Scroll down for a timeline detailing the piecemeal construction of Princes Street over a number of years.

Mutual House, 2 Princes Street/King Street
2015 image
Above: the view from close to the Giles statue. Thomas W. Cotman, nephew of the famous watercolourist, John Sell Cotman, was the architect of the Parr's Bank (later Chelsea Building Society and, in 2017, refurbished as a new town branch of Ipswich Building Society*) at the corner of King Street and Princes Street. His other stone-faced buildings in Ipswich include The Crown and Anchor, Lloyds banking house on Cornhill and the heavily decorated and dated '1905' building at 40-42 Museum Street. Mutual House adjoins The Swan tavern in King Street (as shown in the first photograph). "The style is a sort of c16 French Gothic, similar to the Crown & Anchor, Westgate Street, faced in stone. Four storeys. Two-storey oriels (one on the corner, with copper dome and spirelet) and friezes of decorative panels. Parapet pierced with quatrefoils and broken by gabled dormers with pinnacles." [Bettley/Pevsner – see Reading list]
*Please note that Ipswich Building Society changed its name to Suffolk Building Society in 2021.
2015 images 
Above: one feature not mentioned is (on the Princes Street facade) the gold, chiselled lettering within a kind of Gothic cartouche in relief stonework;

'PARR'S
BANK
L^TD.'

Very grand. The small image above shows that this lettering was covered for some years by a Chelsea Building Society sign.
   2018 image
The veining of the blue-grey mineral panel is a perfect setting for the gold-painted chisel capitals, despite the damage caused by the fixing of a covering sign (a range of drill-holes and plastic rawlplugs).
Above left: The Ipswich Building Society's refurbishment of the building was celebrated with this metal plaque sited just below the Parr's Bank sign.
  
It was only in 2014 that we noticed a pierced date on the stylish weather vane:

'1901'

in 'art nouveau'-type numerals.
Queen Victoria died on Tuesday, 22 January 1901 at the age of 81 to be succeeded by her son and heir Edward VII. With a reign of 63 years, seven months and two days, Victoria was, until recently, the longest-reigning British monarch and the longest-reigning queen regnant in world history. (That is, until Thursday 22 October 2015 when Victoria's great-great granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II, became the longest-lived and longest-reigning monarch of the United Kingdom.) The new century and a short-lived period which has come to be known as 'Edwardian' beckoned and the volcanic events of the 20th century followed. Chelsea House (Parr's Bank) was built at this important crossroads in history.
Images courtesy Ipswich Building Society
Architect's drawings of Parr's Bank, showing the Princes and Kings Street elevations with the lettered cartouche – which is still to be seen – with some further lettering above ground floor window level: 'PARR'S BANK LIMITED.'.
This postcard (perhaps 1910-20) shows at the extreme left some of the raised lettering on the stone work of Parr's Bank. At the time of modernisation, this was a plain slab.


The aerial drawing is unusual showing rainwater flows, accesses, dormers and the spirelet at lower left.

Above: ironmongery business, Alfred Stearn & Son (named on the upper panel (with '1900' above), later relettered: 'Commercial Union Buildings'). Architect's drawing showing considerable difference to today's aspect (below).
2017 images
(A fire in October 2016 scorched the pilaster to the left of the Stearn's building; this clearly indicates that the stone-like material used as cladding, at least on this building, is a fibre-heavy compound. The new owners have repaired this damage.)

