Kindred Spirit

April 1912 Fire

David Kindred — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 19:22:26 +0000

The Model T Ford fire tender by Ipswich to replace the horse drawn steam fire pumps.

A century ago on April 6 1912 Ipswich suffered a major disaster when fire broke out at the premises of R D and J B Fraser. The large furniture store was on a site bound by Princes Street, Museum Street and Elm Street. The fire brigade dealt with a fire on the site but later in the day the blaze reignited and the whole building was lost. The fire brigade were unable to control the fire with their horse drawn steam pumps and buildings opposite in Princes Street were also badly damaged as the fire raged out of control.
While the centre of Ipswich was still clearing within days news broke of the Titanic sinking in the Atlantic.

The fire damaged site in Princes Street, Ipswich. Photo Albert Jasper collection

The fire saw calls to upgrade the fire brigade and plans were made to buy a motor powered fire tender. It was 1918 when a Model T Ford machine arrived and 1920 was the last time the horse drawn steam pump was used.

Clearing up in Princes Street, Ipswich. The heat from the fire was so intense that a support post for the towns trams melted. Photo Albert Jasper collection.

Fraser’s were house furnishers, upholsterers, jewelers and pawnbrokers. They also had a cabinet makers and bedding workshops. the store was rebuilt in similar style. The company was taken over and became Fraser (Maple) Ltd. The company closed in 1984 and the building became offices.

Fraser’s store before the fire

Fire damaged buildings opposite Fraser’s Princes Street, Ipswich store.

Not Amused

David Kindred — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 09:56:02 +0000

An incident in Ipswich in July 1851 resulted in the town being banned from seeing members of the royal family visit the borough for seventy-five years.
The problem arose during a visit of Prince Albert to Ipswich in July 1851 to attend the annual meeting of the British Association and to lay the foundation stone at Ipswich School the following day. Somewhere along the route, six words shouted out in broad Suffolk by someone in the crowd, were to have a disastrous consequence. “Goo hoom, yer rotten ole Jarman.” Albert probably did not understand but courtiers reported this to the Queen on return to Buckingham Palace and Victoria banned visits to the town. No member of the royal family came to Ipswich for the next three-quarters of a century.

Prince Albert

In 1902 the directors of the Mid Suffolk Light Railway planned a branch line that would link Debenham with Ipswich. The Lord Lieutenant of Suffolk was on the board and the Duke of Cambridge, first cousin of Queen Victoria, came by train to cut the first sod at Westerfield Junction. Because of the necessity of keeping Ipswich out of the ceremony a marquee had to be put up on the railway land for 600 guests. The Duke’s first sod was also the last. Not a yard of track from Westerfield towards Debenham was ever laid and shortly thereafter the promoter of the whole scheme went bankrupt.
Almost exactly a year later the Suffolk Victoria Nursing Institute was inaugurated as a memorial to Queen Victoria. It was opened in Lower Brook Street by Victoria’s third daughter Helena. She came not as British Royalty but as German: as Princess Christian, wife of HRH Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein.

Queen Victoria

After the death of King Edward VII in 1910, county memorials to him were planned throughout the land. The first to be completed was Suffolk’s, the Ipswich Sanatorium at Foxhall. People looked forward to a Royal opening but those in the know realised this would not be possible and invited Lord Balfour of Burleigh to perform the ceremony in June 1912.
King George V in the earlier years of his reign was often a guest at shooting parties at Orwell Park but the Royal Train from London always passed through Ipswich and Derby Road stations without stopping.

In 1926 Prince Henry came to Ipswich to open an exhibition celebrating the bi-centenary of the artist’s birth ending a long royal displeasure.

Brave Edith reached for the sky.

David Kindred — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:26:35 +0000

“Reach for the Sky”, “Aim High”, “The Sky is the Limit”. All of these well known sayings must have run through the mind of a little girl in Ipswich over a century ago. Ipswich girl Edith Cook, became the first female pilot in the country.
Edith was born in Fore Street in 1878, a poor part of town close to the dock and potteries. Her father was a baker and confectioner at number 90. The chance to escape the fate of many young girls, whose only career hope was to enter domestic service or work in a local clothing or cigarette factory, was possibly inspired by a balloon assent in Ipswich in 1888 when Edith was nine-years-old.

Was it the ascent of Captain Dale's scarlet and yellow balloon Eclipse in Ipswich, June 2, 1888, which inspired young Edith Cook?

Around 1900 Edith wrote to balloonists the Spencer Brothers asking if she could become a parachutist, then a very dangerous occupation, which meant holding onto a trapeze bar under a parachute, which was attached to a gas balloon. After being lifted to a height of up to 4000 feet the parachute was released for the decent. Edith worked for the Spencer Brothers under the name of Miss Viola Spencer and made over 300 descents over the next ten years all over Britain and Europe.

Edith Cook's fathers shop was on the left of this view of Fore Street, Ipswich.

Edith wanted to become an aeroplane pilot and in early 1910 became the first woman to fly solo in a Bleriot aircraft at Claude Graham-Whites aviation school at Pau near the French Pyrenees. Her flight pre-dated that of Hilda Hewlett who entered the record book as the first woman to obtain a pilot’s licence on August 29, 1911, at Brooklands racetrack and airfield in Surrey. Edith made several flights at shows under another pseudonym as ‘Miss Spencer Kavanagh, the famous Aviatrix’.

The type of aircraft flown by Edith Cook was a Bleriot. This aircraft was flown into Ipswich in August 1912 by Frenchman Henri Salmet.

