Our coverage of The Ipswich Society Annual Awards, the event taking place in mid-November, customarily appears in our April issue. This gives us time to digest and celebrate the nominations and award-winners. It also means that full details with a wealth of colour images are published in a dedicated album on the Society’s web-based Image Archive. This, and the Society’s Facebook and Youtube presence, are linked on the bottom of our own website’s homepage: www.ipswichsociety.org.uk. While not all members have a computer, nor access to the internet (apart from the public libraries), this additional medium gives us the chance to expand on the limited coverage in our Newsletter. It provides an opportunity for members and the public to look at all the nominations, many of which they may not have been aware of, and to discuss good and bad points. Ultimately our Awards seek to encourage and praise good design and careful thinking about community, context and craftsmanship. Tony Marsden’s article is on page 10, with further images.

Historian Bob Malster, whose Maritime Suffolk book was reviewed in our January 2018 issue, wrote to your editor: ‘I have just written up the story of the Ipswich galley of 1294, and wondered if it might be good enough for the Newsletter. There is a chapter in the book on the same subject, but I have written it up in an entirely fresh version… It was the article on the stern rudder in the last issue that prompted me to wonder if an article on the galley might find a place in the Newsletter.’ We are proud to include the article on page 6.

How many members does the Society have? Thanks to Celia Waters, our Membership Secretary, we are able to share our 2017 membership numbers with you. And Ray Atkinson was so pleased with our article about ‘The Warren’ in our last issue that he sent the latest Lacey Street News from which we are pleased to use an article about Ray’s house. Both on page 16.

Robin Gaylard

Photograph above: ‘I know him…’ The story of the Bob Allen’s discovery and rescue of the Wolsey tondo, see page 7. (Photo courtesy Friends of Ipswich Museums)

Above: Retired fireman John Harvey with some of his display of fire service exhibits; see page 18.