Gothic House – A Recent Discovery

Ipswich, like many towns, is an eclectic, sprawling muddle of buildings. Down on the Waterfront there has been a 21st-century attempt to achieve a coherent redevelopment of the old commercial warehouses and grain silos. Nowadays most of the warehouses have been replaced with a variety of residential blocks of flats and single storey boat-building workshops. The area is functional and pleasant enough, but there’s no outstanding contemporary architecture and it all looks markedly more interesting on a misty morning at dawn . . .

Ipswich Waterfront early morning view.

Or, when there’s a dramatic, fiery sunset.

Ipswich Waterfront view as the sun goes down.

However, also like many towns, there are little gems hidden away. Last November, I was walking through a quieter residential area and turned up St John’s Road

Walking up St John’s Road, Ipswich.

and came upon this Tudor-bethan style beauty.

Grade II listed house is in Ipswich. ‘Gothic House’, 5, St John’s Road.

‘Gothic House’, 5, St John’s Road was built by Henry Ringham possibly to the design of architect J Phipson between 1851 and 1857. It is a timber-framed house and was constructed reusing old materials with details copied from original Tudor buildings in Ipswich such as the Ancient House in the Buttermarket.

The Ancient House, 30, Buttermarket.

The Gothic House with the 20th-century neighbouring property almost cropped out of the picture.

I think the flint cobble ground floor works particularly well with the timber and stucco panels above. It is just such a pity that at some point in the intervening 170 years or so somebody sold off part of the grounds and allowed a disagreeable house to be built so close next door it blights the scene. Of course, if the Gothic House was swathed in mist it would lessen the presence of the ugliness next door. And, as we all know early morning mist does so much to enhance the most mundane of views.

Ancient and Modern

It’s a little hard to see from the photographs, but this is the rare, possibly unique, triangular tower of All Saints Church, Maldon, Essex. The top photograph shows two sides of the triangle as you stand looking up to the belfry from the third side.

 

It really is a proper three-sided, stone and flintwork tower supporting a hexagonal roof structure. In fact the three walls of the tower actually form an equilateral triangle and were constructed in the mid-thirteenth century from stone reclaimed from an earlier twelfth-century Norman built church.

It was interesting to find such a quirky tower enhancing a local parish church in what is an unremarkable, market town on the watery fringes of Essex, but .  .  .   there was more – striking mid-twentieth-century stained glass.

This stained glass was made by Frederick W Cole (1908-1998) working for Morris & Sons. Yes, that’s Morris & Sons which is not the famous Morris & Co founded by the William Morris. This stained glass company, Morris and Sons, was originally William Morris & Co of Westminster (also known as William Morris Studios). I can’t help but think that in our litigious times the chances of trading with such a similar name to a famous ‘brand’ would be nigh on impossible.

Generally, I am not a fan of twentieth-century figurative glass and I was surprised to find that this beautiful glass was installed in All Saints in 1950. Interestingly the style of the angels would not look out of place amongst late 1960s or early 1970s fashion illustrations yet perhaps Cole had been influenced by the earlier work of the Arts and Crafts stained glass master, Christopher Whall. For comparison some of Whall’s wonderful windows can be seen at Upton on Severn, Worcestershire.