Edith would probably have become the first female pilot with a licence, giving her a greater place in aviation history if tragedy had not struck on Saturday, July 9, 1910, when she made a parachute decent over Coventry and the wind blew her onto a factory roof. Edith fell from the roof breaking her pelvis and elbow. After an operation Edith died from her injuries on July 14, 1910. She was then just 30.
An inquest into her death heard that she told her surgeon that she enjoyed her dangerous work. She said she did not know what to be nervous was and was absolutely fearless. Her late father disapproved of her work, which was unknown to most of the customers of his tiny bakers shop in Fore Street as she worked under different names.

Edith Cook

Master of Ceremony

David Kindred — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 08:27:36 +0000

Standing on a wooden disc about a foot in diameter and saluting does not sound too much of a challenge, unless it is 143 feet above the ground and you only have a lightning conductor to grip between your knees. This was the job of the button boy at HMS Ganges who had to shin up the last fifteen feet or so to climb on the button during ceremonial parades. The mast has been a local land mark since it was erected at the end of the Shotley peninsular in 1907. Sailor’s uniforms were a familiar site in the area until HMS Ganges closed in June 1976. Crowds of boys from HMS Ganges would visit Ipswich when they were given a day off from the harsh naval discipline at Shotley. The Cattle Market area of Ipswich would be busy at weekends with boys in full naval uniform. The cinemas would be packed with rows of Ganges boys in uniform and the café at the corner of St Stephen’s Lane would sell them many cups of tea as they waited for their bus back to Shotley. HMS Ganges had a reputation for its harsh discipline. Even by naval training standards life there was controlled by a very strict regime.
Ken Smith, who now lives in Brighton, sent me memories of arriving at HMS Ganges in the severe winter of 1963 and his fear of the dreaded mast. Ken said “It was a dreadful winter. It began snowing on Boxing Day. In the first week of January it was snowed even harder and it snowed until March. The previous evening I’d arrived at HMS Ganges training annexe, with an assortment of other would-be-sailors, and was placed in the capable hands of a spotty faced Junior Instructor and a bullet proof Gunnery Instructor who wore crossed guns on both lapels. The only thing I can remember of that awesome night, apart from collecting a kit bag and filling it to capacity with kit, was sobbing myself to sleep and that I ate the biggest meal I’d ever eaten in my entire fifteen years of life, the kindly chef asking me whether I intended to eat the mountain of food I’d heaped on my plate or climb it!”

The mast manning ceremony at HMS Ganges with the button boy standing on top.

“In candy-striped pyjama bottoms and naked chests, we were ordered across the parade ground, through the snow and ice, to the ‘heads’, that grown-up potty land, which had neither doors nor partitions around the bowls for privacy, to partake in our morning ablutions, a most embarrassing experience.”
“For breakfast porridge was on offer, that salt-coated gruel I’d been forced to eat every morning of my schoolboy days. I took a bowl and ate the lot. For spite I think, because it wasn’t compulsory. Around one hundred boy-sailors were in the canteen, chewing and chattering; clattering knives forks and spoons against plates and bowls. The noise was excruciating.”
“I had thought that our group were the only sailors, if we dared call ourselves that, in this annexe, but I was soon to discover there was a continuous rotation of faces, each at various stages of initiation, a small factory taking in baby civilians at one end and throwing out almost sailors into the real HMS Ganges at the other. It was easy to spot those who had been here the longest. They looked smarter, more confident, or even downright dejected. They looked like what we didn’t, sailors.”
“It was as we crossed the parade ground the whole bunch of us suddenly froze and spun to face a huge aircraft-hanger-of-a-building running along its length. From it came bloodcurdling cries of command, so frightening, I most surely would have obeyed them myself, if had I understood what they meant. It would seem those boy-sailors who were seconds ago shoving sausages into smiling faces, had all disappeared into that terrifying building, and by the cries belching from its belly were being eaten alive.”
“Back in the mess, this safe haven shielding us from those torturous sounds, the Junior Instructors suspiciously cheerful faces greeted us. It was a face hiding unknown treasures unknown tricks for us to perform, the first of which was to mark our kit with our names. Each of us was required to construct a printing block using letters carved in wood. “Letters back to front, remember!” Yes, I got it wrong! “The white letters would then be transformed, by our nimble fingers, into red with silk thread using the chain stitch. It had to be a joke! After sewing on a tag and sporting a proud smile as I offered it up for inspection to that gorilla-of-gunner, I was sent scurrying away, ears ringing from slaps and vehement words, asking myself, “How the hell did I mange to sew the tag on upside-down?”
“Our kit was stowed in small silver lockers that we polished daily, but not like any normal person would stow their clothes. It had to be neatly folded and stacked, each item one above the other, with each item measuring exactly nine inches wide and one inch flat. Every letter of our names had to be perfectly in line. Should one of letters be a millimetre out, you found the lot on the deck when you returned to the mess. During the third disastrous week, it spent so much time on the deck I thought I might as well leave it there!”
“Each evening after we had cleaned the mess, we took everything out of the locker rolled each item into a nine-inch sausage, tied white tape around both ends, and then placed every item on a blanket. Every letter, every strip of tape had to be in a perfect line. If not, you would do it repeatedly, until you dropped dead if necessary. When the Gunnery Instructor was finally satisfied, you put the lot back in your locker as before.”
“Other things we had to do included, clean a toilet with a toothbrush, polish a hundred square feet of block-wood flooring with a boot brush every night before going to bed, paint the inside of a dustbin white before putting your rubbish into it. I recall watching a boy, who had been thrown in the deep end of the swimming pool, struggling in the water while a sadistic instructor smiled, saying, “Look what happens if you can’t bloody well swim?” These were all regular happenings at Ganges.”
“I had already taught myself to swim. However lessons, culminating in a test, were much more difficult. The test consisted of two lengths of the pool while wearing a boiler suit, then floating for five minutes. This was followed by a leap from the diving board, as high as any tree I’d ever climbed, wearing the waterlogged boiler suit and a lifejacket.”
“On the parade ground the order went something like “On the command fix!” The left hand went behind the cheek of your left buttock and twisted the bayonet and scabbard upward. On the remainder of the command ‘Bayonets’ the left hand pulled the bayonet from the scabbard, placed it on the barrel of the rifle and, with a quick twist of the wrist, secured it in place. Each time I let it go off it popped, falling to the deck with a clatter. Even if it amazingly stayed put, as soon as I slammed the rifle onto the parade ground off it popped again.”

