The Knowhere Guide

Best and Worst in Ipswich, Suffolk*

Ipswich, Suffolk Triumphs and Tragedies

Favourite Building

• if u go down the alley by the buttermarket that leads 2the cattle market bus station, u can see the back of this shrunken little tudor hose. I don't know why i love it, but i do! the town hall is also cool, so is willis caroon
• St. Margaret's Parish Church
• If you want to see the past and the present side by side, walk around the willis coroon building (which I love despite itself) and visit the Unitarian church, an untouched and unspoilt oasis of georgian architecture that hasn't been "sympatheticaly" converted into a solicitors or an estate agents. The Catherine Deneuve of buildings - timeless understated beauty in a disposable world.
• Christchurch Mansion in Christchurch park - great for chasing pigeons and eating ice-creams.
• A delapadated section of the docks near Stoke bridge. It looks so unsafe I'm just waited to see who it collapes on.
• Willis Corroon, Ancient House in Buttermarket (now home to Lakeland kitchenware shop), Town Hall, St Margaret's Church
• The tomb of Keops, Geeza, Egypt because there aint nothing good about ipswich, they were all pulled down in the early 70`s to build world headquaters for insurance giants.

Demolish It Now Building

• everything, GO ON SMASH IT!!!!!!!!! RARGHHH!!! not really i love ipswich, i want it to bare my offspring.
• Northgate high school.
• Nuke the place, besides ain't it the end of the sewer pipe from the rest of England?
• The college.
• The Buttermarket Shopping Centre.
• The civic building - nuke it now.
• Stoke Park Shopping Centre
• The whole of Cardinal Park. Whose idea is it to have entertainment set around a car-park? Baffling. Please try to go somewhere else instead.
• Odeon cinema, Asda, Paul's Malt building by the docks, disused (condemned?) office buildings in Carr Street and Great Colman Street
• Nacton high School. Sorry, I'm a Coplestonian and the rivalry lives on!!
• All the world headquaters of the insurance giants
• The Civic Centre - a totally hideous piece of architecture

The Best Things

• the parks ,the docks , the river, the kids.
• Ipswich was a very good little market town when I was a kid over 55 years ago but it has been ruined by an ambitious council determined to turn it into a city and outsiders trying to call the football team tractor boys. It is not a city and now it is not a little market town either because of loony toons trying to mould into something they think it should be ie a city which would enhance their social position.
• The vast countryside helping us to breathe through the Ipswich smog.
• The Attic
• It's taken ten years, but I finally like Ipswich. If you want it you can find it, where else can you find a community Samba Band ? if nothing else, music in the park makes it all worth it. The first sunday in July all the world is in Christchurch park, and they are are all tapping their feet.
• Everything is nearby - not a lot of walking necessary from pub to pub/club etc
• The Merman at Orford Castle.
• The parks - nuff said! The fact that you can get out into the countryside within minutes from the town centre.
• IPSWICH COMMUNITY RADIO (on twice a year for a month at a time),open access anarchy on the legal airwaves; ITFC, Red Flag 77, Hippy Hill,Flex Fm (pirate radio),
• Ipswich Town FC, and they try your patience. Nightlife is beginning to improve but there's too high a proportion of chain pubs.
• Dhaka
• The East Anglian Daily Times is produced there - one of the best local daily papers in the country - and that's about all I think
• Having moved south to Bognor Regis, I have to say Ipswich seems a heck of a lot more fun with better facilities, public transport and road links than it did when I lived there!
• The YWCA - best place for new and temporary residents to stay and meet people. (Boys and girls welcome, book weeks/months in advance.)
• The link roads to get you outta here are good...
• Rebecca Jones on About Anglia. Say no more.
• About Anglia ITV at 6 p.m one of the true modern wonders of the world. Is it possible to be more local than a local news programme????
• I can't think of anything GOOD about Ipswich but Christchurch Park isn't bad...
• The best thing is the atmosphere. Everyone is just out to have fun.
• Best band: the Cinnamon Years, pop/folk. "mr. smith", 7 track demo, available from James Taylor, 13 Willoughby Road (basement flat).
• The Malt Kiln, Wherry Quay. Excellent pub for young people, best in the school/uni holidays when underage drinking is at its peak.
• Medieval architecture. Check out especially the "Ancient House" in the Butter Market, with its superb pargetting (sculpted plasterwork).
• Wolsey Art Gallery
• Not many other English towns let you ogle big birds like Ollie, Tilly, Twiggy and co. They're bloody big Ostriches at the Victoria Garden Centre near Christchurch Park.
  The ostriches have now [summer 96] gone from the Victoria Garden Centre but the newer acquisitions are a better source of amusement anyway. Now, there are rheas (ostriches), marras, very greedy goats, wallabies and Rasher and Sasha the Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs. Top place but rumour has it that it isn't to be with us for much longer.

