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The FLS and housing in Ipswich
Providing housing (and the vote) – to men
The Ipswich & Suffolk Freehold Land Society (known as the FLS) was part of a national movement to create ‘forty shilling freeholders’ – giving the ordinary man* the chance to buy enough land to entitle him to vote. The Society purchased large areas of land all over Suffolk, dividing it into smaller plots, or allotments, which were then – following a ballot – sold to members of the Society (mortgages were arranged by the Ipswich & Suffolk Permanent Benefit Building Society arm). Needless to say, business people and speculators bought up numbers of plots from some of those who were successful in the ballot, so that the best intentions of the Society were subverted.
[*It was all men, of course; it was not until 1928 that the Conservative government passed the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act giving the vote to all women over the age of 21, on equal terms with men.]
The roots of the Freehold Land Society movement go back to James Taylor (1814-?) in Birmingham. Taylor, who promoted the movement around the midlands, explained the economic principle on which such a society works: “Now then for a creed, which is simply this: buy land wholesale and sell it to the members retail at the wholesale price. This is the whole of our creed – the all-in-all of our operation. This is, in fact, the very essence of the Freehold Land scheme.”
Lancaster Road is a short street running between Palmerston and Warwick Roads, east of Ipswich town centre. It is of interest because the houses in it were the first to be built in Ipswich by the Freehold Land Society in 1866. The terraced dwellings were described at the time as high quality, 2-bedroom, workman's houses. Compared to much of the poor, slum housing in the nearby Potteries – the area running south of Rope Walk – they would have been seen as little palaces: well-built with good sanitation, facilities and small gardens front and back.
After 1868 the Society built a large number of houses and continued to ballot both plots of land and houses, for purchase by its members, until 1938. Large FLS estates in Ipswich, Felixstowe, Framlingham, Lowestoft and many other small towns in Suffolk were developed between 1850 and 1938. In 1965 the Freehold Land Society was wound up, leaving the Ipswich & Suffolk Permanent Benefit Building Society. In 1969 this was shortened to Ipswich & Suffolk Building Society, and the name changed again in 1975 when Ipswich & Suffolk amalgamated with the Ipswich & District and, as part of the deal, agreed to lose the word 'Suffolk' – resulting in the Ipswich Building Society we know today. In 2021 the Ipswich Building Society changed its name back to Suffolk Building Society.
From the houses in Ipswich built between 1866 and 1934 around nine hundred properties continue in occupation. Over seven hundred had been built prior to 1920 providing a strong representation of early Ipswich housing development.
California: the first FLS estate
The Cauldwell Hall Estate
The derivation of the name is ‘cold well’ /cold stream which relates to the many natural springs which are found in the area, causing copious flows of water down Spring Road, St Helens Street and the Upper and Lower Wash to the dock. The dish-shaped terrain of Ipswich causes this drainage down to the river. Cauldwell Hall, as a farm, is said to date back to Anglo-Saxon times. After the Norman Conquest in 1066, lands were seized by King William I and gifted to the new Norman establishment, in this case to the Norman knight Roger Bigod (died 1107), the High Sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk. The name 'Cauldwell' or its variants, as a Manor, may date from the early 14th century in the ownership of the Holbroke family. The first record of a Caldwell living at Caldwell Hall was in the 15th century, but it is likely that the family had been living there for many generations prior to this, even though it was owned by the Holbroke family.
In the 16th century when Caldwell Hall was still part of the extensive property of the Christchurch (Holy Trinity) Priory, the assets of the Priory were seized by Cardinal Wolsey to provide funds for his ill-fated College which he started to build in Ipswich in the late 1520s. With his fall from grace and subsequent death, the Priory with its lands passed into the hands of Sir John Pope and then the Withepole (today known as ‘Withipoll’) family, who built Christchurch Mansion in 1563. It stayed this way for many generations. By the early part of the 17th century, the Caldwell Hall estate had passed to Robert Leman – the grand Leman memorial in the Church of St Stephen in Ipswich relates to him.
At his death in 1637, Leman left to his daughters Caldwell Hall and, amongst other properties, a sizeable mansion in Upper Brook Street and £10 to the Ipswich Public Library, a forerunner of the current library. In 1775 William Rivers took out a loan of £3,000 from Tobias Rustat, Rector of Stutton to buy the 550 acre Cauldwell Hall estate using the estate itself as security. By the time it was surveyed by Samuel Lewis for William Rivers in 1793, the estate was just over 403 acres in size. The vast majority of it (369 acres), was within the parish of St Margaret, with 14 acres each in the parishes of both Rushmere and St Helen. An additional three acres were taken up by roads on the estate. The estate stretched from the Foxhall Road in the south to Sidegate Lane, where today it meets the Colchester Road in the north. To the west the boundary is roughly in line with today's Spring Road viaduct and in the east where the Woodbridge Road meets Spring Road at the Lattice Barn public house.