“There was one hell to come, the Ganges mast! Every new recruit was required to climb it, not to the very top but to the half moon, about thirty-feet from the top. At about sixty feet was the Devil’s Elbow, the most dangerous and frightening part. This was where the roped rigging jutted out some ten feet – above it, the platform. To get to the platform you would climb out over the Devil’s Elbow, legs dangling in the air, only your grip keeping you from certain death. There was a way to bypass it for cowards like me, but God help you if you tried using it. I was so fearful of that oncoming event I was becoming a nervous wreck, each night reading the next day’s daily orders, wondering if tomorrow would be the day I crapped my pants in public.”

“Rumour had it many years ago a boy did fall, bouncing off the safety net and through the Post Office roof. Was anything in this navy free from fear? I wondered, sewing, perhaps!”

“After initial training we were marched from the training camp. Down the road we proudly thundered, the first time any of us had seen the outside words since the day of our arrival. Within ten minutes, a second pair of gates appeared, the gates of the real HMS Ganges. Reaching high into the sunlit sky stood the mast; its yardarms spread wide like a giant crucifix. From the annexe, I had sometimes seen it, partly hidden by snowy skies as it towered above the buildings, and it looked frightening then, but now, marching beneath its cobweb rigging, it looked truly awesome. I allowed my head to tilt backward, sending my gaze to the very top, to the lightning conductor where the Button Boy stood on ceremonial occasions.

I shuddered to the bone, as I’m sure did other boys. My heart sank and my elation evaporated as I desperately tried to quash all fears of my body falling from the Devil’s Elbow.”

“I knew that once the weather was respectable, when it was no longer dangerous, my skinny little skeleton would be transported, step by trembling step, up that perilous rigging. No way would the Royal Navy let the opportunity to instill fear into a young boy pass them by”

Ken Smith when he was a Ganges boy in 1963.

“So began another nine months of laughter and tears, disaster and joy. I knew only when it was over would I then be able to call myself a true Ganges Boy and, some years later, a real sailor. I did climb that mast. Not to the required half-moon, but to the first platform, where, when authoritative eyes were averted, I dashed to the other side and climbed back down.”
Dates in the history of HMS Ganges.

1903. HMS Ganges moved moorings from Harwich to Shotley.

1905. October, new Shore Establishment created and commissioned as Royal Navy Training Establishment, Shotley.

1906. July 5 The old HMS Ganges sails out of Harwich Harbour. 
1907. Mast erected using the foremast of HMS Cordelia, which was broken up 1904.

1914. Outbreak of World War One. HMS Ganges 2 in the harbour put all boys ashore and was then used as Naval Operations Ship, Harwich.

1927. The Admiralty decided that the shore base should bear the name of the original training ship, HMS Ganges.

1937. Coronation Day of George V1. Boys were permitted to march through the streets of Ipswich with bayonets fixed.

1971. July 27, Awarded Freedom Ipswich.

1976. HMS Ganges closed on June 6. On October 28 the White Ensign was lowered for the last time and the ships figurehead was transferred to Royal Hospital School, Holbrook.

Between 1905 and 1976 150,000 recruits passed through HMS Ganges.

An Ipswich childhood in the 1920s and 30s.

David Kindred — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 16:54:42 +0000

Childhood memories of Ipswich, around eighty years ago, included playing football in a traffic free street, buying fireworks from the back room of the corner shop, Wallace Simpson’s divorce at the County Hall and buying beer in a jug for father on a hot summers night, came from Ernest Farrow who wrote from his home in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. Ernest grew up in Ipswich and was a pupil at St Helens School. Ernest dug out photographs from his time at the school, he said “One was taken when I attended St Helens’ infants’ school late in the 1920s. Another photo was taken at St Margaret’s Boys School on Bolton Lane, late 1920s or early 1930s, Miss Watts was the teacher, Mr. Death (Decker to us boys) the Headmaster, a man who was quite handy with the cane.

The photograph taken at St Helens School

“I lived at number 65 Finchley Road when I was 13-years-old, next door to us on the corner Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Scott, Mr. Scott played a cornet in the Salvation Army band. On the other side, number 63, Mrs. Brown, and next to her Mr. and Mrs. Prime. A little further down was a small Sweet Shop and General Store, run by a family named Withers, very useful – when mother ran short on something.”

“I remember our house was lit by gas in my early days, oh how the ceiling used to get a dark ring from the fumes. We had a meter in the front room, which took the large pennies and was emptied once a month by the meter man, who could wrap a roll of pennies very, very fast; we used to watch fascinated at his performance. That all stopped in the late 20s or early 30s when we were converted to electricity.”

