Dear Ipswich, I trust you are well.
I have always had a deep love of Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian architecture ever since I was a small child and used to visit my grandparents sprawling Edwardian home just outside Ipswich. As I grew up, I knew I felt safe and inspired by these sorts of homes, but I could never really put my finger on why. I later found out that my great great great grandfather was Edgar Catchpole, one of the fathers of Victorian and Edwardian Ipswich. Edgar was a London born architect and builder who came to Suffolk from very humble beginnings and made his fortune building vast swathes of housing around the periphery of Christchurch park and the football stadium. Many of his creations sit in the conservation area, and then sprawled out along Norwich Road following the trolley bus route. Edgar had many children, and was a well-known philanthropist as well as civic contributor.
One of his children was my great great grandmother Emily who married a local publican and had two children, and settled into married life. However, some time afterwards her husband abandoned her and disappeared with one of his female staff. With no independent means of income and no opportunity to divorce, Emily may have been thrust into poverty and possibly the workhouse with its exceptionally high mortality rate. Edgar rescued her, fully funded her new life and built her a beautiful house on Bolton Lane. Emily’s children grew up, safe and protected by Edgar until they could forge lives of their own. My great grandfather William was an engineering apprentice when he was called up to world war one, where tragically he saw many horrors which profoundly affected him. This lead to psychiatric hospitals and bouts of homelessness once he returned home, until he met my great grandmother and found solace. My grandmother was born, following which William was assisted again by the legacy of Edgar, who despite dying some time before, had left him a number of houses in Elliot Street which he sold to buy a marital home.
The whole reason my family line exists is thanks to a man who did something extraordinary for his time, without hesitation. I visit the grave of Edgar once a year as he is buried in sight of his houses in the old cemetery, and thank him for what he did.
I walk these streets now and see the house that Edgar died in on Westerfield Road, his self-built family home, and I think of him and his legacy, protected by the council by the conservation area in this lifetime and the next. My great love of what he built has spread to me, as I now own one of those houses and I am conducting a slow restoration of its features from local sources, when I find them. If I could do one thing for the town it would be to encourage as many other people to do the same and protect these old properties, to honour their history.
My house has stood through two world wars, and housed a woman fleeing what I suspect may have been domestic abuse, when it was first built in 1903. Research from the 1911 census reveals that the first ever occupant Emma Leggatt describes herself as unmarried. In 1901, her and her part time policeman/publican husband were living in a public house near the same one my great great grandmother found herself abandoned in. Emma’s husband was still alive in 1911 and 1921, and she was still ‘unmarried’. This house kept her safe until 1930, when she passed away, I suspect in the house itself as was custom at the time before the NHS.
Her sister and her husband joined her at some point after 1911 and stayed until 1939 when the house was empty. The street was bombed in the war, with an incendiary device exploding opposite, at which point I think it must have lost its stained glass in the front door and wavy hand blown glass in the sash windows. I have no knowledge of who was here after 1939 other than some information from neighbours from a little more recently.
Queen Victoria sits in the hall as a tribute to the recently deceased queen, watching the comings and goings of this place for the last 121 years. I often wonder what sights this plaster corbel has seen in its existence and what it may say if it could talk. Ipswich is deep in my blood, and so is how the historic part of it looks. I hope to be able to continue my work of restoration until the house is as returned as it can be, and to see it stand long after my lifetime for my children and their children.
I walk through same front door every day that kept Emma safe and hope that for at least the next 121 years, many other people will do the same.
