Ixworth
Ixworth maps (2 available)
Map of Suffolk
Beautifully hand-drawn and coloured, dating from around 1840
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Ixworth books (4 available)
Ixworth memories
Read and share memories of Ixworth and Suffolk inspired by Frith photos
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Suffolk memories
So Many Happy Hours
I spent so many happy summer holidays in Great Barton, and in particular Conyers Green where my Aunt Norah Lovelace lived in a cottage next to the old chapel building. I cycled often to the village store/post office, and to my friend's parent's farm up the lane at the side of the cottage, their name was Rolfe and we had many lovely Sunday lunches there, going to Sunday school afterward. There was no great television to watch in those days, my aunt only watched the news on her black and white, but it didn't matter as there always seemed to be something to do and living most of the year round in a city the countryside was great, I loved it ...read more here
A memory of Conyers Green contributed by Shirley Waters
School in Walsham
I atended primary school in Walsham from 1953 to 1955, my father was stationed at Shepards Grove. We lived in West House about a mile out of town toward Bury St Edmonds. I enjoyed my time in school there. My wife and I made a trip back to places I lived at and we went through Walsham and I remembered most of the places.
I remember catching sticklebacks in the stream by the school. Going to the crash site of one of the jets from the base. It was just past where the school is now.
The school had pictures of the archery class, I was in one of those pictures and I wonder if any one might ...read more here
A memory of Walsham-Le-Willows contributed by Bernard Myer
Harry Elmer
I'm sure I remember a Harry Elmer......did he have a shop in Elmswell or did he rent out motor cars or even caravans from Woolpit?
I was born in Elmswell in 1947 and the name certainly rings a very loud bell and was constantly mentioned in our household at the time.
A memory of Woolpit contributed by roger lambourne
Elmers Mill - Family History
Hi there. Harry Elmer (who I understand was my GGrandad's brother) owned and ran this Mill into the 1940s. The Muggeridge Collection has some wonderful images of him replendent in the very gentlemanly working clothes of a miller of his ilk, and still working in his 80's. Anecdotally Elmers Mill in Woolpit and Drinkstone Mill close by were dead ringers for each other, except they ran (i.e. their sails rotated) in the opposite direction to each other. This has recently been questioned on the Suffolk Mills site which has some memories posted about the structure of Elmers Woolpit Mill after it was tail-winded in 1963 and collapsed, saying it was built of "inferior materials" and therefore of much more recent (perhaps ...read more here
A memory of Woolpit contributed by Les Elmer
Extracts From Ixworth & 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".