Parr's Bank Ltd (1788-1918). This private bank was established in Winwick Street, Warrington, in 1788 as Parr & Co by Joseph Parr, sugar boiler, Thomas Lyon, brewer and sugar boiler, and Walter Kerfoot, attorney; it was also known as Warrington Bank. The bank was styled Parr, Lyon & Greenall from 1825 to 1851 and Parr, Lyon & Co from 1855 to 1865. Branches were opened in St Helens (1839) and Runcorn (1853). In 1865 the bank was reconstructed as a joint stock bank with limited liability, Parr’s Banking Co Ltd. The partners in the old business were paid £100,000 and the paid-up capital of the new bank was £100,000. Joseph Parr's son Thomas Parr was appointed chairman and the bank recruited John Dun, from Bank of Scotland, as its first general manager. In 1877 a purpose-built banking house was opened in Winwick Street. The bank expanded by acquisition of many other banks from 1865 to 1915 including in 1909 Stuckey’s Banking Co Ltd of Taunton (or the Somersetshire Bank), which “wielded great power in the west of England” and had the largest note circulation of any bank in England outside the Bank of England". In 1892 the bank became known as Parr’s Banking Co & Alliance Bank Ltd. By 1890 it had 43 branches and sub-branches, rising to 136 in 1900 and to 329 by 1918. In 1896 the company’s name was shortened to Parr’s Bank Ltd. In 1918 Parr’s Bank Ltd amalgamated with London County & Westminster Bank Ltd of London, to form London County Westminster & Parr’s Bank Ltd. At that date 235 branches and 94 sub-branches were operating.

After Alfred Stearn & Son had vacated the next-door building it was taken over by Commercial Union Assurance and they went to the trouble of having the words:

'COMMERCIAL UNION
BUILDINGS'

in relief on the upper stone tablet. During renovation, a covering layer of cement render was removed here and the traces of the letters were discovered where a previous builder had hacked them off around the mid to late-1950s, presumably when the bank expanded into this building. The photograph below shows the remnants of the lettering.
Enhanced image courtesy Ipswich Building Society

[UPDATE 12.9.2017: Heritage Open Days 2017 in Ipswich revealed a restored exterior of Parr's Bank, now renamed 'Mutual House' by Ipswich Building Society who will use the building as their town centre branch. The interior is work-in-progress at this time. At some time, the two adjoining buildings were linked by an internal arched entry to extend the bank premises, although the Stearns part is not included on the Grade II Listing. See the Dogs Head Street page for an illustration of the former IBS branch on the corner of that street and Upper Brook Street.]
2017 images Image courtesy Ipswich Building Society
Above left: the two linked buildings to the left and The Swan Inn to the right. The IBS captioned photograph, above right reads: 'Gone with the wind!!! The original building was built in 1901and the final "topping-out" was achieved by the placement of a dated weather-vane atop the copper dome cupola structure on the King Street corner of the building. With great care and attention to the original mechanism, RG Carter and their specialist, Hall Conservation, have refurbished and restored to working order the fantastic Victorian weather-vane.'
2018 image
Above: the view from the rooftop of post-refurbishment Mutual House; from the left, amongst various finials: the Italianate clocktower of the Town Hall and the kiln-like roof feature of the Corn Exchange, the Mutual House spirelet bearing the '1904' weather vane, the spire of the Church of St Mary-Le-Tower and below it the palladian top of the Barclays frontage.
For other dated weather vanes see Tolly Cobbold Brewery and St Lawrence Church.
See also our Brook Street and Dogs Head Street pages for images of a previous IBS Ipswich branch.

Mini-mural
2018 images
At the base of the Alfred Stearn building, Ipswich Building Society commissioned a mini-mural, easily missed, showing Ipswich buildings through the ages.:
1200: St Mary-Le-Tower Church,
1450: The Ancient House,
1471: Pykenham's Gatehouse,
1480: Curson Lodge,
1549: Christchurch Mansion,
1699: The Friends Meeting House,
1842: The Custom House,
1868: The Town Hall,
1901: Mutual House/Parr's Bank,
1975: The Willis Faber & Dumas offices,
2007: The University of Suffolk Waterfront Building (and '?' sculpture).
A nice addition to the public art of Ipswich.
     
