Snippets

NADFAS / The Arts Society

In January 2017, the arts education charity, the National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies (NADFAS) revealed plans for a new visual identity - and new name. It was announced, that in May 2017, The Arts Society will replace NADFAS as their new trading name. As a means of promoting the new iteration the local group will be featured at Quay Place on Heritage Open Day. The Society met with Jan Watson and Anne Foulds, Chairman of East Anglia Arts Society and John Biglin, Heritage and Community Co-ordinator at Quay Place about producing some colouring-in sheets for youngsters based on images of Quay Place and the area nearby. From our Image Archive work is proceeding to produce materials to celebrate the place, the new name and our connection.

Aerial photographs of Ipswich

After a meeting with Brian Mateer, one of our members, we can expect to see a new album opening in the Image Archive. Brian is retired and was a photographer of aerial views of Ipswich and the surrounding areas. We were able to advise him on matters to do with digitisation and admire many of the hundreds of photographs and negatives which he will be working on over the next few months. The prospect is exciting and will add a new and fascinating dimension to our resource with his excellent images.

The road across two continents, the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean

A direct and continuous motorway is under construction from Shanghai to Hamburg, an 8,500 kilometre road that will connect the manufacturing towns in China with the markets in Europe. Costing six billion dollars (£5 billion) it is expected that trucks will take eleven days to complete the full journey.

I'll say that again - £5,000,000,000 for 8,500 km or 5,300 miles or just under £1 million per mile (compared with £30 million* in the UK)

*across open countryside; in UK urban areas costs can be ten times this figure.

This new road will be in competition with the rail line mentioned in the last Newsletter: Yiwu, China to the London Freight Terminal; a 7,500 mile journey but, because of the change of gauge, the containers have to be transhipped twice (travelling on three trains).

Whither the bridge?

At the time of going to press, our local MP has changed and, judging by press statements, this may affect the trajectory of the three bridges described in our last (Issue 207). Sandy Martin has said that he would ask the Department of Transport to switch the £100 million promised funding towards the building of a Northern Relief Road. The largest of the crossings from Hawes Street to Holywells Road is the most controversial and this bridge is on the Department of Transport schedule of capital infrastructure works and has sizeable funding pledges from the Treasury, Suffolk County Council (SCC) and the Local Enterprise Partnership. This would therefore not require planning permission from Ipswich Borough Council. SCC cabinet member for Ipswich, Paul West, said that SCC would be pressing ahead with the project: ‘This is a full project; you can't plan to have one or two of the bridges. And it isn't possible to move the money from one Ipswich project to another in the town - if it is taken away from this, then it would go to another part of the country.' Our sister organisation, Ipswich Maritime Trust, is very concerned about the effects of the bridge on high-masted vessels accessing the Wet Dock.