By 1809, the Rivers family decided to sell land off to pay off the interest on the mortgage bringing down the size of estate to around 400 acres. Although the interest had been paid off, the original £3,000 mortgage still remained outstanding. In 1822, with John Rivers not in good health, it is not surprising that they were looking to liquidate their assets. The Cauldwell Hall estate had been farmed by the Rivers family for three generations but clearly John Rivers, grandson of William Rivers, could no longer cope with the demands of the 400 acre estate.
Estate sale and the FLS
In 1848 the whole estate was bought by John Footman who was a proprietor of the well established Ipswich linen and woollen drapery business, John Footman & Co, later to become Footman, Pretty and Nicholson. John Footman quickly sold on large areas of the property and it is likely that he was acting on behalf of a number of others; perhaps they had agreed not to bid against each other to ensure a bargain price. It is not known who bought the Cauldwell Hall Farmhouse, nor who did the extensive makeover in an Italianate style, including a signoral tower.
From 1919 to his death in 1956 Cauldwell Hall was the home of the Ipswich solicitor Lionel H. Vulliamy. When Lionel Vulliamy purchased Cauldwell Hall he was a partner in the family firm of Vulliamy &Son. By 1922 the firm had merged with Steward and Rouse becoming Steward, Vulliamy and Aldous, who were based in Arcade Street, Ipswich. During his ownership of Cauldwell Hall, Lionel Vulliamy landscaped the lower gardens including the old pond and introduced flamingos to the grounds. Photographs from the Vulliamy family album show how this work progressed. They also give a good view of the overall extent of the house and grounds in the 1940s and 1950s. After Lionel H. Vulliamy died, the property was sold to L.D. Bloom Estates who divided Cauldwell Hall into apartments and built Trafalgar Close in the lower grounds. The gatehouse and trees fronting on to Spring Road were taken down in 1956. Today, looking up from Spring Road, Cauldwell Hall can be glimpsed through the trees, high above the road.
The development of the Cauldwell Hall Estate for housing started in the early days of the Ipswich & Suffolk Freehold Land Society (FLS) which was formed in 1849: the year of the California gold rush – hence the nickname of the area*. The extensive farmlands belonging to Cauldwell Hall, which in its Victorianised version still stands off Cauldwell Avenue overlooking Spring Road, came up for sale in 1848. The land was sold off to various buyers. One of these was William Dilwyn Sims who became Vice-President of the FLS and acted as agent in the purchase of ninety-eight and a half acres of the estate on 18 October 1850. The FLS could not legally purchase land in its own right, so he made the land over to the FLS some time during 1850. The price was £4,992: over £50 per acre.
(*Some people have suggested that 'California' was used to reflect the pioneer spirit of the settling smallholders on the estate; or even that the gridiron pattern of roads echoed that of the USA. Both of these are questionable.)
New roads, new plots. The land between Woodbridge Road and Foxhall Road was divided up into 282 plots, each of which was offered to senior members of the FLS at £21.10 shillings each. Among expenses were £26 for staking out and £480 for making roads, which were laid out in a grid pattern. New roads named Cauldwell Hall Road and Britannia Road formed the western and eastern boundaries respectively, with, appropriately, Freehold Road bisecting the area from west to east between the two. Howard Street, Milton Street and Kirby Street were laid out between Woodbridge Road and Spring Road. Crabbe Street, Cowper Street and Bloomfield Street were laid out between Spring Road and Freehold Road, also Parliament Road between Freehold Road and Foxhall Road.
The estate was divided by Christopher Fleury (architect of the first Ipswich Museum and Ipswich School on Henley Road), the Society’s Surveyor who stated, when announcing the allocation of the allotments, that he was ‘… aware in the division of so much property, difficulties might arise in giving satisfaction to so many allottees; …’ Indeed, this was to prove the case and it may be why, from then on, a ballot was held to allocate the plots for all subsequent land purchases by the Society.
Much of the original California estate and its road pattern survive into the 21st century. The solidly built, largely Victorian houses have proved popular with both first-time buyers and longer-term residents. However, the Ipswich Building Preservation Trust is acutely aware of the problems of owning such properties as we move into the era of climate change, property insulation, energy efficiency balanced by cost limitations and conservation considerations. Ownership of, in the main, red brick solid wall houses with sash windows (many now replaced with plastic-framed windows) and timber front doors (ditto) presents a conundrum.
The ‘Caring for your Vintage House’ project aims to examine the problems surrounding the legacy housing still prevalent in Ipswich.
See our Links page for useful Ipswich Borough (and other) links.
Note: Ipswich Building Preservation Trust isn’t able to give direct advice, but aims to start a conversation, inform people of current ideas with arguments for and against.