Shotley Gate
Shotley Gate photos (9 available)
Shotley Gate maps (2 available)
Map of Suffolk
Beautifully hand-drawn and coloured, dating from around 1840
Personalised maps
Create an historic map centred directly on any postcode!
Shotley Gate books (6 available)
Newmarket Town and City Memories
Hardback
Newmarket Town and City Memories
Paperback
- 1 photos on Shotley Gate appear in 1 Frith books - View photos of Shotley Gate
- Read extracts and see photos from these books on Shotley Gate and Suffolk
Shotley Gate memories
Read and share memories of Shotley Gate and Suffolk inspired by Frith photos
The Gates to 'Hell'
I remember Shotley Gate 1954/55. I wish I could erase it from my memory. 12 months of sheer Hell at the infamous Ganges. I enjoyed my Naval Service and I did well, but Ganges almost defeated me. I danced a jig when they demolished the place!
JW
Family History
My ancestors owned this public house in the late 18th century. Prior to this they were tenants of the Duke of Bristol and the head of the household was the ferryman. He was mentioned in a letter to the Duke from a disgruntled customer claimed that his attitude was unbecoming!
We have visited the area many times during my search for my ancestors.
Contributed by Mark Cuckow
HMS Ganges
Until the mid '70s Shotley Gate was the home of HMS Ganges, a Royal Navy training establishment. As 15 year old boys under training in 1964 we were allowed to visit the Post Office (see photograph in this collection) to draw money out of our Post Office savings books - usually to buy food of some sort as Ganges food was so bad!! The Bristol Arms was out of bounds to us boys but I did finally get a drink there about 30 years later.
Contributed by Phil Smith
Suffolk memories
The Gates to 'Hell'
I remember Shotley Gate 1954/55. I wish I could erase it from my memory. 12 months of sheer Hell at the infamous Ganges. I enjoyed my Naval Service and I did well, but Ganges almost defeated me. I danced a jig when they demolished the place!
JW
Extracts From Shotley Gate & Suffolk books
St Mary’s, one of the largest
in Suffolk, is not a typical
Suffolk wool church, and has
an elegant lead spire. Inside is
the 600-year-old Angelus Bell,
one of the oldest in the country,
which is inscribed ‘Ave Maria
Gracia Plena Dominus Tecum’.
Perhaps the man who made the
bell had other things on his mind
when it came to putting in the
inscription, as he forgot to invert
the words laterally in the mould,
and they appear backwards on
the finished article!
An extract from from"Ispwich Pocket Album".
A 20th-century means of pro-
ducing power shares the banks
of the Orwell with vessels which
harness one of the oldest forms
of power. With shallow mudflats
along the banks of the tidal
Orwell estuary, moored sailing
boats end up on their keels twice
a day.
An extract from from"Ispwich Pocket Album".
We are looking east along Tavern
Street from Cornhill. On the left
is the red brick and stone Lloyds
Bank building, with its fretted
skyline, while to the right is the
neo-classical Post Office, built
in 1881.
An extract from from"Ispwich Pocket Album".
Wolsey fell from grace when he failed to support Henry VIII’s wish to
marry Anne Boleyn, and it was never completed. The brick gateway,
with its barely discernible royal cipher, is all that remains.
Just a few years later, Christchurch Mansion was built on the site of
the 12th century priory of the Holy Trinity. This Tudor country house
is now a museum, and its adjoining art gallery houses a fine collection
of paintings by Constable and Gainsborough. It is interesting to recall
that this marvellous house almost became a housing estate in the
late 19th century. The Cobbold brewing family bought the building
and then presented it to the town, thus enabling us still to enjoy this
monument to gracious living.
Tavern Street contains the Great White Horse Hotel, which, despite
its Georgian facade, is a timber-framed building dating back to the
16th century. Famous visitors have included Dickens (who wrote about
it in ‘Pickwick Papers’), George II in 1736, Louis XVIII of France in
1807, and Lord Nelson in 1800. Opposite the hotel stands a group of
buildings which appear to be Tudor, but are in fact reproductions, built
in the 1930s when such imitations were in vogue. Today, despite the
presence of the two major ports of Harwich and Felixstowe only ten
miles away at the mouth of the Orwell, Ipswich remains an important
industrial and commercial centre.
An extract from from"Ispwich Pocket Album".
The old part of the town is mainly late Victorian, although it expanded rapidly after World War II as an overspill for London.
An extract from from"Suffolk Photographic Memories".