Panel 1: Pre-Charter (before 1200 AD)

 Historical Content:

 This hanging assembles images of the town's importance to Anglo-Saxon times. The town of Gipeswic (Ipswich) owes its foundation to the house of Raedwald, who was buried at Sutton Hoo and had his royal dwelling near Woodbridge. The bronze deer in the top left corner crowns the whetstone sceptre found among his grave goods. The sixth century Anglo-Saxon brooch (lower left), excavated at the Hadleigh Road cemetery, is now in Ipswich Museum. The centre of the town was newly laid out by Raedwald's kinsman King AElfwald during the eighth century. Ipswich was sacked by the Vikings on several occasions, perhaps as early as 841 and certainly as late as 1069. The Viking boat is drawn from a gravestone in Stora Hammers, Sweden, as is the figure with the torch, here adapted to represent a protector and defender of the Gipeswic. The knot pattern on the left comes from the same gravestone. The church is from the Corporation seal of 1200 and may depict the church of St. Mildred, which stood from the eighth century on the site of the present Town Hall on the Cornhill. Coins were minted in Gipeswic from the eighth century, and Ipswich-struck coins have been found all over Europe. Those shown to the left of the church, of King Ethelred the Unready, can be seen in Ipswich Museum. Below the river the board (left) is taken from the early twelfth-century stone tympanum from a doorway into the lost church of All Saints; it is now in St Nicholas' church. Beside it, St Michael fights the dragon of the Apocalypse, also now in St Nicholas' Church. The monastic seal (top right) is that of the Augustinian priority of St Peter and St Paul which covered six acres north and east of St Peter's Church. The arch surrounding the panel evokes the south door to St Mary Elms church, perhaps preserved from the now lost church of St Saviour. The River Orwell flows through each of the panels to emphasise its importance to the continuity of the town's history.