A New Local List

List of Buildings of Local Architectural or Historic Interest in Ipswich

Though not a legal obligation, a Local List or Grade III list of locally important buildings is vitally useful for development, planning, conservation and educational reasons. This records all those parts of the built environment which don't quite make the Grade I, Grade II* and Grade II standards of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

The Ipswich Society last published the List in 1985. It is now urgent to recreate the List and where necessary to describe and illustrate. By the time you read this, members of the Society who volunteered in the Newsletter questionnaire will be helping to compile, describe and photograph some 3,000 buildings with the Borough Conservation Officer, Bob Kindred, and his assistant, David Emmerson.

To be included will be most 16th, 17th and 18th century buildings, major 19th century buildings, particularly representatives of type and function especially when in groups and original, and major 20th century buildings up to 1973, particularly if by a local architect, and other examples of the built environment if technically innovative or if they have an historical association with events or people or townscape value.

Sources will be The Ipswich Society Local List of 1985 as modified by the Conservation Officers and other lists that are available. The Suffolk Association of Architects, Ipswich Society members and other interested bodies will of course be consulted. We must hope that this long and difficult project can be brought to fruition over the next few years. It will indeed be another landmark in the Society's history.

MIKE COOK