Cardigan Street
St Jude's Brewery is situated in an 18th century coach-house at
2 Cardigan Street. This surprising building on the corner of Orford
Street stretches for quite a distance and ends with a coach entrance
with a hay loft above and an alleyway. We will return to the hayloft. 2013 images
The date '17...89'
seems to be made of raised metal
numerals and looks
convincing (not sure how this floats over more recent rough-cast
rendering). The crest between the numerals may or may not have genuine
significance.
Anyone visiting St Jude's Brewery in recent years will have seen the
copper vats, bottles and other equipment crammed into a small
garage-sized space behind the double gates. For many years
concentrating on high quality bottled beers, the couple who ran the
brewery diversified into the taverns in Ipswich and Felixstowe and
– as far as we can make out – ceased bottling and
concentrated solely on barrelled beers for their taverns. This seems to
have lost sight of the unique selling point of the original idea. The
St Jude's Brewery opened in 2006 and by August 2012 production was 60
firkins (1 firkin = 9 gallons) of beer a week. But financial
over-stretching led to the closure of both taverns and the future is
uncertain for St Jude's.
The long shot down Cardigan Street below shows how narrow this property
is and how closely-built the Victorian Orwell Street houses are.
Stand opposite the winch beam above the hay loft and you might, above
the suspended lantern, spot an
element which mirrors some of the decor in the St Jude's Tavern which
ran for a while in St Matthew's Street. Jutting out over the pavement
is a life-size skull with a mouse popping out from the eye socket, its
tail curling out from the nostril and over the teeth. A blow-fly (or
something similar) seems to lurk in the other socket. What must the
neighbours think?
The date on the wall is not the only lettering on St Jude's. We have
the name above the fine timber door, the medallion beside the ground
floor window (note the narrow diamond leading with stained glass
elements), a similar medallion round the corner on Orwell Street and at
first floor level a blue diamond with a white 'H', presumably
indicating a nearby hydrant. This last has obviously been preserved
when the rendering was added to the wall around it.
'ST.
JUDE'S
... HVS
9FT.
... HVS
11
FT.
... H'
The medallions indicate the position of valves on the water mains and
are of late nineteenth or twentieth century date; see similar which
used to be seen on a wall in Bridge Street.
See also our Pubs &
Off-licences
page.
Alpe
Street
Number 3 Alpe Street boasts a fine shield and scroll name and date
which rivals the ones put up by the Ipswich & Suffolk Freehold
Land
Society in Nelson
Road and Crabbe
Street.
Above left: the house name in 2013; above right: as it was several
years ago, captured by Simon Knott (of Simon's Suffolk Churches, see
Links). Clearly the house was once occupied by
a romantic soul. The
fluer-de-lys-like grass clumps rising into a bleu background are
particulalry appealing.
What is it about the Northumberland county town of Morpeth which
prompts two houses in the Suffolk county town of Ipswich to be named
after it? See also Morpeth House.
Like
Ipswich with the River Orwell, Morpeth is an important crossing-point
of a river: the Wansbeck. The town became a borough by prescription.
King John granted a market charter for the town to Roger de Merlay in
1199. The borough status of Ipswich was granted by King John in 1200.
Just as Ipswich was home to five monasteries
from 1130, Newminster Abbey was founded by Ranulf de Merlay, Lord of
Morpeth, and his wife, Juliana, daughter of Gospatric II, Earl of
Lothian, as one of the first daughter houses of Fountains in 1138. As
with Ipswich's Cardinal Wolsey, there
are links with Henry VIII at
Morpeth: for some months in 1515-16 Margaret Tudor (Henry VIII's
sister) and Queen Consort of Scotland lay ill there, having been
brought to the town from Harbottle Castle. She eventually reached
London in May 1516. Like Ipswich, Morpeth had a castle, but unlike
Ipswich parts of the former's still remain today. There are possibly
other parallels.
Cumberland
Street
'CUMBERLAND
TERRACE'
is
just about readable opposite
the other end of Alpe Street. The dark painted capitals have been
overpainted, possibly the same name in white, which has weathered.
A few doors up Cumberland Street can be found another obscured name
plaque:
'HILL
COTTAGE
1865'
which has either been
repeatedly painted over, or has had its
characters filled at some time.
2013 images
