When Bill Wyman and his band came to the Regent in 2008, Mick Sanderson met him after the gig and showed him the tattoo. Bill was tickled and took a photo of it. Imagine Mick’s amazement a few years later when he bought Bill’s new album Live Communication and there, on the insert, was the photo of his leg! (Thanks to Mick and Ann Sanderson)

JANUARY 4TH

1906: Nina Layard (1853–1935), an Ipswich archaeologist, visited an excavation near the junction of London and Hadleigh Roads (later called Allenby Road). She had been on holiday in Scotland and had read about the dig in the newspapers. Realising that something significant was being unearthed, she hightailed it back to Ipswich to have a look. To her horror she saw that the land was being levelled by unskilled, unemployed men on a work-creation scheme. The site was not being explored – it was being destroyed.

Miss Layard set to work organising and supervising the dig. A sixth-century Anglo-Saxon cemetery was uncovered with over 150 burials and associated jewellery, beakers and weapons. Miss Layard saw to it that everything was properly recorded – although one of the finds, listed as ‘an iron instrument in a silver case’, turned out to be the key and rolled metal strip from a tin of corned beef! As she was a woman, she was not allowed to read her excavation report to the Society of Antiquaries. It was read for her by a male friend.

Miss Layard lived with her companion, Miss Outram, at Rookwood in Fonnereau Road for many years. (Steven Plunkett, Nina Layard, Hadleigh Road and Ipswich Museum)

JANUARY 5TH

1994: Tim Yeo, MP for South Suffolk (including the Shotley peninsula), resigned as a minister in John Major’s government.

Late the previous year, the Major government had launched a ‘Back to Basics’ campaign. Its high moral tone had sparked intense media interest in MPs’ private lives. Tim Yeo, a married man, let the side down almost immediately when a tabloid newspaper revealed he had fathered an illegitimate child by Conservative councillor Julia Stent. The scandal broke on Boxing Day, a quiet news period, and grabbed the headlines all over the New Year. To add to Yeo’s misery, he was forced to admit publicly that this was his second illegitimate child. He had fathered his first when a student in the sixties.

Yeo’s words of three years earlier, spoken to a branch of Relate in Sudbury, now sounded rather hollow. He had pronounced: ‘It’s in everyone’s interests to reduce broken families and the number of single parents. I have seen from my own constituency the consequences of marital breakdown.’ (Express Newspaper, January 4th 2014)

2012: The birthday of Guru Gobind Singh was celebrated at the Gurdwara in Bramford Road, the place of worship for most of Ipswich’s 4,000-strong Sikh community. He was the tenth Guru and is honoured by Sikhs for giving them their five distinguishing symbols, which include wearing an iron or steel bracelet and having uncut hair.

On this Sunday, the Sikh holy book was read aloud by a team of readers without any break from beginning to end, and free vegetarian food was available for everyone. (Guru Nanak Temple website: http://ipswichgurdwara.com)

JANUARY 6TH

1972: Lancelot de Giberne Sieveking, the pioneer BBC producer, died in Ipswich, having lived near Snape for many years.

His exotic name was fitting. He was German on his father’s side, and related to Gainsborough and Gerard Manley Hopkins on his mother’s. In 1924, Sieveking joined the BBC as a producer and playwright and worked there until retirement in 1956. He wrote many plays for Saturday Night Theatre on the Home Service and even C.S. Lewis himself enjoyed his wireless adaptation of The Magician’s Nephew.

Sieveking produced the first BBC live football coverage. To help commentators he devised a plan of the pitch divided into eight numbered squares. It was also published in the Radio Times so that listeners at home could use it to follow the game. This may be where the phrase ‘back to square one’ came from.

In 1930, Sieveking produced the first ever British television play – a short Pirandello drama of two men having a philosophical discussion outside a café. Sieveking ended the programme by playing a recording he had made for sixpence on Southwold pier. It consisted of Sieveking making an explanatory announcement, clapping, and then humming God Save the King. (Derek Brady, The Man with the Flower in his Mouth; Tony Copsey, Suffolk Writers Who Were Born Between 1800–1900; Steve Hawley, Artists, Film and Video)

JANUARY 7TH

1892: The Eagle Iron Works held its works’ annual supper at the Friar’s Head Tavern. After the meal, the evening was given over to entertainment. In traditional East Anglian style, there was some ‘capital step-dancing’. Each man who wanted to dance got up in turn to do a few steps on the stepping flagstone in the bar room floor, accompanied by singing and a Mr Lanedell on the piano. (Ipswich Journal, 1892)

1897: William Flory, cab proprietor, died on this Thursday, aged 85. According to his headstone in Ipswich Old Cemetery, he was an active member of the Ipswich Memnonian Society for fifty years and much loved by his fellow freemasons.