Inside Mutual House
After the official opening of the town centre branch on 23 January 2018, when BBC Radio Suffolk broadcast from the event, Borin Van Loon's map of the Ipswich & Suffolk Freehold Land Society developments in Ipswich up to 1934 was on display in the entrance hall of Mutual House, attracting much comment. See our FLS page for a larger version.
2018 images

Also inside the building, some historic bank safes with a striking branding:

The homophone 'Chubb' uses the the fish, the Chub, as its emblem.
One of the basement strong-room safes has a handsome, hand-painted (according to the branch manager) proclamation of the Chubb manufacture:
Photograph courtesy Celia Waters

BY SPECIAL - ROYAL - APPOINTMENT
LOCK & SAFE MAKERS TO
HIS MAJESTY THE KING
ALSO MAKERS TO
THE BANK OF ENGLAND
CHUBB & SONS
128
Queen Victoria Street
. LONDON .
LOCK & SAFE C^O. L^D.'

Only, perhaps, the misalignment of the '128' in the address suggests that it is hand-painted (and not a transfer).

Britannic House 28 Princes Street

2013 image 

2004 image 2013 image

Britannic House, 28 Princes Street research
There are, understandably (given the date on the facade), no earlier trade directory entries until Kelly’s rather exotic entry in 1903: ‘Mutual Life Insurance Co. of New York’. They continued at this address until at least 1908 (more research required).

  

[UPDATE 14.3.2016: "You might be interested to see the two attached images. The cutting from the Evening Star, dating from 1992, is pretty self-explanatory. It's an advertorial for the building, and I clipped it then because I already had the other picture.
Images courtesy John Bulow-Osborne
[

   2017 image
The photograph above right shows the building in 2017. The angled, corner entrance has been blocked and the door to the left enlarged. Sun Buildings just visible at far left.

with stylish numerals such as the '8' with its flattened top. This feature is repeated round the corner in Princes Street (see below).
Photo courtesy The Ipswich Society
R.D. and J.B. Fraser's furniture emporium burned to the ground in a famous and well-photographed fire on the sixth of April, 1912. The horse-drawn fire engines of the time were outdone by the fire which, seeming to have been extinguished, flared up again later that night. Apparently rolls of linoleum burned and exploded, spreading the fire to other shops in the area. The building we see today is a replacement by E.T. Johns from 1913-14(?) of the original, short-lived, Frasers building by Eade & Johns in 1890.  Incidentally, horses weren't abandoned by the local fire service until 1920.
For images of the lost Frasers store and its hanging signs, see our Albert Clarke, Art Smith page.
We recall this building as as Maples furniture store in the late 1970s with mountainous sofas and armchairs and more-than-life-size china greyhounds.

   

The views from Willis
(1)   (2)
On Heritage Open Day 2015 the views from the Willis building roof garden show (1). the junctions with Friars Street, Princes Street and Museum Street with the old Frasers building at right. (2). The George W. Leighton building at No.28. (3). Fred Smith & Co. building and (4) the remodelled junction of Princes Street with Civic Drive (right) and Franciscan Way (left); the junction with Friars Bridge Road is on the right in the distance.
(3)   (4)2015 images

See also our Coytes Gardens page for a note about the way in which Princes Street was cut brutally through existing gardens and buildings to link Cornhill and Friars Bridge and then, in 1860, Railway Station Road (now all called 'Princes Street'). Railway Station Road included the Princes Street bridge: see below.

