County Hall / County & Borough Gaols

The old split in administrative areas of East and West Suffolk is commemorated here; they were amalgamated in 1974 to form one large shire county. Ipswich Corporation (County Borough) lost many of its responsibilities as a result. For more information, scroll down to 'County Hall through time'.
2014 image
After years of closure, vandalism and neglect of County Hall, this forgotten entrance suffers only from moss and algae in 2014. By 2015 St Andrew House was converted to residential use and renamed Anton House.
[UPDATE 21.10.2016: "I am a member of the Milestone Society with a particular interest in boundary markers. I know that your group mainly covers Ipswich (your website is fantastic and I can't wait to study your boundary marker page and then visit the town) but I wonder if you might know of the whereabouts of an East Suffolk boundary sign image please? This has become a frustrating quest for me although my enquiries did run a West Suffolk sign to earth. It came from Mildenhall last Friday. The owner’s father worked for Suffolk Highways in 1974 and saved it from a skip. Mike Bardell"]
In January 2017, we discovered a set of 'East Suffolk County Council' signs on a bridge on the edge of Needham Market. Below are further examples provided by Mike Bardell (to whom our thanks) from Southwold and Mendham, all dated within a twelve year time bracket (1914, 1922, 1926).

Photographs courtesy Mike Bardell

Rope Walk
Before moving away from this end of County Hall, it's worth a look round the corner in Grimwade Street and Rope Walk. This area was developed as a sort of County Council campus with, in Rope Walk, St Edmund House (now residential), the NALGO Staff Club, St Paul House (Social Services HQ, now demolished) etc. In Grimwade Street is St Peter House, once a Labour Exchange, now the Register Office. Before the Staff Club was demolished in 2016/17, we took these photographs of the frontage showing the East Suffolk County Council coat of arms. East Suffolk, along with West Suffolk, was created in 1888 as an administrative county of England. The administrative county was based on the eastern quarter sessions division of Suffolk. East Suffolk County Council's headquarters were at East Suffolk County Hall in Ipswich, which was a county borough in its own right. In 1974, most of the county reunified with West Suffolk and the County Borough of Ipswich to form the non-metropolitan county of Suffolk. A small part of East Suffolk moved into Norfolk during the 1974 reorganisation.
   2016 images
Official blazon
Arms: Sable a Cross engrailed Or on a Chief Ermine between two Leopard's Faces of the second a pale Azure thereon upon Waves of the Sea proper an ancient Galley to the sinister sail set and issuant from the sinister chief the Sun in Splendour also of the second.
Crest: On a Wreath of the Colours upon a Rock proper a Falcon belled wings expanded Or the inside of the wings Azure supporting with the dexter claw a Staff erect also proper flying therefrom a Banner also Azure charged with a Garb Gold.
Motto: 'OPUS NOSTRUM DIRIGE' - Direct our work
Origin/meaning
The arms were officially granted on December 14, 1935.
The cross is from the arms of the Uffords, ancient Earls of Suffolk, and the leopards' faces are from the arms of the de la Pole Earls and Dukes of Suffolk. The galley represents a Viking ship in token that the County is peopled largely by descendants of the Norsemen, and the rising sun denotes its easterly situation. The crest is a differenced form of the badge of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk.
The motto is a contraction of the Vulgate text, "Opus manuum nostrarum dirige".
East Suffolk County Council coat of arms

  

Courtesy Tony Marsden
George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert, 1865-1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until his death in 1936. In November 1891, George's elder brother Albert Victor had become engaged to his second cousin once removed, Princess Victoria Mary of Teck (known within the family as "May", nicknamed after her birth month). But Albert Victor died of pneumonia in 1892, leaving George second in line to the throne, and likely to succeed after his father, King Edward VII. Queen Victoria still regarded Princess May as a suitable match for her grandson, and George and May grew close during their shared period of mourning. A year after Albert Victor's death, George proposed to May and was accepted. They married on 6 July 1893 and the monogram may relate to their reign 'George, Victoria, Rex/Regina' which continued until two years after this building was dated. However, another explanation after all that complex royal succession research, is that it is George V Rex.