The Memnonian Society was a musical club for freemasons. It was founded in 1832 by twelve men at the Dove Inn, St Helen’s Street. They had a simple set of rules, a password and a secret grip, and their aim was to enjoy musical evenings together. The following year they moved to the Cock & Pye Inn and then on to the Fox, where they decorated their room with an Egyptian theme and bought their own piano. Ipswich’s most prominent citizens became members and no doubt carried out behind-the-scenes business at meetings. Among other philanthropic work, members helped establish Ipswich Museum and the Fore Street public baths. (Thanks to Simon Knott)

JANUARY 8TH

2010: Ipswich artist John Rixon curated a show called Quiet Voices at Tate Britain in central London. John, who worked for the Big Chill Festival and Suffolk New College, collaborated with other artists and musicians to explore the nature of quiet in video and sound. His starting point and inspiration was the phrase ‘listen to the quiet voice’, an aphorism suggested by Brian Eno to help break a creative block.

Alongside the large centrepiece video of icebergs floating in a glacial lagoon, John also showed a mesmerising film of parkland before and after snowfall. John said:

The event was wonderful. The Tate agreed straightaway to the idea and I was lucky to work with the techno-musician Jon Hopkins who has since become so famous I couldn’t possibly afford to work with him now! His music complemented the images I’d created perfectly.

We left Ipswich after work and went to the Tate by train. It was snowing heavily, I remember. When we got to the gallery the atmosphere was so quiet and peaceful – even though people were wandering around talking with glasses of wine in their hands – and the setting was just right for the show. It was the perfect gig.

(Thanks to John Rixon)

JANUARY 9TH

1194: On or about this day, men and ships from Ipswich set sail in a flotilla from Dunwich and Orford carrying a ransom to free King Richard I (1157–99) from captivity.

Richard had been captured near Vienna two years before as he travelled home from the Third Crusade. At first he was held by his enemy the Duke of Vienna, who then passed him on to Henry VI, the Holy Roman Emperor, who demanded 150,000 marks for his release (£2bn at 2011 prices). Back in England, it took nearly a year to raise this enormous sum. His brother (the future King John) was reluctant to do anything to set Richard free. It was their elderly mother and the Archbishop of Canterbury who collected the ransom by levying taxes and confiscating church treasures.

By early January 1194, with all the money gathered in, the little fleet set off from the East Anglian coast carrying ‘a king’s ransom’. Richard was released a month later. (Rowland Parker, Men of Dunwich)

JANUARY 10TH

1799: Elizabeth Edwards (née Kealy) was born on or about this day in Ipswich. She became a successful businesswoman, which was quite unusual for women in this period. She set herself up as a corsetière, making and selling stays and corsets from her shop in Tacket Street. She also sold garments from a cottage in Crown Street, as well as through agents in other Suffolk towns, such as Miss Oxberrow of Framlingham.

She offered to visit women at home if they invited their friends round for fittings – a corset party, perhaps the precursor of the Tupperware party?

One of her specialities was making corsets that were suitable for young ladies to wear for their deportment exercises and physical drills.

When her husband died in 1840, leaving her with a large family, Mrs Edwards was able to support them from her business. About the same time, she became a corsetière ‘by appointment to Queen Victoria’, which gave added kudos to her business in Suffolk.

In the early 1850s, Mrs Edward sold up to a Miss Todd of St Matthew’s parish and emigrated from Ipswich with her adult children to live in South Australia. (Ipswich Journal, various dates; www.ancestry.co.uk)

JANUARY 11TH

1965: Lady Blanche Cobbold became the honorary president of Ipswich Town Football Club. Simon Knott wrote:

She was the first and, in her lifetime, the only female president of a professional football club. This was at a time when the Cobbold family virtually ran the club … and Lady Blanche followed Town through their finest years.

