Martin & Newby R.I.P.,
The
Meremayd, Palmer's Door Mats
Martin & Newby, 4-8 Fore Street
An old established business, suffering closure due to
the rise of
warehouse
DIY outlets in the town, provided customer service and the
availability
of small quantities of screws, other fitments, hardware, electrical
goods, paints
and tools. Martin and Newby proclaimed their business on manifold
signs,
the company establishment date of 1873 clearly shown. While these are
all bolt-on signs on a linked string of
individual
shop premises which
ostensibly fall outside the brief of this website, the architectural
detail
at the top of the building (shown below) qualifies it. Standing at the
south-west corner of the Orwell Place/Upper Orwell Street/Eagle
Street/Fore Street crossroads, that corner building was once a pub, as
were all the other corner premises. The Bull's Head was at south-west,
The Eclipse at north-west, The Shoulder of
Mutton at north-east and The Spread Eagle at south-east – the only
surviving pub here.
The story of the business
Martin & Newby was the oldest shop in Ipswich until it closed down
in June 2004. The business was established in Fore Street in 1873. The
ironmongery department (Commemoration Building) was erected in 1897 on
the site of the original shop founded by John Martin in 1873. This was
known as ‘Birmingham House’ and occupied an old timber-framed building
of probable 17th century construction which was in a poor state of
repair. He took on his nephew, Frederick Newby who ran the business
after Martin died in 1885.
[UPDATE 27.8.2025: ‘I thought
this would make a suitable addition to your Martin & Newby page.
Martin before he joined forces with Newby, presumably. This is number
two Fore St, so the 1897 Martin & Newby building would be built to
the left of this building.’ Thanks
to Ben for this historic image.]
Photographed
after 1873
Lettering painted on the facade:
Top board: ‘WHOLESALE BIRMINGHAM HOUSE.
RETAIL’
In the three cartouches:
‘GENERAL IRONMONGERY.
SPADES, SHOVELS, FORKS.
LOCKS, NAILS, SCREWS, TIN
WIRE, CHIMNEY BRUSHES
AND CARPENTER TOOLS
TIN & JAPANNED GOODS.
MANUFACTURER.
SHOPS ?
? SUPPLIED’
‘J. MARTIN
2 FORE ST
LONDON
BIRMINGHAM
SHEFFIELD
MANCHESTER
STAFFORDSHIRE
WAREHOUSEMAN.’
‘ ? ?
GLASS, PICTURES,
PICTURE MOULDINGS,
HABERDASHERY, MATS,
STATIONERY, LAMPS,
?
GLASSES ?
CHEAP GOODS AND
CIVILITY.’
The price of each item is painted on to it (or has a large label
attached); for example, on the sides of the buckets and the bottoms of
the tin baths; for example, two shillings, or one-and-six. Four large,
ornate and low-slung gas lamps (with their own lettering on the glass
panels) are intended to illuminate the shop windows, all of which are
crammed with displayed goods (including those on the first floor).
Three suited and hatted members of staff stand on the pavement. Perhaps
one is Mr J. Martin himself.
The new building was called the ‘Commemoration Building 1897’ referring
to Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. With the opening of the
Commemoration Building in 1897, Birmingham House ceased to be part of
the business and was not re-occupied until the early 1960s, by which
time a small part of Birmingham House had become a well-known local
newsagent
called Fox's (see the photograph below).
The newsagent’s
shop
Photograph
courtesy The Ipswich Society
Above: this remarkable
photograph from The Ipswich Society's Image Archive (see Links) shows the much-lettered Martin &
Newby's shop – the lettered panels in the negative form to that seen
today. The view is from the entrance to the Co-operative Education
Centre across Fore Street with a green, metal pole to the left
supporting the power lines for the trolley buses. Instead of the string
of linked Martin & Newby shops up to and round the corner into
Orwell Place to which many were familar in the late twentieth century,
we see the newsagent's business of L.B. Fox: an orgy of displayed
periodicals and advertising signs. Perhaps ironically, the largest sign
promotes that most salacious of Sunday papers The News of the World, which Rupert
Murdoch shut down in a sea of phone-hacking scandals in 2011. One
feature of interest in the photograph is the
rear view of Unicorn Brewery (fronting
Foundation Street), which answers one question about the curious
architecture: at the time of the photograph the brewery boasted a tall,
substantial chimney. This would explain the remaining octagonal
white-brick feature behind the building.
Commemoration Buildings
2000
images
'COMMEMORATION ... 1897 ... BUILDINGS'
The first word curves over the centralised date, the
whole contained in a rectangular recessed frame. The date 1897
coincides
with
Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.