County Hall

County and Borough Gaols
1867 map
Although the legends on the Edward White map of 1867 are rather cluttered and overprinted, we can decipher:-
1. On the row of buildings fronting St Helens Street: ‘Assize Court’; this would be the structures we know today as ‘County Hall’ (dated 1837, thirty years earlier) sitting opposite the half-circle junction at Orchard Street, still to be seen outside The County Hotel. Just north-west of this is a ’Silk Factory’, the site of today’s modern development, Silk Street.
2. Immediately south of this, the X-shaped blocks have ‘County Court’ above and ‘County Gaol’ across the centre. This group of buildings appears to be walled with 45 degree-angled corners to the south.
3. East of the County Gaol is the ‘Borough Gaol’ boasting another unusually-shaped set of buildings including most of a hexagon; they appear to front Rope Walk with the jaws of Borough Road, later Grimwade Street, opposite.
4. North of this is labelled ‘Proposed Road’ which would become today’s Argyle Street with its Ipswich Board School and ‘Harry Seaman’ sign. This would eventually run across St Helens Street and cut through the middle of the Borough Gaol site to link with Borough Road, forming today's Grimwade Street. To the east is Wells Street (the site today of Wells Court flats) which runs parallel with St Helens Church Lane, the narrow line of which, running north past the church to Woodbridge Road, is unchanged today.
5. The density of housing in ‘The Potteries’ is seen clearly with many roads unrecognisable today:-
Rope Walk continues into East Street and Curve Street (all now called Rope Walk) to join St Helens Street;
Dove Street doesn’t appear at all, apart from a narrow alley which runs down into Pottery Street, leading in turn to "St Helen's Pottery";
Ernest Street, Alfred Street, Arthur Street and Hill Street are roughly parallel and run between Pottery Street and Mount Street / Regent Street (a small part is still visible today) with "St Helen’s Pottery" clearly labelled with the clay hills edging the grounds of Upper Hill House (today’s Alexandra Park) being dug into to produce tile and brick;
Milner Street is still there, dropping south from Curve Street, but Gibson Street has gone;
The long east-west Victoria Street, quite a thoroughfare by the look of things, has gone;
South of Victoria Street is, inevitably, the smaller Albert Street, Potter Street, David Street, Mills Street, Princes Street, New Street and Baker Street (all now gone);
Just readable is ‘Long Lane’ part of which today runs from the bottom of ‘Wykes’ (Wykes Ufford Hamlet, today’s Back Hamlet) into the university site – the ‘Long Street building’ still stands behind the Congregational Church.
The east-west section of today’s Fore Street (from about The Lord Nelson to Duke Street) is labelled ’St Clements’ with Church Street running north on the line of today’s Grimwade Street with the Captain’s Houses, but curving round the churchyard to the west to turn north again and become Back Street. Today this is Star Lane and Waterworks Street respectively, indeed the ‘Water Works’ are clearly labelled with the reservoir visible above the legend.

See The Potteries

The bottom photograph shows how the original County Gaol/Hall was extended eastwards incorporating an arched gated entry and the 'East Suffolk County Council' pedestrian entrance. The design by H. Munro Cautley features on the architect's watercolour drawing held at Suffolk Archives (HG400/2/246/3), dated September, 1926. The ground floor in 1926 featured shop-fronts either side of the central door – as it is today. Cautley's lettered entrance was linked to a more modern block behind it, which has since been converted into accommodation called 'Anton House'. The main bulk of County Hall has been abandoned, empty and badly damaged by vandals, pigeons and the weather since 2008. Historic England has categorised County Hall as a 'Building-at-risk'. In 2024 there may be a glimmer of hope that the building, Listed Grade II, can be converted for a new use.

K6 telephone kiosk
  
The classic pairing of a (ER II, modern) pillar box and a K6 telephone kiosk outside the County Hall entrance archway. As far as we know, this is the only K6 with a regularly working telephone in the town. See one from the past ouside The Greyhound pub on our Street furniture page (with a link to photographs of its removal); also a vandalised K6 next to Stoke bridge which sometimes has a working telephone, but no door.

The County Hotel
On the opposite side of St Helens Street The County Hotel underwent thorough renovation in May, 2004 at the hands of Suffolk brewers, Adnams (the castle motif repeated near the apex of the palladian-style frontage). This castle was resplendantly picked out in gold and the walls painted mouth-wateringly mid-blue with white details on the so-called 'Gastrobar' (ahem!).

