Ipswich () is a port town and borough in Suffolk, England, located on the River Orwell. It is the county town, and largest in Suffolk, followed by Lowestoft and Bury St Edmunds, and the third-largest population centre in East Anglia, after Peterborough and Norwich. It is northeast of London. In , Ipswich had a population of , making it the fourth-largest in the East of England and the 42nd-largest in England and Wales. It surrounds the towns and villages of Kesgrave, Woodbridge, Bramford and Martlesham Heath.
Ipswich was first recorded during the medieval period as Gippeswic, the town has also been recorded as Gyppewicus and Yppswyche. It has been continuously inhabited since the Saxon period, and is believed to be one of the oldest towns in the United Kingdom.Hills, Catherine. "England's Oldest Town" . Retrieved 2 August 2015. The settlement was of great economic importance to the Kingdom of England throughout its history, particularly in trade, with the town's historical dock, Ipswich Waterfront, known as the largest and most important dock in the Kingdom.K. Wade, 'Gipeswic – East Anglia's first economic capital, 600–1066', in N. Salmon and R. Malster (eds), Ipswich From The First To The Third Millennium (Ipswich, 2001), 1–6."Ipswich Port is a success story but we must protect old waterfront too" . Ipswich Star
Ipswich is divided into various quarters, with the town centre and the waterfront drawing the most footfall. The town centre features the retail shopping district and the historic town square, known as the Cornhill. The waterfront, south of the town centre on a meander of the River Orwell, offers a picturesque setting with a marina, luxury yachts, high-rise apartment buildings, and a variety of restaurants and cafes. The waterfront is also home to the University of Suffolk campus.
Ipswich is adjacent to the Suffolk & Essex Coast & Heaths National Landscape AONB and is close to Dedham Vale AONB. The town has a tourist sector, with 3.5 million people reported to have visited the town in 2016. In 2020, Ipswich was ranked as an emerging global tourist destination by TripAdvisor.
History Ipswich is one of England's oldest towns, and is claimed to be the oldest still continuing town to have been established and developed by the English, with continuous settlement since early Anglo-Saxon times.
Roman settlement A large Roman fort, part of the coastal defences of Britain, stood at Walton near Felixstowe (,Fairclough J. and Plunkett S. J. 'Drawings of Walton Castle and other Monuments in Walton and Felixstowe', Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History 39 Part 4, 419–459. See also Fairclough J. Boudica to Raedwald: East Anglia's Relations with Rome (Malthouse Press, Ipswich 2010), 174–77. and the largest Roman villa in Suffolk (possibly an administrative complex) stood at Castle Hill (north-west Ipswich).The so-called 'Whitton' villa, see Fairclough J. Boudica to Raedwald (cited above), 134–145.
Middle Ages
The modern town took shape in Anglo-Saxon times (7th–8th centuries) around the Port of Ipswich. As the coastal states of north-western Europe emerged from the collapse of the Roman Empire, essential North Sea trade and communication between eastern Britain and the continent (especially to Scandinavia, and through the Rhine) passed through the former Roman ports of London (serving the kingdoms of Mercia, the East Saxons, Kent) and York (Eoforwic) (serving the Kingdom of Northumbria).
Gipeswic (also in other spellings such as Gippeswich)Bowen, Emanuel "An Accurate Map of the County of Suffolk Divided into its Hundreds c. 1760" arose as the equivalent to these, serving the Kingdom of East Anglia,Hodges, R. Dark Age Economics: The Origins of Town and Trade AD 600–1000 (London 1982)Plunkett S. Suffolk in Anglo-Saxon Times (Tempus, Stroud 2005), 76–78, 129–133, 148–52, 156–58, 200–202Gardner, Rhodri "Ipswich, Cranfield's Mill", in "Archaeology in Suffolk 2005", Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History 41 Part 2, 2006, p.251Verhulst A. E. The Rise of Cities in North-Western Europe (Cambridge University Press 1999), pp. 27–30Malster R. A History of Ipswich (Phillimore, Chichester 2000), pp. 5–13. its early imported wares dating to the time of King Rædwald, ruler of the East Angles (616–624). The famous ship-burial and treasure at Sutton Hoo nearby () is probably his grave. The Ipswich Museum houses replicas of the Roman Mildenhall and Sutton Hoo treasures. A gallery devoted to the town's origins includes Anglo-Saxon weapons, jewellery and other artefacts.
The seventh-century town was centred near the quay. Around 700 AD, Frisian potters from the Netherlands area settled in Ipswich and set up the first large-scale potteries in England since Roman times. Their wares were traded far across England, and the industry was unique to Ipswich for 200 years.K. Wade, "Gipeswic – East Anglia's First Economic Capital 600–1066", in Salmon N. P. and Malster R. (Eds), Ipswich From the First to the Third Millennium (Papers from an Ipswich Society Symposium), (Ipswich Society, Ipswich 2001), 1–6, at pp. 3–4.Plunkett S. J. Suffolk in Anglo-Saxon Times (Tempus, Stroud 2005), 130–133, 201. With growing prosperity, in about 720 AD a large new part of the town was laid out in the Buttermarket area. Ipswich was becoming a place of national and international importance.Wade 2001. Parts of the ancient road plan still survive in its modern streets.