“We used to play football at the end of Finchley Road, a practice not encouraged, every afternoon a Policeman used to come down the passage connecting Hayhill and Finchley roads at which time we scarpered. One day he changed routine, came up little Finchley Road and caught the lot of us; we received a good dressing down and told next time our parents would receive a visit. After that we always had a look out”.

“As youngsters we used to look though the fence of a Saunders Stone Mason’s to see if we could catch sight of Dammo Green, centre forward for Ipswich Town in their Amateur days. Dammo was a prolific goal scorer and was our local hero, we often saw him chiseling away at a chunk of granite, it made our day!”
“Well known local trades people included Hall’s the Newsagents and General Store, where we used to buy our fireworks in the back room. Hall’s was located between Samuel Road and Cemetery Road, then there was Smith’s the pork butcher located in Blanche Street and a small sweet shop on the corner of Little Cemetery Road, we were regulars there when we had a half penny to spend.”
“Then at the junction of Suffolk and Norfolk Roads, now Tuddenham Avenue there was an Off-Licence and a Bakery named Ixworth’s. For many Christmas’ my mother made a large cake, which we would take over to lxworth’s to be baked. On a hot night, in the summer, my father would send me over to the off-license for a jug of beer.” “As a youngster I was a keen collector of cigarette cards, a popular past time back then. Each packet contained 10 cigarettes made locally by Churchmans.”
“I attended two opening events which have stuck with me, one was the first Professional Football game played at Portman Road, a Southern League match against Tunbridge Wells we won 4-l. Jimmy McLuckie led out the team in their smart blue and white kits. I stood on the West Side on the Wooden Bleachers, cost of admittance for children 2 or 3 pence.”

“The second occasion my family attended the opening of the ‘Ritz’ cinema in the Butter Market on January 4, 1937, cost for a seat in the stalls 1/6 pence. Anna Neagle the actress was in the film and attended the opening.
We moved to Princethorpe Road in 1937, but still maintained contact with several of our Finchley Road friends. My brother and I went down there to see the damage done by the Land Mine in World War Two, Cemetery Road was cordoned off and guarded by a big policeman.”
“We witnessed an amusing incident, a gentleman well known to our family was determined to gain access to his house in Finchley Road, he was so persistent that eventually this big policeman told him that if he tried to get in there once more he would arrest him. My parents could not understand his behavior as he was a very quiet man and this was completely out of character. The mystery was not solved until several years after the war when he died, his son found a Smiths Crisp tin full of pound notes, cushions were lumpy also stuffed with notes!”
“I was a chorister in the St Mary le Tower choir, prior to the opening of the Suffolk Assizes. A service was held attended by the Presiding Judge and local dignitaries, afterwards us boys used to run over to the County Hall to watch the judge arrive to a fanfare of trumpets. On one occasion the judge arrived after a long delay, his car surrounded by police, at the time we did not know the reason for this high level of security.”
“It later transpired Mrs. Simpson’s divorce hearing was taking place before Mr. Justice Hawke. A man in the crowd said, “Royalty are mixed up in a divorce hearing today”. I repeated this to my mother and received a clip across the head for my trouble and was told: “Not to come home with yarns like that about the Royal Family!”

Ipswich newspaper history.

David Kindred — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 11:11:28 +0000

Thundering sounds of a press printing newspapers was a feature of Carr Street, Ipswich until publishers, the East Anglian Daily Times Company, moved to Lower Brook Street in May 1966.

The Carr Street, Ipswich newspaper works Photo by Alan Valentine

The roar of the rotary printing press was a regular sound day and night. Diane Roper (nee Last) said “Until the age of eleven I lived with my family at 22 Great Colman Street. This stood directly behind the East Anglian building on the corner of Little Colman Street and belonged to the EADT. There was an alley between the buildings which was always called ‘The Drift’. This took you out onto Carr Street almost directly opposite Woolworths store. The house was a great big place, which we believe had been a gentleman’s club at one time. We lived in half of it and the East Anglian used the other half to store reels of paper. I had lots of fun playing hide and seek amongst the paper when my friends came to play.

The wire room at the Carr Street, Ipswich newspaper office in the 1940s

There was also a great big cellar which we liked to disappear into. We managed to rent it because my father Charlie Last worked at the EADT in the general printing department from the time he left school until he retired in 1977, apart from six years when he was called up for the war. My mother used to make the workers their tea for their breaks and they used to come and drink it in our back garden.

A Linotype operator setting hot metal type at the EADT works in Carr Street, Ipswich.

I spent many an hour at the side door of the building watching the metal plates being made ready for the next edition of the paper. It was noisy, dusty and hot, but also fascinated me. Any visitors who came to sleep would be awake all night with the sound of the press, but we slept like logs. I suppose we got used to it. Things used to get a bit noisy sometimes if the workers had been to their social club in Little Colman Street after work! I think it was classed as the canteen and seemed to me to be open all day, but it was a nice place to live.”

The composing room at the EADT in Carr Street, Ipswich in the 1940s.

The EADT staff social club in Little Coleman Street was something of an institution until it was demolished after the company moved in 1966. It occupied two tiny terraced houses. The two original front rooms had a table and chairs with enough room for around ten people each. Mid mornings it was cheese rolls and mugs of tea. During the evening it operated like a tiny public house closing at 10.30pm. Half an hour later the steward opened the bar again until around 2am with a permanent special licence. This made the club a popular late ‘watering hole’ as any staff member could sign in two guests to the only bar open in the county. Proprietor and editor Ralph Wilson would be there most nights into the small hours as the morning paper was being produced where the world and company matters were put right over a pint of beer or a glass of Scotch! Mr Wilson knew all his staff personally and would never have referred to anybody as a “Human Resource”.