In 1978, Ipswich Town won the FA Cup at Wembley, beating Arsenal 1–0, the only East Anglian team ever to win the trophy. A guest of honour that day was the new leader of the Conservative Party, one Margaret Thatcher. The Cobbolds were nothing if not Conservative, but the parvenu qualities of the Iron Lady would not have appealed to Lady Blanche … Anxious to assert the correct and appropriate protocols, an official of the Football Association approached Lady Blanche, and invited her to meet Mrs Thatcher. ‘Mrs Thatcher?’ said Lady Blanche. ‘You mean – Margaret Thatcher?’ The FA official confirmed that they were one and the same. ‘Good God,’ replied the grand old lady. ‘I’d much rather have another gin and tonic.’

(Thanks to Simon Knott and Ralph Morris)

JANUARY 12TH

1800: Soup at a penny per quart with a slice of bread was made available for the Ipswich poor on this winter Monday. A subscription to pay for the food was raised among public-spirited families such as the Ransomes, the Alexanders, the Byles and the Cobbolds. The soup kitchen was open between 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. in the yard of the Coach & Horses in Tacket Street. (Ipswich Journal, 1800)

1823: On or about this day, Lord Wellington accidentally shot his host, Lord Granville, in the face. They were near Hill Covert near Wherstead, shooting on Granville’s land, when the accident happened. A Dr Bartlett of Ipswich was called and he extracted the pellets, or most of them, as two or three could not be removed. Lord Wellington was deeply upset, with tears streaming down his face.

In later years, the Vicar of Wherstead enjoyed recalling that he once saw the Lords Canning and Wellington at one of Granville’s house parties. They were acting a charade in which the Iron Duke appeared as a nurse wearing a white cap and holding a pillow dressed as a baby in his arms. (Freda A. Fryer, Wherstead; East Anglian Magazine, 1951)

JANUARY 13TH

1706: Judith Hayle, the only seventeenth-century teacher of needlework whose name is known, was buried in St Stephen’s parish. She was nearly 60 years old and had spent most of her adult life in the area.

Between 1691 and 1711, Judith taught young middle-class women from Ipswich how to stitch samplers. These samplers were quite distinctive, as Judith’s name or initials were always incorporated into the design to show that they were made under her tuition. One from 1691 made it even clearer: ‘Elizabeth Meadows is my name and with my needle I wrought the same and Juda Hayle was my dame.’

The fifteen or so surviving samplers made by Judith’s pupils form the largest group known from the period. Individual items eventually went into public collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum. (Ipswich Women’s History Trail; Costume Historian, June 2012)

1931: Ian Hendry, ‘the actor who should have been a star’, was born at his parents’ house in Tuddenham Road on this Tuesday. One of his major successes was as Dr David Keel, the starring role in the first series of The Avengers. He left at the end of the series to concentrate on films, and it was only then that the bowler-hatted John Steed became the main character. (East Anglian Daily Times, 2013)

JANUARY 14TH

1736: George II stayed overnight at the Great White Horse in Tavern Street to break his journey from Lowestoft to London. To mark the occasion, the nearby Cock and Pye Tavern put on performances by the Royal Company of Artificial Actors, a troupe of puppeteers who operated marionettes that were up to 5ft tall. (Carol Twinch, Ipswich Street by Street)

1940: Trevor Nunn was born in Ipswich. Educated at Northgate Grammar School, he threw himself into drama. One teacher in particular was an inspiration. Nunn recalled:

He just had this incredible ability to unlock the texts. Every year he directed the school play. Wanting to impress him, and wanting to emulate him, was very much part of growing up. In the sixth form he would do Friday night extra Shakespeare sessions. We would all bicycle out to his windmill.

Nunn took his first steps in the acting profession as an assistant stage manager at the old Ipswich Arts Theatre and then, between school and university, he formed the Ipswich Youth Drama Group. Nunn aimed high even then – their first production was Hamlet! (Ipswich Star, 2012; Guardian, 2011)

JANUARY 15TH

1905: In mid-January this year, Edward Ardizzone, the award-winning illustrator, writer and war artist, moved to Constable Road from his grandmother’s house in East Bergholt. He was 5 years old and lived with his mother, brothers and sisters. His father had stayed to work in Indo-China, where Edward was born. Edward went to Ipswich Prep School where he struggled with his schoolwork and was bullied by other pupils. In fact, he was too scared to walk home across Christchurch Park, as a group of boys used to lie in wait for him there.

