Snippets

The 200 tonne tidal gate moored at Gasworks Quay (close to Aurora) in the Wet Dock.

Tidal barrier

The delivery of the tidal gate from its manufacturing site in Rotterdam is a significant step towards the completion of the Environment Agency's £70 million project. It took two years to design and build the gate and twenty-four hours for it to be transported across the North Sea, finally passing under the Orwell Bridge and entering Ipswich Wet Dock early on the morning of Friday 27 October 2017. The gate is twenty-two metres wide and will stand nine metres tall when in its ‘closed position'. It is finished with five tonnes of special paint that will help protect it, as it spends most of its life underwater. A 1,000 tonne crane, assembled on-site, lifted the gate into place. The barrier is expected to be operational in the spring of 2018.

Meadow Hall

This shopping mall in Sheffield is to get a £300 million curving glass roof extension; work on site starts this month, January, and is due for completion in time for Christmas Shopping 2020.

The new extension makes a clear change from being a shopping centre to becoming an ‘experience led' destination. The new wing will include a multi-screen cinema (replacing the existing film theatre), a gym and a flexi-use leisure space. This could be indoor golf, 10-pin bowling or exhibition hall.

This sort of upgrade is happening to shopping centres across the county as town centre retail withers (hence the rationale behind the changes to the Buttermarket in Ipswich).

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STOP PRESS: Broomhill Pool success

Mike Cook announces that he and The Ipswich Society can be quietly triumphant. After many years of struggle, the Broomhill Swimming Pool and Lido has secured three-and-a-half million pounds of Heritage Lottery funding. A full article will appear in our next issue.

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Internet Access

Ten million adults don't have access to the internet, they don't have computers, tablets or smart phones, they don't access libraries, don't know the whereabouts of internet cafés and when/if they visit friends or relatives, the opportunity of going online doesn't occur. They are being increasingly isolated from Government and essential services like banking without knowing it.

St Clement Church carillon

The carillon in the tower of The Sailor's Church has been refurbished by the Ipswich Historic Churches Trust. Philanthropist, Felix Thornley Cobbold, donated the cost of the clock and carillon in St Clement in 1884. A carillon is a mechanical device that plays a tune on the church bells but restored, it has an electrical control system which will facilitate the ringing of a wide range of music. The nearby location of the lost public house The Musical Clock is not known.