A similar group, this time including the brewer John Wilkinson Cobbold, and notably his son, John Chevallier Cobbold JP, MP, DL, dock commissioner, brewer, banker, and ship owner worked tirelessly to ensure that the railway came to Ipswich and extended beyond Ipswich to Bury and Norwich. Their motives were of self-interest, a railway would allow them to move goods, including the beer produced in Cliff Quay brewery and the cargoes imported into the Wet Dock but they also knew that the railway would benefit the town, allowing its citizens to travel and engage in business over a much wider area. The railway to London opened in June 1846 and to Bury in November the same year.

It seems we spend a lot of time, effort (and money) on thinking up ideas that then fall by the wayside.  Take for example the Town Centre Master Plan of 2012 which proposed 40,000 square feet of additional retail space between the Cornhill and the Waterfront, an attempt to ‘turn the town around’, to create more of a north/south orientation rather than the current so called golden mile. It also touched on other schemes that you have seen and heard previously, a single bus station, a residential led redevelopment of Tacket Street carpark (behind Woolworth’s) and improvements to the market.

I accept that 2012 was more than a decade ago and that Covid has intervened but in 2012 the demise of town centre retail was already evident, in Ipswich.

JN

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