After the invasion of 869, Ipswich fell under Viking rule. The earth ramparts circling the town centre were probably raised by Vikings in Ipswich around 900 to prevent its recapture by the English.Wade 2001, 5.Malster R. A History of Ipswich (Phillimore, Chichester 2000), 13. They were unsuccessful. The town operated a mint under royal licence from King Edgar in the 970s, which continued through the Norman Conquest until the time of King John, in about 1215.North J. J. English Hammered Coinage (Spink and Son, London 1980), Volume I: Early Anglo-Saxon to Henry III, "Mint Towns" (p 194), Ipswich, Suffolk: Edgar to John. Example figure:Aethelred II first hand type, Plate X no. 23, Cat. 766 & p. 120. The abbreviation Gipes appears on the coins.
King John granted the town its first charter in 1200, laying the medieval foundations of its modern civil government.Martin, Geoffrey "The Medieval and Early Modern Borough" in Salmon N. P. and Malster R. (eds), Ipswich From the First to the Third Millennium (Papers from an Ipswich Society Symposium), (Ipswich Society, Ipswich 2001), 7–17.Text of charter (translated into English) and image of 1200 Town Seal, see Wodderspoon, J., Memorials of the Ancient Town of Ipswich (Pawsey (Ipswich): Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans (London) 1850), 'Ancient Incorporation of the Town', pp 75–130, at pp 75–85. Thenceforth Ipswich strongly maintained its jurisdiction over the Liberty of Ipswich, an administrative area extending over about 35 square kilometres centred on the town.Briggs, Keith "The bounds of the Liberty of Ipswich", Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History 44, 19–38 (2017)
In the next four centuries it made the most of its wealth. Five large religious houses, including two Augustinian Priories (St Peter and St Paul, and Holy Trinity, both mid-12th centuryMalster 2000, 41–45.Briggs, Keith "The rentals of Holy Trinity Priory in Ipswich", Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History 44, 456–461 (2019)), and those of the Ipswich Greyfriars (Franciscans, before 1298), Ipswich Whitefriars (Carmelites founded 1278–79) and Ipswich Blackfriars (Dominicans, before 1263), stood in medieval Ipswich. The last Carmelite Prior of Ipswich was the celebrated John Bale, author of the oldest English historical verse-drama (Kynge Johan, ).B. Zimmerman, 1899, 'The White Friars at Ipswich', Proc. Suffolk Institute of Archaeology 10 Part 2, 196–204, at p. 199. There were also several hospitals, including the leper hospital of St Mary Magdalene, founded before 1199.
During the Middle Ages the Marian Shrine of Our Lady of Grace was a famous pilgrimage destination, and attracted many pilgrims including Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon.Wodderspoon 1850, 331–332.Malster 2000, 43–47, 63–67. At the Reformation the statue was taken away to London to be burned, though some claim that it survived and is preserved at Nettuno, Italy.Malster 2000, 67.
Around 1380, Geoffrey Chaucer satirised the merchants of Ipswich in The Canterbury Tales. Thomas Wolsey, the future cardinal, was born in Ipswich in 1473 as the son of a wealthy landowner. One of Henry VIII's closest political allies, he founded a college in the town in 1528, which was for its brief duration one of the homes of the Ipswich School.Blatchly J. M. A Famous Antient Seed-Plot of Learning (Ipswich School 2003), 27–41. He remains one of the town's most famed figures.
Early-modern era
During the 14th to 17th centuries Ipswich was a kontor for the Hanseatic League, the port being used for imports and exports to the Baltic.
In the time of Queen Mary the Ipswich Martyrs were burnt at the stake on the Cornhill for their Protestant beliefs. A monument commemorating this event now stands in Christchurch Park. Ipswich was a printing, bookseller centre, and an entrepôt for continental books in the 16th century.King, John N. (1982) The English Reformation Literature: the Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. pp. 100f. . From 1611 to 1634 Ipswich was a major centre for emigration to New England. This was encouraged by the Town Lecturer, Samuel Ward. His brother Nathaniel Ward was first minister of Ipswich, Massachusetts, where a promontory was named 'Castle Hill' after the place of that name in north-west Ipswich, UK. Ipswich was also one of the main ports of embarkation for puritans leaving other East Anglian towns and villages for the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the 1630s and what has become known as the Great Migration.Thompson, Roger, Mobility & Migration, East Anglian Founders of New England, 1629–1640, Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1994
The painter Thomas Gainsborough lived and worked in Ipswich. In 1835, Charles Dickens stayed in Ipswich and used it as a setting for scenes in his novel The Pickwick Papers. The hotel where he resided first opened in 1518; it was then known as The Tavern and later became known as the Great White Horse Hotel. Dickens made the hotel famous in chapter XXII of The Pickwick Papers, vividly describing the hotel's meandering corridors and stairs.
19th and 20th centuries
In 1824 Dr George Birkbeck, with support from several local businessmen, founded one of the first Mechanics' Institutes, which survives to this day as the independent Ipswich Institute reading room and library. The building is located at 15 Tavern Street.
In the mid-19th century coprolite (fossilised animal dung) was discovered; the material was mined and then dissolved in acid, the resulting mixture forming the basis of Fisons fertiliser business.
The Tolly Cobbold brewery, built in the 18th century and rebuilt in 1894–96, is one of the finest Victorian breweries in the UK. There was a Cobbold brewery in the town from 1746 until 2002 when Ridley's Breweries took Tolly Cobbold over. Felix Thornley Cobbold presented Christchurch Mansion to the town in 1896. Smaller breweries include St Jude's Brewery, situated in an 18th-century coach-house near the town centre.
Ipswich was subject to bombing by German Zeppelins during World War I but the greatest damage by far occurred during the German bombing raids of World War II. The area in and around the docks was especially devastated. Eighty civilians died by enemy action in the Ipswich county borough area during the latter war. The last bombs to fall on Ipswich landed on Seymour Road at 2a.m. on 2 March 1945, killing nine people and destroying six houses.