Ransomes
One of the greatest names in engineering and a company at the heart of the industrial expansion of Ipswich until the late twentieth century, Ransomes has all but disappeared from modern Ipswich (apart from the industrial estate on the site of their Nacton works: 'Ransomes Europark). However, the shadows of old lettering were noticed high up on the building which used to be called Island House in Wykes Bishop Street*** off Duke Street. Once the home of Five Castles Press and, until the 1980s, boasting a tiny docklands pub on the opposite corner of the block: The Happy Returns (it can still be seen amongst the new dockside regeneration flats and houses as an empty shell). Now part of the building is the Premier Pool Club staging occasional concerts by local rock bands in part of a building presumably used by Ransomes as workshops, a warehouse or foundry.
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Ploughs and tillage machinery, steam engines, grass-cutting equipment, trolleybuses, threshers, tractors, combines, electric trucks and more – the range of products made by Ransomes of Ipswich is perhaps the widest of any similar British manufacturer. From a small workshop in 1789, the company grew to employ 3,000 people and export all over the world. Having the large Orwell works between Wherstead Road and New Cut West, then extending to the Nacton Road site on the edge of town, this faded lettering is all that is left of this massive enterprise on the riverside.
[***Wykes Bishop Street, tiny though it is has an interesting derivation. The Bishop's Wick, or Wicks Episcopi as it was sometimes called, was one of the four hamlets into which the town was once divided. It is the area to the south of Felixstowe Road which now includes Bishop's Hill, extending to the river and including Holywells Park where the residence of the Bishop of Norwich stood within the extensive moat (fed by the local springs) which is still to be seen. The site would have given the Bishop a splendid view of the town and port. Wykes Bishop continued in the hands of successive bishops from 1235 until the properties of the diocese were exchanged for those of St Benet's Abbey by Henry VIII. Source: Robert Malster's 'A-Z', see Reading List.] Fascinating that all this history is commemorated in the name of this tiny road.
Copyright throughout this site belongs to Borin Van Loon, 2003.