Again, after closures and reopenings, this building was boarded up in 2012.
   2004 images

[UPDATE

[UPDATE March 2013: What a depressing part of the town this has become. The County Hotel struggles on with intermittent openings. County Hall may see a glimmering of a future use for the complex if the Ipswich Building Preservation Trust can take it on as their largest ever project. Add in the long-blighted Upper Orwell Street with its gaps, decaying empty shops and burn-out St Michael's Church (March 2011) and the nearby Carr Street Co-op complex and one wonders how, by the early twenty-first century, we ended up here...]
[UPDATE 20.5.2014: "There used to be some nice modern aluminium lettering on both County Hall (St Helen's Court) and St Edmund House including a very fine version of the County Council's coat of arms. I know because I had them made and, when the council moved, had them taken down! I hope they are in store somewhere. I've got some photo somewhere I'm sure and will try to look them out. They were made by Bill* Clarke (the wife of Geoffrey Clarke the famous sculptor who's work still hangs high up at the corner of St Matt's St and Berners St). ... When the County Library (as it then was) in Northgate St was refurbished in the 90s I had her make cast lettering signs for the entrances - as required by the planning authorities. Someone took them down and (perhaps "illegally") replaced them with inferior quality signs. – Rev'd Alan Forsdike" Our thanks to Alan.] *N.B. Geoffrey married Ethelwynne Tyrer, known as Bill.

County Hall and St Helens Street memories
The following recollections are taken from the 'Kindred Spirits' column, in the Ipswich Evening Star, 1 September 2009 [http://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/news/grim_history_of_town_landmark_1_174934]
“Originally built as the county jail in the 1780s, it [County Hall] was never intended to be a thing of beauty. At one time it contained a treadmill, as a means of punishing [through long sessions of ‘hard labour’] rather than providing exercise for the prisoners and when needed, a set of gallows was erected behind its castellated walls. As recently as 1926, well within my parents' lifetime, men were being hanged within its walls for committing murder and one could still detect a slightly dark and foreboding atmosphere around the place.

Overlooking County Hall was the County Hotel. Accommodation here would have been in great demand during local murder trials and also of course, during the famous divorce proceedings of Mrs Wallis Simpson, then a Felixstowe resident, and later the wife of King Edward VIII following his abdication. Between Grimwade Street and County Hall was another row of shops, including a greengrocer's and florist's, which had flowers in buckets standing outside on a low green wooden shelf; and a furniture shop displaying highly-polished antique tables and ornately upholstered chairs. There was also St Helen's post office, which become another victim of the rush to kill off local post offices. Opposite was a very large house, possibly a doctor's, which stood in its own grounds well back from the road and the May Bush public house. The latter closed in the mid 1960s and was taken over as a social club by the Royal Air Force Association.”

Opposite the Gaumont is a sandwich bar. It was empty and in poor condition some years ago, but was refurbished and the original beams exposed. The date, 1636, had been carved on one of the upper beams and the numerals would appear to be original. A little bay protrudes from the first floor and above that is a tiny dormer window. We may be able to describe the changes to St Helen's Street during the last 50, 100 or even 150 years with some degree of accuracy, but anyone looking through that window 373 years ago would have encountered a very different scene. What they might see in 373 years time?”

Shops east of County Hall
Courtesy John Bulow-Osborne
[UPDATE 29.1.2018: from John Bulow-Osborne. County Hall 'East Suffolk County Council' offices at far right; Suffolk Connexions (sorry about that) and SCC road safety offices; G. Golding Family Butcher at no. 40 – empty; former St Helens Street Sub-Post Office (the red pillar box on the pavement outside stayed there for some time after closure); The Fire-Place at no. 44 – empty and, finally, number 46: an empty shop used as local authority offices. The Fire-Place and the shop to the left were demolished to make room for the corner apartment block. Photograph: early to mid-1990s.]
2016 image
Below – John Bulow-Osborne: '46 St Helen's Street: rough mono image of my grandfather and uncle, who ran a furniture shop there. My uncle took over later.' John's photograph also shows that further shops extended eastward in the early 20th century, before road widening at the St Helens Street/Grimwade Street/Spring Road/Argyle Street crossroads. For a period view of the corner Emeney's Newsagents see our H.W. Turner page.