Some of you may have noticed that I had my face in the local papers recently, explaining to Danielle Letts, a reporter for Newsquest (owners of the Star and the EADT), the importance of Wolsey’s Gate and its location as the Water Gate to Wolsey’s College. Back in 1528, when construction started, all visitors to the town (who didn’t walk) came by boat and the Watergate would have been a significant entrance to the institution. So, some of the previous suggestions carried in the press of moving the gate elsewhere in town miss the importance of its location.

Knowing that I would probably cause some controversy, I suggested an alternative: ‘move the traffic.’ I don’t claim this as my own idea; it has been suggested by forward thinkers and politicians for some forty years. What did surprise me, however, was the large number of near- rude comments suggesting that I was wrong, mad and ill-informed. Despite taking the trouble to comment, these commenters could offer no alternative solution. I am told by political colleagues that these bedroom trolls spend hours at their keyboards, anonymously slagging off almost every published article whether it warrants a reply or not.

It is perhaps time we started singing the praises of Ipswich, telling the world of our good fortune to live in a town with history, culture, diversity, educational opportunity and freedom. We can rightly claim to be England’s oldest continuously inhabited town (especially now that Colchester is a city), with evidence of manufacture (especially pottery) since the seventh century, one of the oldest ‘mints’ in the country, also a port with a licence to export cloth – which made us wealthy – and to import the finest produce from the low countries, from the Baltic and from other British coastal towns. Ipswich is also worthy of note because, for all of those past fourteen centuries, we have welcomed a diversity of people into our community, to share our good fortune, our relative wealth and our friendship.  

This is evidenced by some of the bodies excavated at St Augustine’s just over Stoke Bridge with the archaeological dig that took place before the flats on Stoke Quay were built. Oxford Archaeology unearthed the graves of over one thousand individuals, including a couple from Africa: travellers who had spent some time in Scandinavia before coming to Ipswich where they eventually died – and where they were buried perhaps a thousand years ago. This is not surprising; just as in many other port towns across the world, sailors and others jumped ship whilst in port, for a variety of reasons and to make for themselves a new life in a new place.

And for the majority of those past centuries we have made then welcome, we’ve learnt their ways, utilised their skills, profited by their presence and integrated them into the community. 

I cannot deny that each generation has had some difficulty in learning to live with the latest arrivals, be it Vietnamese Boat People, Ugandan Asians expelled by Idi Amin or American servicemen during the Second World War. For the most part they integrated well, slipped into the community and provided us with a service – where would our hospitals, our care homes and our poultry producers be without them?

Let us then get back to promoting the attributes of our town, using every opportunity to tell the world that we have half a dozen Nationally Funded providers of cultural entertainment, more than Norwich or Cambridge, that we have a dozen medieval churches – seven of which are still used for worship – and over 600 listed buildings of architectural or historical significance (including the Watergate to Wolsey’s College).

Which brings me to the Wolsey 550 celebration, launched last month. This is an 18 month celebration of Ipswich’s greatest son, an opportunity to include his success in life into teaching today’s youngsters. Also, how the son of a typically average Ipswich man, by his own efforts and hard work, made it to the top, not only of his own profession but also becoming the King’s right-hand man. I strongly suspect that he did not get to become Chancellor by telling all who would listen that ‘the others’ were wrong, mad or ill-informed.

John Norman