APT Regional meeting, March 2017

A well-attended regional Heritage Trust Network (formerly Association of Preservation Trusts) meeting was hosted by Ipswich Building Preservation Trust at Quay Place (the renovated St Mary-At-The-Quay Church), Ipswich on Tuesday 21.3.2017. Representatives from a number of Preservation Trusts, both those relating to a locality or to a single project, were joined by speakers from Historic England, the newly-formed Heritage Trust Network and the Architectural Heritage Fund. See our Newsletter Summer 2017 on our Archive page for more information.

The meeting was followed by a walking tour of some buildings of interest and the historic Wet Dock:

(Circled numbers on map)

1. St Mary-At-The Quay Church (Quay Place), built c.1450-1550

2. Two houses awaiting restoration in Lower Brook Street

3. The Wolsey Gate, the water-gate to Wolsey's short-lived College, c.1528

4. Church of St Peter (St Peter's on the Waterfront), pre-dates Little Domesday, 1086

5. 4 College Street (Benet Aldred house), 1590 merchant's house

6. Stoke Bridge, close to the original Anglo-Saxon fording-place of the Orwell

7. The Island site created by New Cut, 1842 (Last Anchor: viewpoint for the northern quays)

8. DanceEast, 2009; built on the site of Cranfields Flour Mill

9. Custom House, 1844, built after the opening of the Wet Dock

10. Isaac Lord's merchant complex (Isaac's bars and restaurants), parts date to 1471

Estimated duration of guided walk, weather permitting: 60 minutes.

Above: Nick Jacob, Chair of the IBPT shows visitors the two houses at the bottom of Lower Brook Street and the impossibility of making the finances work in relation to their becoming a Trust project.

IBPT Committee member, Mike Smith, on St Peter's Wharf; shows visitors Stoke Bridge Maltings and the Genesis flats and apartments on Stoke Quay in the background.

Outside the Last Anchor on the Island site with Neptune Quay and the University of Suffolk Waterfront building in the background.

The group on the inner right-angle of the dock with views to the west (towards Stoke Bridge) and south towards the lock gates and the Orwell Estuary beyond.