Ipswich School, 25 Henley Road IP1 3SG

The earliest record of Ipswich School is a bill, sadly unpaid, dating back to 1399. The school, which has Cardinal Thomas Wolsey as one of its former pupils, was established on several different sites throughout Ipswich until it moved to Henley Road. Prince Albert laid the foundation stone for this building in 1851.

Acknowledging its Tudor past, the school has a tower, reminiscent of both the Dean’s Turret House of Cardinal College and Christchurch College’s Tom Tower at Oxford, and a main entrance porch recalling Wolsey’s Gate - which can be found near on College Street near the Ipswich Waterfront. Otherwise, the frontage is Elizabethan in nature, in keeping with Headmaster Rigaud’s keenness on Queen Elizabeth’s Letters Patent to the school of 1566, which re-established the school’s Royal Charter.

The new schoolroom ran well over budget but took only a year to build and was occupied on 1 July 1852, by which time Headmaster Rigaud had already raised the funds for an adjacent chapel, later joined to the school. This can be seen to the right of the main entrance as you look at the school from Henley Road; the Chapel has Victorian stained-glass windows. Also, to the right of the main entrance, just before the chapel is the Headmaster’s study which houses the Town Library – a collection of books dating back to the 1400s. The school holds this collection on behalf of the town of Ipswich.

While the traditional method of teaching all classes in one room continued for several decades after the completion of the Henley Road schoolroom, with time new classrooms were added and laboratories built. These included an indoor swimming pool which was a rarity when it was constructed in 1884 and is still going strong today. The Duke of Edinburgh visited the school in 1956 to lay the foundation stone of the Great School, which is now used as a concert venue and for school performances, and again in 1973 to open the Leggett Technical Studies Centre which made the school one of the first in the country to have an engineering department.

The school library was designed by award-winning architect Birkin Haward, and features stained glass windows by John Piper, which depict the four seasons. The main school building, chapel and library all have Grade II listed status. Ipswich Preparatory School, founded in 1883, has had homes at both the north and south ends of the school. The Upper Prep now occupies a building on Ivry Street which recalls Ipswich’s maritime roots with its ship-like design, while the Lower Prep borders Anglesea Road. The Lodge Day Nursery, which caters for children from three months to three years, was originally the Adjutant’s house from the former army barracks in Ipswich. In 2019 Ipswich School purchased the Anglesea Heights site, adding to its portfolio of buildings in the area, and enabling expansion of boarding provision and the Prep School.

[Source: Communications Manager, Ipswich School]

Links: The Ipswich School; Ipswich Society Image Archive; Historic England Listing