Although Ipswich held some deeply unhappy memories for him, what he saw in the ‘rough and tough’ town influenced him for life. He loved wandering around the docks which inspired the illustrations for his Little Tim series. When he was 10, he came across a scene that fired his imagination. In a rough part of town, he witnessed the spectacle of two barefoot women brawling outside a pub. They were wearing only torn nightdresses and ‘were shrieking like cats’. Pub customers watched out of the window but did nothing. Ardizzone wrote that it was a formative moment in his career and he included a sketch of the scene in his autobiography, Those who will not be Drowned. (Susan Gardiner’s blog; Edward Ardizzone, The Young Ardizzone)

JANUARY 16TH

1789: It was one of the coldest winters on record throughout Europe and today Charles Berner of Woolverstone Park, ordered 15 guineas to be distributed to the poor living in the Shotley Peninsula parishes of Holbrook, Harkstead and Erwarton, to help them through the frostiest days. In Woolverstone, his own parish, he also arranged for flour to be distributed weekly to families. (Ipswich Journal, 1789)

1875: The Ipswich Journal reported that a fire had broken out that week at the Reform Club in Tacket Street. Attempts to tackle it were risible. The fire brigade was late arriving at the scene and the nearby hydrants only produced trickles of water. The size of the blaze drew crowds, who jeered at the police and fire-fighters as they struggled in vain to save the building. After this shambles, the corporation was compelled to set up a new, properly organised fire brigade under new leadership. (Henry Reynolds Eyre, History of Ipswich Fire Brigade; Ipswich Journal, 1875)

2010: The unappealing headline ‘Ipswich Stink Back Again’ appeared in the Ipswich Evening Star. (Ipswich Evening Star, 2010)

JANUARY 17TH

1583: Everyone in Ipswich was ordered to keep a sturdy stick at home so that they could help put down any street disturbances. (Nathaniell Bacon, Annalls of Ipswich)

1842: The lock at the new wet dock was used for the first time, but the ceremony was a fiasco.

Late in the afternoon of this gloomy day, a handful of people joined the mayor, the chief engineer and the dock commissioners to watch the lock in operation. No one had made arrangements for a ship to come through, so a grain carrier bound for Rochester was persuaded to use the lock just to mark it open.

After that, a brig laden with coal showed up unexpectedly. As the tide was low, the crew did not think they would be allowed into the lock. When they realised that they would be, they made a mess of the awkward turn needed to come in through the gates from the new cut. The ship crashed into a side wall and damaged it.

The Ipswich Journal, which had always opposed the scheme, concluded rather sarcastically: ‘After no inconsiderable delay and bungling, the Town may be considered to enjoy the advantages of a wet dock.’ (Ipswich Journal, 1842; Robert Malster, Ipswich: An A to Z of Local History)

JANUARY 18TH

1297: Princess Elizabeth (1282–1316), the teenage daughter of Edward I, was married to the Count of Holland at the King’s Hall near St Peter’s church. It was a dynastic marriage and the couple had been betrothed as infants.

Elizabeth’s trousseau and the curtains for the nuptial bed had taken thirty-five tailors four days and nights to make and were brought up to Ipswich in a couple of carts, rumbling over Cattawade Bridge. The ceremony was marred by a couple of misadventures. Elizabeth’s sister disliked the jewels that had been sent from London for her to wear – so much so that she sent them back in disgust. The King lost his temper for some reason and threw Elizabeth’s wedding coronet into the fire. Two precious stones were lost and his goldsmith had to find replacements at the last minute. After the wedding, Elizabeth and her new husband set off for Harwich and from there to the Low Countries. (L.J. Redstone, Ipswich Through the Ages)

1478: The town authorities ordered all ‘Strangers and Dutchemen’ who kept inns or shops in Ipswich to pay an annual tax of 20d. They wanted to discourage outsiders from trading in Ipswich and to keep an eye on any who did. (Nathaniell Bacon, Annalls of Ipswich)

JANUARY 19TH

1997: On or about this weekend, a metal detectorist in East Bergholt found a lead figurine, about 2in high, of a man with huge genitalia. Experts thought it probably dated from Roman times. They said it was a simplified representation of Priapus, a fertility god familiar to anyone who has been to modern-day Greece, and an alleged precursor of the garden gnome. (Archaeological Finds, Proc. of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History, 1998)

2013: On this bitterly cold and windy day, at least fifteen avocets were seen feeding at the mouth of Levington Creek on the Orwell Estuary. These wading birds, with their bold white and black patterning, were sweeping their distinctive long, upturned bills from side to side, searching for food.