A newspaper seller outside the newspaper offices in Carr Street, Ipswich.

Newspapers were sold outside the office. Alan Theobald said one of the sellers was Ray or “Chopper” Theobald, his father, “Ray won distinction while serving with the Royal Tank regiment in World War Two. He also won the Military Medal in Italy. He gained the nickname ‘Chopper’ there after an incident involving an officer’s pet duck and a rather large axe! After serving in the war he worked in the morning as a Co-op milk man, then from lunch time in to the evenings selling papers outside of the newspaper office in Carr Street. At one point the East Anglian Daily Times Company was almost a family firm with six members of the Theobald family working there, my brother also a Ray, uncle Peter and Norman and two of my dad’s cousins Harrold and, Denis as well as my father. Elizabeth Montgomery who now lives in Gosport said “I remember well the old East Anglian Times Offices, as I used to go to Woolworth’ s store almost opposite to spend my 6d pocket money on a Saturday, 1940s early 50s. My next door neighbour worked at the newspaper and I was invited to the Christmas party for workers children. Happy memories. I wish they had not pulled the building down, as it was quite a landmark. Gerald Pilbro of Waterford Road, Ipswich was a paper delivery boy at Churchyards newsagents in St Helens Street from 1955 to 1957. “My job was to get the “Green-Uns” from Carr Street on a Saturday evening. There were always a lot of boys and girls waiting for the press to start and our newsagent’s names to be called. The press would start with a slow rumble and quickly gather speed.”

Dance Hall Days.

David Kindred — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 12:35:58 +0000

Thousands of people have walked through the impressive front entrance of a building in Museum Street, Ipswich, since it was first opened to the public over 160 years ago. The building, which was closed for around fifteen years, has been brought back to life as a restaurant.
Built as Ipswich Museum, opening in December 1847, it stood in the then new street cut through to link Westgate Street with Elm Street. This Victorian structure has seen several uses since the town’s museum moved to new and bigger premises in High Street in July 1881, which was a big day for the town when, with much ceremony, the new lock gates at the dock and the Post Office on the Cornhill were also formally opened.

When Ipswich photographer William Vick published a set of captioned photographic prints in 1890 of ‘Ipswich Past and Present’ he included a photograph of the museum in Museum Street. His caption in Victorian style tells us of when the museum was in the Town Hall. “Various thoughts will arise at this expression in old Ipswich minds. Prior to 1847 this was applicable to a long, dingily lighted, attic kind of place, high up near the clock in the Town Hall, approachable only by a long flight of narrow steps, accessible by a common key “off a nail” in the precincts below, and entered by a mean looking half glass door, in which the then stock of articles of virtue, of rarity, or otherwise deemed valuable, belonging to the Corporation, were exhibited. In 1846, during the mayoralty of George Green Sampson Esq., an effort was made to improve upon the state of things, and a public meeting was held, and a project for establishing a museum set on foot, which resulted in the hiring, for a term of years, of a building in Museum Street; to this the then Corporation transferred all its treasures suitable for it; many valuable additions were kindly added by numerous donors; and the Rev Professor Henslow, whose fostering care was continually present, superintended the arrangements thereof; we have here given a view of the principal room in the building referred to.”

A directory for 1921 lists the building in Museum Street being used by J Noller builder and contractor, Frederick Fisher auctioneer, estate agent and removal contractor and R Payne dancing hall. In 1928 B Bullard electrical contractor was there with the Arlington Rooms and the Arlington Bowling Club. By 1939 Fred Jewhurst confectioner shared the building with The Arlington Bowling Club.
Most people will remember it as the Arlington Ballroom where ballroom dancing lessons were given to thousands when learning to ballroom dance was a ‘must’ for all young people as this was how thousands of couples met their husband or wife to be, until fashions changed in the mid 1960s. As well as lessons there were many dancing competitions and the school won many trophies in national ballroom dancing events.

Ballroom dancing at the Arlington Ballroom in January 1968. The original Victorian balcony is in the background.

Ipswich School of Dancing teacher Rosemary Watson said “Olga Wilmot took over The Arlington Ballroom in Museum Street around 1948. It was then a popular venue with American Servicemen and the locals. Olga operated from there until the business moved to Bond Street in 1991. It is now The Ipswich School of Dancing LLP run by former Arlington teachers Rosemary Watson, Susan Matthews and Jennifer Dix.”

A team of dancers at the Arlington Ballroom in June 1966. Olga Wilmot is in the centre. Olga died in January 2000.

The building was designed by Christopher Fleury who also designed Ipswich School in Henley Road. A promoter of the museum, which was said to be ‘more particularly for the benefit of the working class’ was Rev Professor J Henslow who was Charles Darwins’s tutor at Cambridge. Rev Henslow was keen to educate the working class with free tickets handed out at works and factories to lectures in a time before state education. As the museum outgrew its home it was decided in 1878 to erect a new museum in High Street.
The former ballroom stood empty when the dancing school moved out although part of the ground floor was used for a few years as a fitted kitchen showroom. The link between Museum Street and Elm Street was not made until 1850 when an arch was cut through a building to Thursby’s Lane and the lane was renamed Arcade Street. The rest of the lane to Princes Street was renamed Museum Street.