Princes Street timeline
1845-   proposal by Eastern Union Railway company (EUR) to build a bridge over the Orwell. We believe that works to cut Princes Street from Queen Street to Friars Bridge (the north end) were started at this date, too.
1846-   EUR opened the original railway station in Croft Street. The tunnel, engineered by Peter Bruff,  through Stoke Hill (’Stoke Bone Beds’, so-called because of the important fossils found during construction) was dug in the same year to facilitate the extension of the railway to Bury St Edmunds.
1849-   some sources quote this as the date on which the original timber and iron bridge over the river opened, but this doesn't fit with other landmarks on this timeline.
1856-   The New Cattle Market was relocated to a site either side of Friars Bridge Road (now a car park between the rear of the AXA block and Portman Road) from 'The Old Cattle Market' at the top of Silent Street (now mainly known as a country bus station); The surface of the marsh was raised about two feet to provide a firm, dry site for the cattle pens. It was served by the new road from the railway and the Old Cattle Yard on the railway spur serving the dockland (see our page on Water in Ipswich for a photograph and more detail).
1860-   the railway station, resited from Croft Street to today’s Burrell Road/Ranelagh Road location, opened. The road across the river to Friars Bridge was for a short time known as ‘Railway Station Road’ – and appears as such on some maps.
Bob Malster in Ipswich: an A to Z of local history (see Reading list) states: "Even this much [the northern part of Princes Street] was unfinished when the railway station opened in 1860 and a timber bridge was thrown across the river to carry the new Railway Station Road." As well as the original timber and iron bridge over the river, the new road (later Princes Street) which ran across the marshes to Friars Bridge Road, also Commercial Road (now Grafton Way) linking Railway Station Road with Stoke Bridge were opened.
The town end of Princes Street (named after Prince Albert, died 1861) was ‘a street bored through a mass of houses, gardens, streets and lanes diagonally, leaving corners and angles of old buildings, dead walls with the marks upon them of gable-ends dislodged, and bits of lanes running off at curious angles.’ [Hunt, W.: Descriptive handbook of Ipswich, 1864 – quoted in Malster, R.: A history of Ipswich, see Reading list]
This stretch of road (today, Cornhill to Willis) was much-delayed by negotiations with numerous property owners; the delay extended by a decision to build it wider than originally planned, leading to further renegotiations. It was clearly unfinished by 1864.
1866-   The R&W Paul maltings fronting Princes Street and just over the river from the station were refashioned by J.R. Cattermole (date according to the Grade II Listing text and the foundation stone shown on the Burtons page), having being built in c.1820. Unfortunately, this doesn't tally with the building of Railway Station Road in 1860; the assumption that Cattermole was employed to cut back the eastern face of the maltings to enable the building of the new road, may be erroneous. Is it possible that the new road swerved round the projecting building for six years, or was the reshaping done for a different reason?
c.1870-   The Railway Hotel was built on the south side of the bridge over the river, with a frontage on Burrell Road.
1878-   Princes Street was officially made a public highway. The whole stretch from the station to Queen Street junction became known as Princes Street. Today we consider that it reaches the few extra yards up to the Cornhill. It is the longest single street in Ipswich.
1883-   the island platform (Platforms 3 & 4) of the railway station was built to facilitate more trains, accessed by a footbridge from Platform 2 (see the casting plate below).
1913-   Sun Buildings at 35 Princes Street (shown above) opened.
1927-   The original road bridge over the Orwell (described in July 1860 by The Ipswich Journal as 'rugged and aboriginal in appearance') was replaced by that seen today: built in concrete steel and stone.

Princes Street bridge
  
Down at the railway end of Princes Street, past the R&W Paul maltings (formerly a night club) we find the plaque on Princes Street bridge. It reads as follows:

'THIS BRIDGE WAS ERECTED BY THE IPSWICH COUNTY
BOROUGH COUNCIL & COMPLETED IN 1927 REPLACING
ONE OF WOOD & IRON ERECTED BY THE EASTERN
COUNTIES & EASTERN UNION RAILWAY COMPANY
IN 1860 WHEN THE ROAD WAS FIRST OPENED.'

Another trace of the pre-1974 Local Governemnt Reorganisation 'Ipswich County Borough Council' can be seen on street nameplates on Civic Drive.

   2018 images

Directly above the large plaque on the Ranelagh Road side is a smaller plate reading:

'EASTERN ELECTRICITY
ARE PLEASED TO SPONSOR
THE RUNNING COSTS OF THE
LAMPS ON THIS BRIDGE'

Elsewhere is another small plaque reading:

'THE LAMPS ON THIS BRIDGE
WERE PRESENTED TO THE TOWN
IN 1985 TO MARK THE CENTENARY
OF THE IPSWICH EVENING STAR'

Station Hotel
  
Above left: the view from the reshaped station forecourt in 2018; Princes Street Bridge over the river is visible at left. Above right: the building in 1982, photograph courtesy The Ipswich Society (see Links).
2018 images
Noticed during our research into public clocks, the words 'HOTEL ENTRANCE' (west) and 'PUBLIC  BAR' (east) are incised ito the lintels above the entrances on Burrell Road. Another, unlettered, entrance to the bar opens onto Princes Street, but that look as as if it might have originally been a fire entrance. This building opened as a bar/hotel directly opposite the railway station (before or) in 1860. It is suggested that the design might have been by the great railway engineer, Peter Bruff, who had an influence n the station buildings opposite.
    