It was a sight that would have been impossible to witness even a few decades earlier. Avocets had become extinct as a breeding bird in the UK by the mid-1840s due to the drainage of wetlands for farming. However, flooding on the Suffolk coast in the Second World War and in the 1953 flood provided the perfect habitat of salt water marshes and lagoons for the birds to make a spectacular comeback. By 2014 there were 1,500 breeding pairs on the East Coast in summer and they had even started to over-winter on the Orwell Estuary and thereabouts. (Mick Wright’s website: www.mickorwellestuary.co.uk)

JANUARY 20TH

1928: St Augustine’s church in Felixstowe Road received its licence to conduct marriages, and a month later the first wedding was celebrated there when Herbert George married Evelyn Bridge. The church had been consecrated the previous November and was built to serve the newly built Nacton council estate.

There was a lot of goodwill surrounding the founding of the church. The land had been given by Lady de Saumarez of Shrubland Hall; the architect, H. Munro Cautley, gave his services free of charge; and a local tailor, Charles Bancroft, donated the necessary funds.

Unusually, the church was dedicated to St Augustine of Hippo because he, like Bantoft, had a ‘devout and pious mother’.

St Augustine’s, with its lighted cross high above the tower, became a local landmark. Unfortunately, its plain concrete rendering made it, for some, ‘the ugliest church in Ipswich’. (St Augustine’s church: newspaper cuttings and parish registers (SRO))

1970: A spectacular area of coast and heath in Suffolk, stretching from Kessingland in the north to the Shotley Peninsula in the south, was designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) on this day or thereabouts. This meant that it was recognised as a precious landscape whose distinctive character and natural beauty was so outstanding that it was in the nation’s interest to safeguard them. In the immediate Ipswich area, the ANOB included two bird reserves (Cattawade Marshes and Stour Estuary), two Suffolk Wildlife Trust reserves (Trimley Marshes and Levington Lagoon) and Landguard Point, which is at the furthest point of the Orwell estuary. (Suffolk Coast and Heath website: www.suffolkcoastandheaths.org)

JANUARY 21ST

1847: The kindly but reputedly long-winded Rev. John Nottidge died at The Grove, on the corner of Grove Lane and Spring Road. He had been the rector of St Clement’s and St Helen’s churches for many years.

Nottidge was the son of a wealthy wool merchant. When he realised that Ipswich needed an extra church to serve people living in the new streets that had been thrown up around Fore Hamlet, he had one built at his own expense, costing £2,400. It occupied the site of an old rope factory. Dedicated as Holy Trinity church in 1835, it was the first Anglican parish church to be built in Ipswich since the Reformation, and it was one of Suffolk’s few Georgian-style churches.

Above all, in his ministry, Nottidge was an evangelist, wanting to bring all people to Christianity, be they the poor of Ipswich, ‘natives’ of Africa and India or British Jewry. (M.G. Smith, Twixt Potteries and California; Frank Grace, ‘Talk on the history of Holy Trinity church’)

2003: Jose Camarinha opened O Portugues in Norwich Road. It was the first café in Ipswich to specialise in Portuguese-style coffee and pastries. With the Portuguese community forming the largest group in Ipswich whose mother-tongue was not English, it became an immediate success.

JANUARY 22ND

1888: Basil Brown, the man who discovered the royal ship burial at Sutton Hoo, was born in Bucklesham, just outside Ipswich. He had no formal education and at first followed his father into farming.

In the 1930s, he was taken on by Ipswich Museum to excavate local archaeological sites. In 1938, he was sent to work for Edith Pretty of Sutton Hoo near Woodbridge, to investigate three mounds on her estate. What he unearthed was incredible: a royal Anglo-Saxon ship burial with magnificent grave goods.

Academics and archaeologists descended on the site as soon as they heard what he had found. Brown found himself sidelined for the rest of the dig and throughout the press hoo-ha which followed. In particular, he had to steer a careful path between Mrs Pretty, various scholars and other authorities who all vied for control of the site and its finds. Eventually, Mrs Pretty gave the treasures to the British Museum.

