The Great White Horse Hotel – Pop-Up Exhibition: If these walls could speak…

Ever wondered about the famous faces and intriguing stories of the historic Great White Horse Hotel?

Found yourself wondering what’s happening behind the doors right now?

Excited about what it might become in the future?

Now is your chance to find out and have your say! 

For two days only, take a sneak peak inside the inner courtyard of the Great White Horse. Explore the past, present and future of this historic Ipswich landmark with our pop-up If these walls could speak… exhibition, explore the hotel’s old visitor books and add your voice to our bank of ideas for the future of the building.

See event details here:  https://ipswich.love/event/pop-up-exhibition-if-these-walls-could-speak/

The Great White Horse Hotel, 45 Tavern Street, Ipswich IP1 3AH

Proudly standing on the corner of Tavern Street and Northgate Street this Grade II listed building has played a significant part in the history of Ipswich.   A hotel has stood on this site since 1518 and back to medieval times a building known as The Tavern occupied the plot. A notice in the Ipswich Journal 1778 describes the hotel in some detail :-

‘Charles Harris of the Great White Horse, Ipswich, was still advertising his Inn for sale, consisting of 8 parlours, a good kitchen, bar room, 14 bed chambers, which will contain 24 beds, good wine vaults and cellar, stabling for 46 horses with proper hay and corn chambers over the same, good coach houses and coach-yard…’

Between 1815-1818 widening of Tavern Street saw the hotel loose its timber frontage to its present impressive structure using Suffolk white bricks possibly to match the ill-fated Assembly Rooms in Northgate Street. At the same time, the inner courtyard was glazed over, and the original rampaging white horse was erected over the entrance. This horse was later removed and sent to the White Horse Tattingstone and replaced by a more sedate version.     Notable patrons were George II, LouisXV111 and Admiral Lord Nelson when Lady Nelson was a resident of Ipswich. At the height of top line artists appearing at the nearby Gaumont many famous artists stayed at the hotel including the Beatles.  

Probably the most celebrated guest is Charles Dickens. Dickens was a regular patron often reporting on political meetings and debating groups such as the curiously named ‘Rump Ups’. Inspiration from the Great White Horse saw Dickens pen his debut novel Pickwick Papers in 1836.

An extract from Pickwick Papers describes the hotel as follows:

The Great White Horse is famous in the neighbourhood, in the same degree as a prize ox, or a county paper-chronicled turnip, or unwieldy pig – for its enormous size. Never were such labyrinths of uncarpeted passages, such clusters of mouldy, ill-lighted rooms, such huge numbers of small dens for eating or sleeping in, but beneath any one roof as are collected together between the four walls of the Great White Horse at Ipswich.

An Ipswich Society blue plaque celebrating visist by Dickens (and Samuel Pickwick) can be seen on the façade.  Read about it here:  CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870) The Great White Horse Hotel, T… | Flickr .

Such was the notoriety of the hotel that in1893 it received international fame representing Britain at the World Fair. A replica was erected in Chicago, although apparently not an accurate one.

In 1967 the then owners, Trust House Forte, decided to close the hotel and demolish it as there was a fashion to build out-of-town hotels at the time. However, following a public enquiry the building was saved until 2008 when the doors finally closed. In both 1967 and 2008 the building was saved as an historic asset to the town.

Sources: Kevin Smith; Ipswich History website; Tony Green.  Thanks to The Ipswich Society for archive photos