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Holywells Park
We wish IBC well in its bid for Heritage Lottery funding for Holywells Park. The hope is to attract £3m to go with the Council’s £1m in substantially renovating and improving the park. As all Ipswichians know, the town is blessed with parks, not just un number or size but in the spread of locations. Holywells has always been appreciated by the residents nearby but is also close enough to the Waterfront to enhance the attractions of living by the water.
Ipswich Buses – public asset
Only 13 council-owned bus companies remain in Britain and Ipswich Buses is one of the smallest left. But this is a case of ’small is beautiful’ because standards are high and the company is responsive to the needs of a town that it knows well. Malcolm Robson, the manager, say, ‘Herein Ipswich the council seems committed to retaining the bus company and we are doing well at present.’ We hope both remain true.
Students squashed
University Campus Suffolk is likely to have 3,000 students who will need housing in Suffolk, many of them in Ipswich, in five years’ time. Planning applications for purpose-built of adapted student accommodation are coming in. The Society will be monitoring the quality of the proposals. One recent one, since rejected, was described by one of our planning monitors as providing ‘coffins’ rather than ‘bedsits’ or ‘studios’.
Not as bad as you think!
An independent survey of traffic in towns and cities in Britain ranks Ipswich behind only Dundee, Aberdeen and Telford as most free from traffic congestion. Motorists who don’t drive in other comparable towns might find this hard to believe. However, regional and national authorities will have to realise that traffic in ‘the fastest growing urban centre in East Anglia’ will get worse unless there are resources made available for improvements in both roads and public transport.
Flowers respected
Ipswich Central’s ‘Clean and Bright’ Project should be congratulated on providing the 45multi-tier flower planters in the town centre. They have been colourful, well maintained and mostly free from vandalism. Hope it goes on till the end of the season!
Newcomers
Ipswich has received many waves of migrants over the centuries. Our multi-cultural background is illustrated in the exhibition ‘Coming to Ipswich’ in the Town Hall Gallery 3, the former ‘Library’ upstairs. There are said to be 60 languages spoken in Ipswich nowadays.
Michael Fryer Photographic Collection
Details of this collection were given in the July Newsletter. But at the time no official deposit number had been received from the Suffolk Record Office. It can now be consulted using the call number K820 at the Ipswich Office, Gatacre Road. In acknowledging the receipt of the collection, Bridget Hanley, the Public Services Archivist, writes that ’it will be of great use to searchers both now and in the future – it is just the kind of material that often doesn’t make its way to the Record Office, and yet has a very important story to tell.’ The Record Office staff are always very willing to advise on any material relevant to life in Ipswich, or Suffolk in general, so before you bin it, take it along for assessment at Gatacre Road.
Ruth Serjeant
Plaque Design Corrected
Members who noticed oddities in the design of the Edith Maud Cook plaque on the front cover of the July Newsletter are to be commended for their sharp eyes. We accidentally provided out printer with an early version of the design. You will be pleased to know that the actual plaque installed at 90 Fore Street is correct. Perhaps you might like to see it on this fine old building?
It does give an opportunity to say a little more about this remarkable lady about whom little seems to be known locally until her descendants contacted the Society. She is stated by the RAF Museum as being the first woman pilot in Britain. She learned to fly a Blériot monoplane in early 1910 at the Claude Graham-White School at Pau in France and made several solo flights, although she did not obtain a pilot’s licence before er death later that year.