The return of The Longship Screens

Members of The Ipswich Society join David Ellesmere (Leader of Ipswich Borough Council), SCC Cllr. Mandy Gaylard and John Mowles (former Ipswich Borough Councillor & Mayor) to celebrate the return of sculptor Antony Robinson's Longship Screens to the Old Cattle Market bus station after an absence of three years.

It is over three years since Antony Robinson's fine, wrought iron public sculpture was taken down from the Old Cattle Market Bus Station, prior to the refurbishment of the site by Suffolk County Council. I say ‘Old Cattle Market Bus Station', but former Borough Planning Officer and Ipswich Society member, Ruth Stokes, tells us that when an earlier makeover of the facility was nearing completion in 1995 the County Council was set on changing its name to ‘Buttermarket Bus Station', to match the branding of the nearby shopping centre. This met with opposition from Ipswich residents and Borough Councillors because the terminus/stop on maps, bus timetables and in travellers' minds has always been ‘Ipswich OCM' (Old Cattle Market). Indeed, the town's historic livestock market had moved to this site from the Cornhill, eventually ending up between Princes Street and Friars Bridge Road (now a car park). The issue clearly became quite a hot potato.

The Longship Screens in the 2000s

Because of the proposed use of rather poor quality bus shelters (they eventually used somewhat better ones), it was decided to commission a piece of public sculpture to screen them and act as an eye-catcher from the bottom of St Stephens Lane. The brief to the sculptor was to strictly avoid any visual allusion to either ‘butter' or ‘cattle' in the work. Such are local politics. The agreed theme was based on a Viking ship on the seas with the famous Sutton Hoo helmet in stainless steel at its centre. However, when the work was installed, some people suspected a possible resemblance in the wrought ironwork of the smaller screen to a cow's head, face-on. Mildly scurrilous and mildly satisfying…

The sculptor himself made reference to 'a surprise' in the screen. So, a cow produces milk and from milk we get butter. Perhaps honour was served on both sides.

The Longship Screens – cattle head?