Ipswich Charter Festival – the countdown begins

We’re into the festival year of 2025, a year to commemorate the 825^th anniversary of King John granting Ipswich its historic Charter. May it be a great year for our town and all who live and work here!

We have been working with pupils from Northgate School, preparing for the Charter 825 concert to be held on Friday 27^th June in the Corn Exchange. Details of the programme will follow in due course but one thing we can promise is that the Ipswich Charter Anthem will be performed for the very first time with great lyrics composed by some of Northgate School’s budding poets. Year 7 pupils have been studying the Charter and the turbulent history of the time when King John succeeded his brother, Richard the Lionheart. He inherited some serious money-problems caused by the cost of Richard’s crusading and the rebellion of his subjects in France. We sometimes forget that, in those days, the kings of England owned more of France than the French kings! One way King John sought to raise funds was by allowing citizens of up-and-coming towns like Ipswich to buy a Charter, freeing them from their feudal overlords and allowing them to trade without restrictions and govern themselves as they saw fit. In Ipswich, each of the twelve parishes elected a representative to the new council. These men were called portmen. They had the right to graze their livestock on the meadows near where the football stadium now stands. That is how our famous Portman Road got its name. You could say the town’s footballers are our new ‘portmen’. This amazing history is all picked up in Northgate’s lyrics.

We are hugely grateful to the pupils who studied this period of Ipswich’s history so enthusiastically and generated excellent words for our new anthem. These lyrics will be set to original music by an Ipswich composer in time  for the concert. We hope the anthem will be performed many times over the coming years – yet another thing about Ipswich to celebrate!

Don’t forget there are Art and Poetry competitions open to all. If you want to know more about them and how to apply, as well as having access to the wonderful stimulus material and information about the Charter, download the documents from here:

https://www.stmaryletower.org/charter825

As ever, Ipswich.Love also has all the information you need.

Who wrote this about Ipswich?

David Matthews

David is a Churchwarden, St Mary-le-Tower and Acting Chair of Trustees of Essex and Suffolk Children’s University. For the last eleven years of his professional career, David was headteacher of a comprehensive school in South London.