News & Comment

Commemorating Ipswich's greatest son

The Wolsey statue will have been installed during Ipswich Charter Day, 29 June. Sited at the junction of Silent Street and St Peter's Street it will be close to the long-lost mansion where he intended to retire as Provost of his Cardinal College. So it is appropriate that he is cast as a benevolent teacher. Although famous throughout Europe as Chancellor and Cardinal to Henry VIII, he was also an advocate of humane education: "Pleasure is to mingle with study, that the boy may think learning rather an amusement than a toil. Tender youth is to suffer neither severe thrashings nor sour and threatening looks, nor any kind of tyranny, for by such usage the fire of genius is either extinguished or in great measure damped."

The James Hehir Building

Officially opened on 30 March, this is the second major building for the University and it sits on Orwell Quay. It comprises laboratories, lecture theatres and social areas. Its appropriate name commemorates IBC's late Chief Executive, long an advocate of a university here.

New children's hospice for Suffolk and Essex

The Treehouse at St Augustine's Gardens and close to Felixstowe Road has recently opened. In addition to its bedrooms there are specialist facilities such as a hydrotherapy pool and a music studio. It has been located sympathetically in this small area of woodland. The architects were Barefoot & Gilles and the builders Barnes Construction, both local firms.

Boxes full of boxes: the growth of containerisation and the Port of Felixstowe

In the 1960s over 50% of the British workforce were employed in manufacturing, a figure that is now less then 15% (and in Ipswich considerably lower still). Why? It is so much cheaper to import manufactured goods from the Far East, where labour is cheaper, and ship them into Felixstowe. In the 1960s over 30% of the cost of imported goods was transportation. Today the cost of using containers is 1% of the retail cost of the goods.