Suffolk childhood memories of the 1930s

David Kindred — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 08:45:41 +0000

A drink and a meal at the Butt and Oyster public house by the River Orwell at Pin Mill, is a very pleasant experience, with thousands of locals and tourists visiting the beauty spot every year. Imagine how different it would have been in the 1930s when John Andrews was a boy and barges unloaded untreated sewage from London to be used to fertilise the fields!
John said “My early recollection of life in the 1930s, in the Shotley Peninsula, revolve around my school days. Shotley School then was an area school and took pupils from primary schools in other villages when they were eleven. Some travelled to school on the service bus while those who didn’t live within walking distance or the bus route were issued on loan with county council bicycles. These were distinctive machines painted black and white and it was the responsibility of the user to keep them clean and in good repair. The boys and girls from Erwarton were users of these bicycles and they kept them very well. The headmaster, Mr Snell, lived at the end of the street in a large house with a beautiful garden, which he tended lovingly. Gardening was a regular subject taught to the boys at the school with Mr Snell.”
“Shotley Peninsula was a predominantly agricultural area with fewer houses than today and no large housing developments. Shotley itself was also dependent upon HMS Ganges, the Royal Navy Boys’ training establishment, as a source of employment. I lived in a terrace of farm cottages until 1938 when we moved to a new bungalow in what was the first stage development at Shotley Gate.”
“It was about this time that electricity first came to the peninsula. As boys our play revolved around the nearest farm and we roamed freely among the farm implements and the large Shire horses which were the tractors of their day. These animals were very well cared for and I never saw one ill treated. On occasions a beautifully groomed and bridled stallion would arrive on foot to ensure that the supply of work horses was perpetuated. Similarly, a common sight on the road was the boar walker, every farm having a large complement of pigs, which on hot days was very obvious.”

Horse power on a Suffolk farm in the 1930s

“Harvest was a time of particular enjoyment. We children, armed with knob ended sticks, followed the reaper and binder as the wheat, barley or oat field was progressively cut, hoping to catch the odd rabbit as it made a dash for it. As the standing crop grew steadily less, we knew that the rabbits would be massing at its centre.

“We would form a circle around and as the rabbits rushed out would knock out as many as we could. How cruel and barbaric it all seems now.”

“The main road to Ipswich was then relatively narrow, but traffic was light. The road became busier in the late 1930s when the fuel requirements of HMS Ganges had to be satisfied and a collier docked at Ipswich, discharged into a fleet of lorries, which then transported the coal to Shotley. Prior to this Thames barges, loaded with coal, beached on the “hard” at Shotley Gate and, at low tide, the coal was transferred to horse drawn tumbrils and hauled up Bristol Hill to the Ganges coal pounds. The hards were a common feature all round the peninsula, the one at Pin Mill being still recognisable today, while traces of others remain. Another commodity arriving at these hards was organic manure, mainly untreated, from the London sewage farms, also transported in Thames barges and again horse and cart hauled to the fields, it had to be smelt to be believed!”

Barges of straw were transported from Pin Mill, Suffolk to London for use with the thousands of horses in the city. The barges returned with sewage from the city for use on the fields as fertiliser.

“Over the years, and going back to the First World War, the pattern of public transport changed. In 1919/20 the recognised way of getting to Ipswich from Shotley was by the Great Eastern Railways ferry or HMS Ganges pinnace to Harwich, then by train. Travel direct to Ipswich by road could only be achieved by horse and wagon until a pair of entrepreneurs inaugurated a bus service. One of these, Bill Edmunds, later became an Eastern Counties driver when taken over by the company.”
“With little traffic there were few accidents and crime was at a minimum. Even so almost every village had its policeman who lived in a police house and patrolled on a bicycle; the ratio of police to total population then being about 1 to 200. The local bobby was a firm, but friendly soul and we children thoroughly respected him, looking upon him as something of a father figure and never as “the enemy”
German child refugees joined classes at Shotley and there was a daily school bus trip crossing RAF Martlesham, where experimental aircraft were being tested, on their way to school in Felixstowe, Pupils from Shotley had to make the long journey every day to the grammar school in Felixstowe. “ This was decades before the Orwell Bridge and the bus travelled through Ipswich and several villages including Martlesham, where children could spot aircraft being tested at the RAF station.
John explained that his teacher at Shotley school, Mr Snell, was able to spot a likely scholarship candidate among his pupils. John said. “This was long before the days of the “eleven-plus” exams. After weeks of cramming and reading the scholarship class presented itself at the County Hall in Ipswich for the examination, which was a terrifying ordeal, but Mr Snell’s success rate was high. The hurdle crossed, September 1938 saw me and other new pupils from the peninsula villages, traveling to school daily at the grammar school in Garrison Lane, Felixstowe. At first this was quite a tiring journey, but we soon acclimatised. In those days the Eastern Counties kept two outstation buses at Shotley Gate, in the garage halfway up Bristol Hill. These were staffed on a shift basis by three regular locally domiciled crews, while a third bus, from the main Ipswich depot, helped maintain the full timetable. The local crews were responsible for keeping their vehicles clean and this they did as they came on duty early in the mornings, the first bus was at 7.15am, followed by the 7.55. At Ipswich we were joined by children from other directions and then boarded a special bus which took us on to school.”
“As we had to pick up even more children our route took us out by Rushmere and Kesgrave, then through Martlesham RAF Station to Brightwell, Fakenham and Kirton before joining the main Ipswich to Felixstowe Road near Trimley. For the boys the highlight of this daily run, in both directions, was the traversing of Martlesham Camp. This was the RAF’s experimental station, as Felixstowe was the marine equivalent, and every new aircraft, both civil and military was sent to ether of these stations for testing before entering service. We saw many prototypes, including the first Hurricane and Spitfire fighters and many others that were never developed further. On the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the road through the camp was immediately closed and our bus had to be diverted.”
“With the outbreak of the Second World War we were issued with our gas masks and the school was provided with air raid shelters.

