Panel 7: The Victorians

Historical Content:

The importance of Cornhill is again emphasised on this panel. Its clearance must have been very dramatic with the removal of the Market Cross and the Moot Hall in 1812. The Hall was replaced by a new Town Hall in 1818. A second, larger (and present) Town Hall replaced it in 1867, seen at the top, right. To the left of the Town Hall is the old Three Tuns Tavern, soon to be demolished to make way for Princes Street. On the other side is the Golden Lion Hotel, still there today. Below this is the tower of the new building of Ipswich School in Henley Road which opened in 1852. Above, in the right-hand corner are the lovely Minton tiles with their Madonna lilies adorning the sedilia in St Mary le Tower Church. The spire and tower of the church hold centre ground in the hanging. It was the civic church and the people of Ipswich met in the churchyard to elect their town government after King John granted the Charter in 1200. It was almost totally rebuilt during the Victorian period. Bethesda Church, erected by a Gloucester alderman in memory of his mother who was baptised in the River Orwell at the age of fifteen, is shown below Tower Church, although in reality it stands at the bottom of Fonnereau Road. To the right is the Ragged School, built by the Quakers for the education of the poor, and later moved to its present building in Waterworks Street. The shops to the right are again in Fore Street, opposite the Neptune Inn. Above these buildings is one of the many horse buses which would have been parked on the Cornhill. Below the Fore Street shops are small lanes and cottages near to the Docks and towards Rope Walk which were slum-cleared in the 1950s. On the dockside is the new (1845) Custom House which still stands. At the far right-hand end is the Victorian warehouse with the maltings behind, taken from a contemporary picture of the docks. To the left is the railway with its tunnel (the first to be built with a curve in it) which opened in 1845. It demonstrates the importance of Ipswich's newly founded industries linking them to the docks and trade routes. The top left-hand corner of the panel has a bracket from Ipswich Station platform. Goods to and from the railway were transported by horse and cart, shown on the quayside. In front of the Customs House in the dock are two Ipswich barges, used to bring coal in (on the left) and take agricultural goods out. Inside the left-hand arch is the 1810 Corn Exchange. In 1881 the site was re-used for the Post Office, now Lloyds TSB. In the area below can be seen representations of one of the important manufacturing firms in Victorian Ipswich, the first plough and lawnmower made by Ransomes. Below them to the left are the livery stables of Fred Smith, still standing in Princes Street. At the bottom of the panel are the County Courts of 1837, currently County Hall. The Scotsman on the left stood outside Finlay's tobacconist at the junction of Crown Street and Westgate Street. Anyone who grew up in Ipswich after the Second World War would have known this statue which is an advertisement for Churchman's cigarettes, made in the town. It is now in Christchurch Mansion. On the opposite side is a Suffolk Yeoman. The military in the town garrison would have been important in the nineteenth century.