Despite his discovery, Brown remained a fairly lowly member of staff at the museum until he retired. He died in 1977 in Rickinghall Superior, near Diss. (Tony Copsey, Suffolk Writers Who Were Born Between 1800–1900; Sam Newton Sutton Hoo: Burial: Ground of the Wuffings)

JANUARY 23RD

1893: The cabmen’s shelter on the Cornhill was opened. It was, according to Robert Malster:

A timber-framed shelter, intended as a refuge from bad weather for the men from the cab rank. It was alleged, however, that they congregated in the shelter and ignored would-be passengers. The building was therefore removed to Christchurch Park in 1895, on a trolley towed through the street by the corporation steam-roller.

The shelter was restored in 2006 after years of neglect at the Park and moved from the Round Pond to the Westerfield Road entrance. (Robert Malster, Ipswich: an A to Z of Local History)

1944: Some Ipswich people were shocked to see the bad feeling between the white and black American servicemen on leave, who were stationed on bases near the town. Occasionally things got so bad between them that their commanding officers had to order that white and black soldiers must come into Ipswich on different nights.

In a town centre pub on this night, one old Ipswich boy said to another: ‘What do you think of these Americans then?’

‘Well, there’re alright, boy,’ his mate said: ‘But I don’t think much of them white fellas they’ve brought with them!’ (Apocryphal, from Roger Freeman, The Friendly Invasion)

JANUARY 24TH

1903: At Ipswich Assizes, the jury delivered its verdict in the trial of William Gardiner, who was accused of stabbing Rose Harsent to death in Peasenhall. This was the second time Gardiner had been tried for Rose’s murder.

The case had shaken the village. Gardiner and Rose were both well-known there. He was a pillar of the Peasenhall Methodist chapel and a family man. Rose was young and single but, it was later revealed, six months pregnant when she was murdered. It also came to light that she had been engaged to a mystery suitor and that she had kept a stash of lewd, unsigned letters in her bedroom.

Rumours of an illicit relationship between Gardiner and Rose had been rife in the village the year before, but nothing had ever been proved. Gardiner was nevertheless arrested a few days after Rose’s body was found.

When the case came to the Assizes, the jury could not agree a verdict. Gardiner had to be tried again, and once again no agreement was reached: no conclusive evidence was brought to court. Five days later, Gardiner was released from Ipswich prison. He shaved off his moustache and beard, caught the night train to London and started a new life. Whoever murdered Rose – and fathered her baby – remained a mystery. (Edwin Packer, The Peasenhall Murder)

JANUARY 25TH

1939: The River Gipping burst its banks and much of the Ipswich area was swamped. Homes were abandoned and people took to rowing boats to get around. The Ipswich Evening Star reported:

Damage was estimated at thousands of pounds although the exact figure was never known. Amazingly, only one person was killed.

A lethal combination of melting snow and heavy rain proved too much for the Gipping valley. Within hours it was transformed into a huge lake. Roads, railways and telephone lines were rendered useless as the flood tide rose.

In Ipswich, families were marooned in their homes without food, water or fire. Hundreds of homes were ruined.

The first sign of disaster came at midnight when the river level started to rise. Three hours later the water was pouring from Whitton and settling in the Dales Road area. Properties near Beaconsfield Road and Yarmouth Road were badly affected and at 3.55 p.m. the Gipping burst its banks at the London Road Bridge.

Meanwhile, upriver in Bramford, David Allum, with his shire horse and wagon, braved the torrent of flood water to rescue schoolchildren trapped on the wrong side of the river. (David Kindred, Ipswich Pocket Images; Ipswich Evening Star, various dates)

JANUARY 26TH

1963: As the long, hard winter continued, there was a complete breakfast-time power failure throughout Suffolk. The cut was caused by the freak weather conditions. Just a few days before, the temperature was at an all-time low of 80°F (−130°C). Water pipes were already frozen hard and gas was on reduced supply.

After the power went down that Saturday morning, housewives out shopping found the shops lit by hurricane lamps and candles. Hundreds of children were turned away from Saturday morning pictures, and the Cranes factory sent its workers home at 9.15 a.m. as they could not light their furnaces; in fact machinery all over Ipswich came to a standstill. Traffic lights went out, and tropical fish died. Two babies were born at the maternity hospital under emergency lighting. A hairdresser in Princes Street had to look after thirty-five ladies with wet hair. Fortunately, another shopkeeper sent round a 5-gallon urn of coffee so they had something hot to drink as they all sat there in the dark and cold. (Ipswich Evening Star, 1963)

JANUARY 27TH

1868: Ipswich’s ornate new town hall was officially opened.