The Worst Things

• The men are annoying
• the idiots who have six pints and then want to fight, pushers and the kids.
• Gary Boys, Rude boys (those people whose intelligence is proportional to the height of their car off the floor) or anyone who thinks that Ipswich is the be all and end all of this world.
• Everyone knows everyone, or knows someone who knows that bloke who knows you, or knows someone you used to work with or who is the sister/brother of someone you used to go out with. chances are everyone born here is probably related.
• all the ugly, low-life gary boyz and sharons
• Stupid twats from the ipswich high scool being to loud after half a shady on the sly...posh knobs
• Gary Boys, Garage music everywhere you go.
• Clothes shops could be better - usually end up going into Cambridge for a good shop.
• The increasingly bizarre traffic/roads policy. Bus lanes everywhere, pointless thirty mile an hour speed limits (i.e. Ipswich - Martlesham road) and cycle lanes. But worst of all, the current idea of putting bloody traffic lights on roundabouts! Surely the point of a roundabout is to avoid the need to have traffic lights? Apparently not in Ipswich - more specifically around Grange Farm on that Martlesham road. Ridiculous.
• The proliferation of traffic lights that seem to be springing up anywhere there's a junction. Did the council buy a job lot cheap? Traffic congestion - it's getting worse in spite of the bus lanes etc.
• The worst thing about Ipswich is a company called ANGLIA MOTOR INSURANCE 31 Princes Street the worst car insurance company ever.They never reply to your letters and customer services dont even seem to exist despite them telling you that someone will ring you back(never do)when questioned about this they state that we did call but there was no reply.( I have Bt caller display and no calls registered.I feel a lot better now writing this ray.j.p@btinternet.com a very unhappy customer.(now an ex customer)
• A council who welcome every development with open arms so that the place is full of Drive-in's, horrible pubs and rubbish shopping centres, and The Evening Star - local evening paper that is essential reading but that applauds all of the above. Both of these bodies are leading a campaign to get Ipswich city status which kind of defeats the object of living in a Suffolk TOWN. Everyone who wants to live in a city should piss off to London!
• Lack of decent clubs and live music venues: The Regent gets has-beens and while the Corn Exchange gets the odd good band it's very infrequent and the acoustics are dreadful. The locals tend to be stand-offish, and the accent's pretty dodgy. Loads of derelict buildings that have been neglected for years. An appalling one-way system - one mile detours to reach the next street are commonplace. Crap shops.
• Libertys
• The Evening Star - one of the most tacky tabloid efforts of a local paper
• I lived near Ipswich in 1995 for 12 months and used to go into the town regularly. Ipswich has lovely buildings and most of the people are very friendly. However, while I was there I noticed an increasing trend of violence - more and more you couldn't go out unless you wanted your face smashed in. Several of my friends came from Chantry, which is like the arse of Birmingham, and they said Chantry was full of guns, knives and stupidity... this was an opinion that I thoroughly agreed with by the end of the year. Also, every town match was an opportunity for local bands of thugs led by the I.R.A. (Ipswich Republican Army...dear God!) to get out on the piss and attack anyone not wearing Ipswich Town colours. Anyone wearing Ipswich colours was thrashed by Norwich (nickers off ready when I come home) Town supporters who turn up aggressively drunk in Ipswich every second Saturday. Basically Ipswich is a nice place to drive through and perhaps spend a week, but avoid all forms of life... if possible.
• Grass verge parking. This is getting so bad the town in parts is begining to look like a holiday camp minus the tents, Defoe Road is particularly well adept at creating this impression.
• Bus Lanes They are coming up everywhere, the plan would seem to be to convert the whole town road system to bus lanes, and then charge the earth so that no one uses them. Traffic problems solved.
• Sundays are so dull (especially in winter, as at least in the summer, you can venture elsewhere in East Anglia). Some may actually enjoy this but hailing from Newcastle, I like Sunday nights out...(sob!)
• I live here so I normally have to go back after the weekend... There isn't much choice in Ipswich (eg only one cinema who can charge whatever they want 'cos there's nowhere else within 50 miles!), and shopping for clothes is nigh on impossible.
• Lack of decent cheap, crowded, sweaty, dodgy, cool clubs for young people, (but not too young!). Or perhaps it's the young people who are missing.
• The Evening Star and its obsession with Daniel O'Donnell and its Clean up the Orwell campaign not to mention its Pride in Ipswich campaign etc. etc.
• The lamest thing is the amount of hassle you get from Garys, police etc.
• The council's unerring willingness to build large shopping centres (Tower Ramparts, Buttermarket) and not being able to fill them with shops. Utter crap.
• Worst thing in the town are the council offices, AKA the Civic Centre, and the really naff sculpture supposedly of a ship, on the roundabout outside it.

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Last updated: 2008-06-12