Beneath the building name we can read (in a Gill Sans-type font):
'MARTIN & NEWBY ... EST
D. 1873 ... MARTIN & NEWBY
GENERAL IRONMONGERS ... ELECTRICIANS ... TOOL MERCHANTS
MARTIN & NEWBY ... HARDWAREMEN ... MARTIN & NEWBY'
Across the whole
agglomeration of buildings there were, in its heyday, no less than
eight
repetitons of the company names, including the italic serif'd capitals
over the electrical shop, so redolent of the 1950s. Below: the shop
frontages
on Orwell Place (formerly Stepples Street – see Street name derivations) and the side
entrance on
Fore
Street, photographed shortly before the business closed its doors for
the
last time in June, 2004.
The corner premises
The tool department was situated in a former pub called The
Bull's Head,which was the oldest property within the business – thought
to date from the 17th century – and was timber-framed. It was a ‘Tolly
house’ (a public house tied to the local brewers Tolly Cobbold) and it
closed on 31st August 1958 to become part of the shop. Finally, the
electrical department occupied a fine three-storey Georgian building
with cellars, it had previously been owned by a fruit and vegetable
wholesaler named Ellis. It can be seen below right, with white-painted
quoins, to the right of the former pub. The building retained some
period features such as a cooking range and copper in the cellar. To
the rear of this building was a garden which was dug out in the 1960s
to create the car park, accessed from further down Fore Street, close
to the junction with Lower Orwell Street (photograph below right). The
warehouse had also been owned and built by Ellis for storing his fruit
and vegetables.
2000
images
Just in front of the final Martin & Newby shop (8
Fore Street) and set into the pavement is ths plaque:
'THIS PLAQUE WAS
LAID BY
THE WORSHIPFUL MAYOR OF IPSWICH
COUNCILLOR PENNY BREAKWELL
ON
26TH AUGUST 2003
TO CELEBRATE THE REPAVING
OF FORE STREET'
Compare
with similar plaques on Common Quay, in front of the Custom House and one that used to be on Cornhill.
After the closure
[UPDATE March,
2005: during a snow shower (see also Unicorn
update below), we
see the sad sight of Martin & Newby bereft of its midriff. The more
modern shop
section demolished down to the basement and netted off from the
pavement was presumably unlisted, as were the warehouses behind and to
the left, also gone. It's doubtful that any new retailer will display
so proudly the word 'HARDWAREMEN'.]
2005 image
By 2012, the shop premises are patchily occupied by
retailers and the lower signs removed. To the right is the infill
building with dormer windows above; to the left can be glimpsed the new
flat block built in what was once the M&N warehouses and car park.
2012 images
A tour of the buildings after
closure
The Ipswich Society
Newsletter July 2004 carried a fascinating article by Ruth
Serjeant: 'Goodbye to all that'. A tour of the linked buildings in
Fore Street and Orwell Place was conducted by Michael Atkinson, the
person who had to decide to close down the business. A bewildering
series of rooms, passages, cellars and attics were explored through the
range of different buidings, each with their own staircases. Some were
offices and workshops but most were shelved out as storage for
thousands of boxes of stock. It was noted that some of the boxes were
labelled: 'washing line pulleys', 'Victorian ring door knobs',
'chain saw files, all sizes, same price'. There was evidence in
the large store-room at the rear of its use as a warehouse for Ellis
the fruiterers, whose premises in Orwell Place the company had acquired
during 1950s and 1960s expansion. A small room at one end had rows of
hooks in the ceiling which were once used to hang hands of bananas to
ripen. It was still referred to as 'the banana room'.
"A small portion of the walling at the end of this building is made of
flint stones, and this has raised the archeological question of whether
this southern boundary of the site is related to the adjacent buildings
of Blackfriars uncovered over recent
years. Further flint walling in cellars elsewhere on the site has been
found, whether as original or re-cycled remains to be seen."
In the 1897 Commemoration Buildings an internal fire escape was
observed: a vertical ladder straight down to the ground from a small
trap door in the floor. The large upper storey windows of this building
finish literally at floor level with no sill. Old photographs show that
they were use to display goods with the windows open although it is not
reported who might have been able to see them up there. The expansion
of the business already noted also included purchase of Fox, the
newsagents, along Fore Street and the Bull Inn which stood on the
corner. In fact there were public houses on all four corners of this
crossroads at one time; the Spread Eagle is the only one which remains
in business. Evidence of the living accomodation above the Bull Inn was
seen with 1950s wallpaper and paintwork, plus wall cubboards and cast
iron fireplaces from an earlier period. The cellar below the former inn
is very low and those entering had to stoop all the while they were
looking at the remains of the 'beer cask pavement' along the floor on
which barrels would be placed to be tapped with an open runnel to take
the drips. I another cellar an even lower ceiling made it hard to see
how anyone could have operated the black iron cooking range which was
still in situ: perhaps the
ceiling of this 'below stairs' living area had been higher at some time.
