Ipswich, Ancient House 1893

Photo ref: 32205

More about this scene

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.