Children with gas masks during World War Two

Sign posts and other locality identifying signs were removed and there was the boarding up of some windows and security taping of others. The Eastern Counties dispersed its buses from Ipswich depot, a number being relocated in Wolverstone Park and six single deckers were stabled at the Shotley garage, which made the accommodation there very cramped. Night driving conditions became very hazardous with the compulsory shielding of headlamps, but due to severe traffic reduction, accidents were minimal. Later came the use of “producer gas” to propel road vehicles causing many “incidents” such as roadside fires started by burning coal from the producer and the Shotley bus regularly stalling ascending Freston hill because of lack of gas! At this juncture the driver and conductor would manually bounce the towed producer unit up and down, to accelerate the fire into producing more gas. Schedules suffered in consequence.”
“Another significant change caused by the war was the threat to London from German bombers requiring the evacuation of children from there to “safe” areas, East Suffolk being considered one of the latter. Our school roll numbers thus increased considerably and was further added to by a number of German Jewish children who had been rescued from Hitler’s Germany on the eve of the outbreak of war. Likeable as these children were, the rest of us were very suspicious of them, even thinking of them as spies! Unfortunately, it was never deemed necessary to tell us about who they were or the traumatic experiences they had been through. Had we known the true circumstances I feel sure that we would have been much more sympathetic.”
“By the middle of 1940 with the fall, to the Germans, of the Low Countries and France, East Suffolk no longer looked “safe” and evacuation became an exercise that we were all to experience, some for the second time. Planned with military precision, it almost failed as I was concerned. It was a Sunday morning and normal bus transport arrangements, as for school, were to apply. Frank Berry one of our local drivers was to take the special bus to Ipswich where we would, as on weekdays, transfer to the school bus – for the last time. My mother and I waited impatiently for the bus for what seemed hours, she crying because I was leaving her and I because I was afraid that my friends would go without me. Eventually Frank came down the road “hell for leather” on his bicycle still in carpet slippers and we soon got away, but had missed the school bus at Ipswich. We had to go on to Felixstowe without changing buses and arrived at school just as the briefing ended. Then the long crocodile march to the town station, along with gas masks slung and onto our designated part of the train of which, appropriately, one of my classmates’ father, was the guard, as far as Ipswich, we then having no idea of our ultimate destination.”
“It was a long, interesting day for rail buffs. We travelled first to Cambridge and then on, through Bedford and Bletchley towards Oxford, over lines which have now mainly disappeared. The line from Cambridge to Oxford was largely single track and at every station we crossed freight trains, loaded with war materials and this on a Sunday. We missed Oxford by traversing the now defunct Yarnton Curve, to join the Oxford to Worcester line and started shedding our passengers at Worcester.
Then on to Bromsgrove where many more children alighted, eventually only leaving our school pupils on the train until we arrived on the outskirts of Birmingham. Here we changed trains and soon came to Redditch, our destination. Then onto buses and out to villages where, in school and halls, we were received into our new communities, some of us being hand picked by our foster mothers on the spot and the rest being delivered”

Veronica Lake in Ipswich

David Kindred — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 16:23:57 +0000

Film premiers, Hollywood stars as friends and a showbiz lifestyle, all sound a long way from life in Ipswich, Suffolk. American film star of the 1940s, Veronica Lake, lived in Ipswich. when Veronica was asked ‘Why Ipswich?’ She said, ‘Why not?’
Thanks to Valerie Giles of Ipswich, we now know more about the stars time in town in the 1960s. Valerie explains how she spent hours every day chatting with the Hollywood Star. Valerie said. “In 1969 my father was a regular at the Thomas Eldred public house in Cedarcroft Road, Ipswich and another regular there asked my father if I would be interested in caring for a friend of his. I went to 137 Valley Road, Ipswich and to my great surprise found that it was film star Veronica Lake. She explained that she had come to England to appear on a television show to promote her autobiography “Veronica” While in London she was admitted to hospital and one of her nurses was the daughter of the chap who was a regular at the Thomas Eldred. That was the Ipswich connection.”

In November 1970 Veronica Lake made a rare appearance in Ipswich when she attended an annual darts tournament at the Suffolk Mission for the Deaf and Dumb in Fonnereau Road, Ipswich to present prizes. This photograph was taken as the tiny star, who was around five foot tall, walked through the crowd. Were you there that day or did you meet Veronica Lake during her stay in Ipswich.

“I was just twenty-one when Veronica came to Ipswich and she immediately became very fond of me, possibly because I was born the day before her own daughter Diana in October 1948. I visited the house every day for around three hours helping with a little house work and being her friend. She rarely left the house and I was always told to keep details about her a secret. Veronica became very fond of my son Vincent, who was around two-years-old, while she was in town. She was a lovely lady who I still have a great deal of affection for”. Veronica moved from the house in Valley Road to a flat in Marlborough Court in Henley Road, where I continued my daily visits, before she returned to hospital in London and then back to America in around 1971”.

It seems that times were hard for Veronica Lake when she came to Ipswich. The days of high spending and Hollywood parties were over. A drink problem had blighted her career and she died in 1973 of hepatitis in her early fifties. Explaining in an interview in October 1970 why she thought the work in theatre and television came to an end she said “It all goes back to a live television show when something happened which I could not help and I have never been asked to do anything since. She had apologised to viewers about the way she sounded because she said she had a cold and left suddenly during an advertisement break.

