St Stephens Church, St Stephens Lane, Ipswich - 01473 258 070 tourist@ipswich.gov.uk

Ipswich - From "Gippa's Wick". Gippa was a Viking who sought shelter and sailed into an inlet (wick) and gave the place its name. The very name Viking means the people of the fjords or inlets.

Under the Roman empire, the area around Ipswich formed an important route inland to rural towns and settlements via the rivers Orwell and Gipping. A large Roman fort, part of the coast defences of Britain, stood at Felixstowe (13 miles, 21 km), and the largest villa in Suffolk stood at Castle Hill (north-west Ipswich). Ipswich is one of England's oldest towns, and took shape in Anglo-Saxon times as the main centre between York and London for North Sea trade to Scandinavia and the Rhine. It served the Kingdom of East Anglia, and began developing in the time of King Rædwald, supreme ruler of the English (616-624). The famous ship-burial and treasure at Sutton Hoo nearby (9 miles, 14.5 km) is probably his grave. The Ipswich Museum houses replicas of the Roman Mildenhall Treasure and the Sutton Hoo treasure. A gallery devoted to the town's origins includes Anglo-Saxon weapons, jewellery and other artefacts.

The 7th century town, called 'Gippeswick' was centred near the quay. Towards 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. 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. 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. 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. The abbreviation 'Gipes' appears on the coins.

King John granted the town its first charter in 1200, laying the mediaeval foundations of its modern civil government. In the next four centuries it made the most of its wealth, trading Suffolk cloth with the Continent. Five large religious houses, including two Augustinian Priories (St Peter and St Paul, and Holy Trinity, both mid-12th century, and those of the Greyfriars (Franciscans, before 1298), Ipswich Whitefriars (Carmelites founded 1278-79) and Blackfriars (Dominicans, before 1263), stood in mediaeval Ipswich. The last Carmelite Prior of Ipswich was the celebrated John Bale, author of the oldest English historical verse-drama (Kynge Johan, c.1538). 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. 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.

Around 1380, Geoffrey Chaucer satirised the merchants of Ipswich in the Canterbury Tales. Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, the son of a wealthy landowner, was born in Ipswich about 1475. 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. He remains one of the town's most famed figures.

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. 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 decade of the 1630's and what has become known as the Great Migration.

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 is now known as the Great White Horse Hotel. Dickens made the hotel famous in chapter XXI of The Pickwick Papers, vividly describing the hotel's meandering corridors and stairs.

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 elegant 15 Tavern Street building has been the site of the Library since 1836.

In 1797 Lord and Lady Nelson moved to Ipswich, and in 1800 Lord Nelson was appointed High Steward of Ipswich.

In the mid-19th century Coprolite (fossilized animal dung) was discovered, the material was mined and then dissolved in acid, the resulting mixture forming the basis of Fisons fertilizer business.

Ipswich was subject to bombing by German Zeppelins during the first world war but the greatest damage by far occurred during the German bombing raids of WWII. The area in and around the docks were especially devasted. The last bombs to fall on Ipswich landed on Seymour Street in March of 1945.

Ipswich has undergone an extensive rebuilding and a gentrification programme in recent years, principally centred around the waterfront. Though this has turned a former industrial dock area into an emerging residential and commercial centre, it is being completed at the expense of much of the town's industrial and maritime heritage and in spite of efforts made by a local civic group, The Ipswich Society. Much of this development is residential and is marketed at high net-worth individuals in the DINKY demographic. As such, some have considered it incompatible with Ipswich's existing socio-economic mix. It could therefore be considered to be aimed at encouraging economic migration to the town, particularly as a commutable satellite town of London.

The Tolly Cobbold brewery, built in the 19th century and rebuilt 1894-1896, is one of the finest Victorian breweries in the United Kingdom. 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.

The town centre contains the glass-clad building owned by Willis, properly called the Willis Building but still often called the "Willis-Faber building" by locals, as the company Willis Corroon themselves used to be called Willis Faber. Designed by Norman Foster, the building dates from 1974. It became the youngest Grade I listed building in Britain in 1991 and at the time one of only two buildings to be listed and be under 30 years of age.

Ipswich is set to be the main hub for University Campus Suffolk, which will give Suffolk its first university, though it is essentially a collaborative project between Suffolk College (a local further education college) and two other regional universities. It is hoped that within a decade, a University of Suffolk in its own right will become established out of UCS.

In September 1993 Ipswich and Arras, Nord Pas-de-Calais, France, became twin towns, and a square in the new Buttermarket development was named Arras Square to mark the relationship.

On 13 March 2007 Ipswich was awarded the cleanest town award.

Ipswich remains a 'town' despite a few attempts at winning 'city' status. It does not have a cathedral, so the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich is based at Bury St Edmunds the former headquarters of West Suffolk.