A few months before, local people had unsuccessfully petitioned the corporation to ask that the new building should have two clocks: one set at Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), the other at ‘Ipswich Time’, five minutes later. On the day of the opening, the Council heard a proposal from the Deputy Mayor that the large town hall clock should be set at GMT, which was the time shown at the railway station. This was opposed by Cllr Edward Grimwade. He felt that Ipswich would be better served if the clock were to show local time. He said that many people, including him, were used to having an extra five minutes in hand to get over to the station. The matter was referred to the Estates Committee, which eventually found in favour of GMT. It would be another twelve years before the passing of the Statutes (Definition of Time) Act when Britain finally had a standard time imposed across the country, thereby formally ending ‘Ipswich Time’. (Ipswich Journal, 1868; www.planetipswich.com)

JANUARY 28TH

1955: Arthur Benjamin, a young man from the West Indies, was elected to serve as the first chairman of the Ipswich Caribbean Society at a meeting held by ‘sixteen West Indians and nine Englishmen’ at the Quaker Meeting House.

There were about 250 West Indians in Ipswich at the time, many of them newly arrived from Barbados. Supported by local churches and large firms like Ransomes and Cranes, who employed the men, the Ipswich Caribbean Society was keen to help fellow West Indians settle. Their regular meetings were held at a hall at the Unitarian Meeting House on Saturday afternoons.

Of utmost priority was the lodgings problem. By March the same year, they had set up a welfare office in Berners Street. Apart from a degree of racism which they encountered in Ipswich, there was the added problem that American service families were able to pay higher rents than they could.

For entertainment, the new society founded Palm Branches, a steel band with oil drums provided by Shell-Mex, which played concerts in and around Ipswich. (Anne Porter interviewed about Ipswich’s West Indian community (SRO); East Anglian Daily Times, 1955)

JANUARY 29TH

1977: Ivan Blatny (1919–90) was admitted to St Clement’s Mental Hospital, the latest episode in a sad but interesting life.

Blatny, a well-known poet in his native Czechoslovakia, had fled to England in 1948 after communists took power. When he arrived in England, he found work at the BBC and Radio Free Europe, but the Czech authorities continually pressured him to return, finally making a public announcement in the 1950s that he had died.

Meanwhile, Blatny’s mental health was deteriorating. He was eventually diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and spent most of the rest of his life in British psychiatric hospitals, including a long stay in St Clement’s.

For years, psychiatric staff believed that Blatny was deluded when he said that he was a well-known poet. Eventually – by chance – it was shown to be true. A nurse from St Clement’s was on holiday in Czechoslovakia when she met two people who knew Blatny. They told her his story and asked her to take special care of him – which she did. She befriended the poet and he started writing again.

In all, Blatny wrote eight volumes of poetry and his work was translated into English. He was still writing on the day he died in Colchester Hospital in 1990. (Czech Radio website: /www.radio.cz/en/section/books/ivan-blatny-the-strange-story-of-a-czech-poet-in-english-exile)

JANUARY 30TH

1805: The Bury & Norwich Post reported: ‘on Thursday last, a private solder received 400 lashes in the Horse-barrack yard, Ipswich, for uttering seditious expressions in a public house there a short time since. Detachments from all the regiments of the garrison were present at the punishment.’ (Bury & Norwich Post, 1815)

2008: The dramatic headline ‘Scampi Blaze Rescue Drama’ appeared in the Ipswich Evening Star – there’s an episode of the Archers in there somewhere! (Ipswich Evening Star, 2008; Flickr)

2009: The final meal in this week’s TV competition Come Dine With Me, filmed in Ipswich, was shown on Channel 4. Gerard, the butcher from Suffolk Food Hall, was cook and host for the evening. His menu was, appropriately, full of locally sourced meat:

Starter: sautéed chicken liver, black pudding and bacon on toast (which most guests disliked).

Main course: roast pork chops (‘too fatty’, complained guests) in cider with mashed potatoes and spring greens.

Pudding: strawberries and cream filo tart (which Gerard burned) with a raspberry coulis.