A Veronica Lake film poster.

Her lonely life in Ipswich is summed up in the same interview when she said “My three children lead their own lives. We are close in one way, but very independent in another. We correspond if anything particular happens, but we have not got a hell of a lot in common. I have my own life to live”. Her breakthrough film was I Wanted Wings in 1941, a major hit in which she played the second female lead. This success was followed by Hold Back the Dawn later that year. She had starring roles in Sullivan’s Travels, This Gun for Hire, I Married a Witch, The Glass key and So Proudly We Hail. During the early 1940s Veronica Lake was considered one of the most reliable box office draws in Hollywood. She became known for onscreen pairings with actor Alan Ladd. They made four films together. A stray lock of her shoulder-length blonde hair during a publicity photo shoot led to her iconic “peekaboo” hairstyle, which was widely imitated. During World War Two she changed her trademark image to encourage women working in war industry factories to adopt more practical and safer hairstyles.

The Ipswich Cattle Market.

David Kindred — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 07:58:36 +0000

A child walking from school in the middle of Ipswich would be amazed to see a herd of cattle approaching. The Ipswich Livestock market was held every Tuesday until the 1970s at sites around Princes Street. Bernard Jasper of Ipswich, was a pupil at St Matthews School, Ipswich, in the 1940s and on his journey to school he would often encounter cattle and other ‘evidence’ that it was market day. Bernard recalls those days and tells us what life was like at the original St Matthews School, Ipswich, when it was so cold in the winter pupils worked in gloves coats and scarves to keep warm in the classroom heated by an open coal fire. Getting better marks in class was rewarded with a place nearer the fire Bernard explained “As a junior school boy in the 1940s, just after World War Two, I walked to and from my home in Ranelagh Road, to St. Matthew’s School, which was in the now disappeared St. Matthew’s Church Lane. I was always rather apprehensive on Tuesdays, as that was the day when cattle were driven from a rail head near Princes Street bridge, along Princes Street, and into Portman Road. On many occasions I can remember, as an eight year old on my way home from school for lunch, being confronted by what seemed to me to be a massive herd covering the width of the road, bearing down on me at a rate of knots. The herdsmen were usually at the back, driving them on. Such a massive tonnage of large animals approaching me was frightening. However, they always seemed to purposefully avoid any pedestrians, including myself. The main danger was the possibility of slipping over on the pungent and very numerous freshly laid cowpats liberally scattered on the road and pavements. Can you imagine this happening now in Princes Street? How times have changed!”

The livestock market close to Princes Street during a fall of snow in January 1962. Families like that of Mary Clay (nee Fletcher) lived in one of the houses, which then surrounded the market.

“The original St. Matthew’s School building was to a youngster like me at the time, a rather formidable Victorian place, with what seemed like cathedral size classrooms that had windows too high to see out of. There was no central heating of course; the only warmth in winter was a coal fire in one corner. I can remember that my class of 50 pupils would wear gloves, coats and scarves in the winter months. Weekly tests were held, and those who gained the higher marks were allotted the desks nearest to the fire! During the Second World War years, my class had to go into the school shelter when the air raid siren went off, and we continued the lesson there until the ‘all clear’ sounded.”
“I have a ‘taste’ memory which is still rather off-putting. In the winter months, the daily milk delivery would be put in front of the open fire, which resulted in it having a sickly flavour. We would have to drink our third-of-a-pint bottle of warmed up milk at morning break.”
“For football, cricket and other organised games we were marched down to Alderman Road recreation ground, having changed at the school. For swimming we used St. Matthew’s Baths; in the summer months we went to Broomhill pool.” ”The teachers were pretty strict, and the lessons were what we now call formal, but this particular church school had a very good reputation for teaching the ‘three Rs’ extremely thoroughly, and I am grateful for the grounding that I had, and the fact that a high percentage of the pupils passed the eleven-plus. I went on to Northgate Grammar School in 1949 well prepared for taking on what was on offer there. The St Matthews School building became outdated, and the late 1950s and 1960s development ripped that whole area apart. The school needed replacing. Nevertheless I was sad when it happened, and when I stand at the corner of Handford Road and look across the roundabout towards the Wolsey Theatre, I can picture the old building in its original position; this would be more or less astride the north bound carriageway of Civic Drive, with part of it probably sitting on the roundabout itself. Both staff and building have long gone, but I am grateful for what St Matthews did for my education.
Mary Clay (nee Fletcher), who now lives in South Carolina USA, has her own market day memories “During my childhood my family lived on the corner of Portman Road and Friars Bridge Road. One day I was looking out of our window watching a herd of cattle being driven down Friars Bridge Road, when one cow came ambling up to the window and casually looked in at me. I had the net curtain over my head and got tangled up in it as I screamed. My dad, who was deaf, was napping in his armchair with the newspaper over his face. I must have made quite a racket because it woke him up and he got tangled in the newspaper. What a sight we made, like something out of the Keystone Kops

Cattle being loaded into wagons in a yard next to the Princes Street bridge in Ipswich in the 1950s. Bernard Jasper recalls finding himself among the cattle as a child walking to school.

Frank Symonds of Ipswich used to earn pocket money on market days. Frank said, “I spent every morning at the cattle market during the school summer holidays in the 1930s helping the drovers get the animals into pens. We were armed with a short stick to prod the animals with. At the end of market day I would again help the drovers through the streets with the animals. For this I would get a sixpence (2.5p). This does not seem much today, but with that I could buy a bottle of Tizer drink and a two penny bar of Cadbury’s chocolate.”