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The October 2016 Newsletter (Issue 205) carried an article about a Society outing to King’s Lynn. Caroline Markham wrote: ‘We were guided round Hanse House, one of the original ‘kontors' or warehouses of the Hanseatic League - indeed the only surviving intact Hanseatic warehouse in England. King's Lynn, according to Dr Richards, is an Edge Town – on the edge of the Fens, on the edge of East Anglia (it is closer to Leicester than to Great Yarmouth), on the edge of the Midlands and on the edge of the Hanseatic League – it was a partner town along with Great Yarmouth and Ipswich.
‘The Hanseatic League or Hansa was a confederation of merchants stretching from the Baltic to the North Sea in operation from the 13th to 17th centuries. A New Hanseatic League has been formed, with its headquarters in Lübeck, for those with connections to the medieval Hansa - King's Lynn was the first English town to join in 2006. Hull and Boston joined in 2014 and 2015 respectively and we look forward to Ipswich putting in its application and becoming a member of this historic economic association.’
In April 2017 Alison Fairman, Chairman of Boston Hanse Group, contacted Caroline as a result of the article in the Newsletter and offered support with an Ipswich application. The email was forwarded to Stuart Grimwade and the Ipswich Maritime Trust took it from there. The Borough of Ipswich duly applied to join the New Hanseatic League, which is based in Lübeck in Germany, and was accepted in 2018. Pat Grimwade, a member of the Society’s Executive Committee for a number of years, has written a book on the subject and will be the speaker at our Winter Illustrated Talk in February (see page Diary dates, page 23, for details).