Ipswich Station
[UPDATE 6.4.2018: this is a good place to include a piece of cast iron lettering in the railway station. Incidentally, a 1969 photograph of the station frontage appears at the top of our Ipswich station and Westerfield-Felixstowe Branch Line page. Many Ipswich residents will remember crossing the main line to the island platform to catch Norwich, Cambridge and other trains. The upper sections of the original cast iron bridge were open to the elements many years ago (now glazed) and it could be a very drafty experience. Des Pawson has drawn our attention to a founder's plate on the bridge, so many thanks to him.]
2018 image courtesy Des Pawson

'MATT^W. T. SHAW & C^O.
ENGINEERS
141 CANNON ST. E.C.
– O –
WORKS MILLWALL'

The cartouche bearing the iron founder's name is now choked with layers of paint, but still readable. Grace's Guide (see Links)tells us:-
Matthew T. Shaw and Co. of West Ferry Road, Millwall, London E.C.
1850 Company founded by Matthew Turner Shaw;
1856 Matthew T. Shaw, in business as iron and steel merchants in George St, Mansion House, London;
1859 Matthew T. Shaw of 64 Cannon Street, London EC.;
1868 Matthew T. Shaw of 142 Cannon Street, London Bridge, London EC.;
1879 Messrs. Matthew T. Shaw & Co., of Cannon Street, supplied wrought iron girders and cast iron columns for a multi-storey building;
1886 Death of Matthew T. Shaw, senior partner in a business at 139-141 Cannon St [this is the address shown on the casting plate above; the Princes Street timeline, also above, gives the date of the building of the island platorm as 1883];
1886 Matthew T. Shaw of London Constructional Iron and Bridge Works, Millwall;
1895 Private limited company;
1914 Matthew T. Shaw, Constructional Engineers, Bridge Builders. Specialities: high-class constructional steel and ironwork, bridges, roofing, girders, sheds, tanks, forgings. Employees 25;
1937 Matthew T. Shaw, Structural engineers;
1961 Matthew T. Shaw, Structural engineers and structural steel work fabricators.

Ipswich railway station was re-sited from the original EUR station site in Croft Street to its present location in 1860 and the main building was thought to be principally the work of Peter Bruff (the engineer of Stoke railway tunnel); who had certainly started the structure. The actual design was in the Italianate style and submitted by architect Sancton Wood (1816-1886) as part of a competition. When the new station was completed, a new road (Railway Station Road, later an extension of Princes Street) linking the station to the town was also opened.
By the 1860s the railways in East Anglia were in financial trouble and most were leased to the Eastern Counties Railway (ECR). Although they wished to amalgamate formally, they could not obtain government agreement for this until 1862, when the Great Eastern Railway (GER) was formed by the amalgamation. The island platform at Ipswich was added by the GER in 1883. Although access to such a platform could be achieved by boardwalks across the lines at the end of the platform slopes, it is most probable that the footbridge was built in 1883.
2018 image
On platform 2 is a rather grand plaque:

'THIS PLAQUE WAS UNVEILED
BY THE WORSHIPFUL
THE MAYOR OF IPSWICH
COUNCILLOR MRS GILLIAN AUTON
TO COMMEMORATE THE LAUNCH OF THE
LONDON–IPSWICH–NORWICH
ELECTRIFIED SERVICES
ON 11 MAY 1987'

See our page on the Felixstowe branch line for 1956 photographs of Ipswich station and track.
See our page on Public clocks in Ipswich for a 2018 view of the station car park and its clock.

See also our Lettered castings index page.

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