Gerard came third. The prize money went to young grandmother Lisa, who worked as a waitress at Ray’s Bistro on the corner of Silent Street. (Channel 4)

JANUARY 31ST

1948: Westbourne Library in Sherrington Road opened its doors to the public for the first time.

It had originally been built during the Second World War as an air-raid shelter and gas decontamination centre. The building was designed to be blast-proof, and later gas-proof, and was made of reinforced concrete with a flat concrete roof.

Unusually, the exterior was designed in a Modernist style, rather like neighbouring Broomhill Pool, which was also designed by the borough engineer. As such, the building had rather a boxy shape, which was emphasised by decorative symmetrical grooves that ran along its length. Any embellishment at all was rare on a Second World War functional building.

Inside there was an air lock, an undressing area, showers, an eye douche and a drying room.

It is Britain’s only library originally built as a bomb-proof decontamination unit and public shelter. Not many other libraries could say they store books in a Second World War lookout tower! (Ipswich Society; English Heritage; East Anglian Daily Times, 2012)

2013: The date of the first Holi festival to be held in Ipswich was announced to the public. The Hindu community invited everyone to Holywells Park on Sunday 24 March to welcome the spring with them. At the festival, known as the ‘Festival of Colours’, people celebrated by covering each other with brightly coloured paints and throwing coloured powder, dye, coconut and popcorn into a bonfire. People planning to attend were advised to wear old clothes! (Ipswich and Suffolk Indian Association)

FEBRUARY 1ST

1917: Ronald Garnham was born in Ipswich on this Thursday. He served in the Second World War and survived years as a Japanese prison of war.

Early in 1940, Ron enlisted in the army and was sent to the Far East. Captured by the Japanese, he was imprisoned in the notorious Changi POW camp in Singapore. His life there was filled with illness, cruelty, hunger and hard work. After 1943 he was sent to work on the Thailand–Burma Death Railway, and then, finally to Japan to labour in the dockyards.

After the Allied victory in Japan, Ron was liberated by Americans and returned to Ipswich via the USA. Back in Suffolk, Ron eventually married, had children and ran a fish shop in Kirton. After such harrowing wartime experiences, Rob could hardly believe his rotten luck when he found himself being called up again in the 1950s for a fortnight’s National Service! (Ron Garnham, Every Man for Himself)

1990: Diana, Princess of Wales visited Ipswich to open the Record Office in the redeveloped Bramford Road School building. She also did a walk-about in the Cornhill and visited Crown Pools, where she was photographed crouching down to talk to delighted members of the public who were there having a swim.

Rumours about her troubled marriage to Prince Charles were well known but the princess, who was wearing a tartan coat-frock, looked like she was enjoying every minute of the day – as did the people she met. (Commemorative plaque at Ipswich Record Office; Ipswich Evening Star, 1990)

FEBRUARY 2ND

1644: William Dowsing, a Suffolk-born puritan soldier, arrived in Hadleigh with his men to remove or deface ‘idolatrous’ and ‘popish’ images and fittings from churches, such as pictures, crosses, crucifixes, stained glass, monumental brasses and altar rails. In his journal he noted this day:

Hadleigh: ‘We brake down 30 superstitious pictures, and gave order for taking down the rest, which were about 70; and took up an inscription, Quorum animabus propitietur deus [to whose souls may God be propitious]; and gave order for the takeing down of a cross on the steeple; gave 14 days.’

Layham: ‘We brake down six superstitious pictures, and takeing down a cross off the steeple.’

The men then went on to the villages of Shelley and Higham, where they found plenty of similar work to do. (Trevor Cooper, ed., Journal of William Dowsing)

1933: Ipswich Corporation opened Electric House, a striking art deco building purpose-designed to be their electricity offices and showrooms. The decoration was largely intended to illustrate the use of the new building, so the frontage was covered in motifs such as zigzag lightning, fan-shaped light symbols and pointed stars. The front and sides were embellished with words associated with electricity, such as ‘light’, ‘power’, ‘heat’ and ‘cook’. (Ed Broom, The Seven Wonders of Ipswich)

FEBRUARY 3RD

1776: The Ipswich Journal reported that the salt river in the town was frozen over. It had been so cold for so long that people were out skating on the river and had even roasted a sheep on it. Live cod in the wells of fishing smacks had frozen to death and it was quite impossible for ships to move. No one at the time could remember such a harsh spell. (Ipswich Journal, 1776)

1984: The East Anglian Daily Times