The Board Room of Martin & Newby had old photographs, a plan of the
Bull Inn before the takeover and many of the firm's business ledgers
(which with other archives were subsequently handed on to Suffolk
Record Office). In its own way, a great loss as a time capsule of
Ipswich life. At least much of the building still stands and the black
and white signs are largely intact as a remembrance.
1912
advertisement
The printed advertisement shown above comes from an E.A.D.T.
Souvenir of the King Edward Memorial Sanatorium 'Ipswich in 1912'. The frontage
lettering on Martin & Newby's at that time advertised somewhat
different products and services:
'GENERAL
HARDWAREMEN.
BUILDERS IRONMONGERS.
ELECTRICITY. RANGE FITTERS.
MARTIN & NEWBY. CYCLE
AGENTS MARTIN
& NEWBY.'
Although many will recall with
affection the linked shops of Martin & Newby, they may not know
that the company were contractors providing electric bells and
telephones (among other things) for the new Sanatorium in 1912,
otherwise
Foxhall Hospital, let alone acting as cycle agents in direct
competition with Sneezum's, just a few yards down Fore Street. See our Hospitals
page for more on this. Incidentally, note the row of spades hanging in
front of the first storey windows to the left. Did they come down and
get re-hung every day?
For a 1980s view of the Orwell Place elevation of the Martin &
Newby shop, see our Edme Bakery page
under '8 Orwell Place'.
Meremayd (former inn), 17 Fore Street
Just across the road from the M&N vehicular
entrance above: the
carved
wood 'MEREMAYD' on the front wall of 17 Fore Street can be seen. The
Mermaid public house was closed at an indeterminate date and is now in
residential use. It is probably a very ancient pub; few records have
been found and it doesn't appear on OS maps as far back as 1884.
2012 images
It would be very tempting to think that this carved wooden cameo is
ancient. A look at the definition and lack of weathering of the carving
may suggest otherwise.
The Public sculpture in
Norfolk & Suffolk database (see Links)
cites a carved signature and date: 'M. Hardy, (19)74'. Mermaids were
always shown with a mirror and comb, signs of luxury and vanity, in
medieval bestiaries and misericords. Here her head and hair are
'modern'. It is unclear whether this is a reworking of a traditional
design or based on an earlier sign.
Palmer's Door Mats, 63 Upper Orwell Street
Upper Orwell Street (formerly 'The Wash' to mark the
almost constant
flows
of water from the springs around Christchurch Park, also Spring Road
via Majors Corner down to
the
Wet Dock) has been ill-served by 'progress' in recent years. Planning
blight
has left many shops empty and boarded up. The Baipo Restaurant
occupies
a high building which is home to one of the most obscure advertising
sites
in town (enhanced but barely readable on this photograph):-
Slightly
enhanced images
2012 image
' - FOR -
PALMER'S
DOOR
MATS
&C [?]'
The first close-up image above is from 2012 (sadly, a
TV
satellite dish now covers the ampersand.) This capital lettering fits
the triangular
shape left by the
adjoining roof. There is a
decorative
flourish rising up from the roof level next to the word
'Door' also
above the 'ME' of 'Palmer's' the lower part of the word
'FOR'.
Clearly there was a shop or dealer name above this; perhaps the
upper
wall
was remodelled - or at least cleaned. The following ampersand is
puzzling: unless it is '&c.' which stands for 'et
cetera', it can only mean that the pitched roof next door was built at
a later date obliterating the lettering. This does seem unlikely given
the way in which the advertisement is laid out in the available space.
See Links
for the Lost Pubs Project which has another view of this building,
revealed as the former Eagle Tavern - not to be confused with the
nearby (and still trading) Spread Eagle - which was at 61-63
Upper Brook
Street. Suffolk CAMRA (see Links) show this
pub as opening in 1851 and closing in 1903.
For a period painting of The Eagle building (probably Edwardian), see
our Peter's Ice Cream page.
See The Unicorn for information about the
former hotel and brewery a few doors along from Martin & Newby on
Orwell Place/Foundation Street.
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