Bury St Edmunds

Heavy Haulage Bury St Edmunds Suffolk

Approximate Population: 35,015

Bury St Edmunds (Beodricesworth, St Edmund’s Bury), supposed by some to have been the Villa Faustina of the Romans, was one of the royal towns of the Saxons. Sigebert, king of the East Angles, founded a monastery here about 633, which in 903 became the burial place of King Edmund, who was slain by the Danes in 869, and owed most of its early celebrity to the reputed miracles performed at the shrine of the martyr king. The town grew around Bury St Edmunds Abbey, a site of pilgrimage. By 925 the fame of St Edmund had spread far and wide, and the name of the town was changed to St Edmund’s Bury.

Near the gardens stands Britain’s first internally illuminated street sign, the pillar of salt. When built, it needed permission because it did not conform to regulations. Bury St Edmunds is terminus of the A1101, Great Britain’s lowest road.

Bury St Edmunds Cathedral was created when the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich was formed in 1914. The cathedral was extended with an eastern end in the 1960s, commemorated by Benjamin Britten’s Fanfare for St Edmundsbury. A new Gothic revival cathedral tower was built as part of a millennium project running from 2000 to 2005. The opening for the tower took place in July 2005, and included a brass band concert and fireworks. Parts of the cathedral remain uncompleted, including the cloisters. Many areas remain inaccessible to the public due to building work. The tower makes St Edmundsbury the only recently completed Anglican cathedral in the UK. Only a handful of Gothic revival cathedrals are being built worldwide. The tower was constructed using original fabrication techniques by six masons who placed the machine–pre-cut stone individually as they arrived.

Heavy Haulage Bury St Edmunds Suffolk

Felixstowe

Heavy Haulage

Felixstowe Suffolk

Approximate Population: 29,349

A village has stood on the site since long before the Norman conquest.   The early history of Felixstowe, including its Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Norman and Medieval defences, is told under the name of Walton, because the name Felixstowe was given retrospectively, during the 13th century, to a place which had already been important for well over a thousand years.

It continued as a linchpin in England’s defence, as proved when in 1667 Dutch soldiers landed and failed to capture Landguard Ford.   The town only became a major port in 1886.   In addition to shipping, tourism increased, and a pier was constructed in 1905 but is soon to be demolished.

Indeed, during the late Victorian period (after circa 1880) it became a fashionable resort, a trend initiated by the opening of Felixstowe railway station, the pier, (see above) and a visit by the then German imperial family.   It remained so until the late 1930s.   In 1953, 38 died in the town in the North Sea flood.

Heavy Haulage Felixstowe Suffolk

Ipswich

Heavy Haulage Ipswich Suffolk

Approximate Population: 128,000 (2007)

Ipswich is one of England’s oldest towns, and took shape in Anglo-Saxon times as the main centre between York and London for North Sea trade to Scandinavia and the Rhine. It served the Kingdom of East Anglia, and began developing in the time of King Rædwald, supreme ruler of the English (616-624). The famous ship-burial and treasure at Sutton Hoo nearby (9 miles, 14.5 km) is probably his grave. The Ipswich Museum houses replicas of the Roman Mildenhall Treasure and the Sutton Hoo treasure. A gallery devoted to the town’s origins includes Anglo-Saxon weapons, jewellery and other artefacts.

Around 1380, Geoffrey Chaucer satirised the merchants of Ipswich in the Canterbury Tales. Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, the son of a wealthy landowner, was born in Ipswich about 1475. One of Henry VIII’s closest political allies, he founded a college in the town in 1528, which was for its brief duration one of the homes of the Ipswich School. He remains one of the town’s most famed figures. In the time of Queen Mary the Ipswich Martyrs were burnt at the stake on the Cornhill for their Protestant beliefs. A monument commemorating this event now stands in Christchurch Park. From 1611 to 1634 Ipswich was a major centre for emigration to New England. This was encouraged by the Town Lecturer, Samuel Ward. His brother Nathaniel Ward was first minister of Ipswich, Massachusetts, where a promontory was named ‘Castle Hill’ after the place of that name in north-west Ipswich, UK.

The Tolly Cobbold brewery, built in the 19th century and rebuilt 1894–1896, is one of the finest Victorian breweries in the United Kingdom. There was a Cobbold brewery in the town from 1746 until 2002 when Ridley’s Breweries took Tolly Cobbold over. Felix Thornley Cobbold presented Christchurch Mansion to the town in 1896.
Former stables, reflected in the glass panels of the Willis Building. Owned by Willis Limited, the properly called the Willis Building but still often called the “Willis-Faber building” by locals, as the company Willis Corroon themselves used to be called Willis Faber. Designed by Norman Foster, the building dates from 1974. It became the youngest Grade I listed building in Britain in 1991 and at the time one of only two buildings to be listed and be under 30 years of age. Ipswich is set to be the main hub for University Campus Suffolk, which will give Suffolk its first university, though it is essentially a collaborative project between Suffolk College and two other regional universities. It is hoped that within a decade, a University of Suffolk in its own right will become established out of UCS.

Heavy Haulage Ipswich Suffolk

Woodbridge

Heavy Haulage Woodbridge Suffolk

Approximate Population: 10,956

Woodbridge is a town in Suffolk, East Anglia, England. It is in the East of England, not far from the coast. It lies along the River Deben and the town is served by Woodbridge railway station on the Ipswich Lowestoft East Suffolk Line. Woodbridge is twinned with Mussidan in France.

Sutton Hoo, a group of low grassy mounds famous for turning up Anglo-Saxon treasure of one of the earliest English kings, Rædwald, overlooks Woodbridge from the Eastern Bank of the Deben.

There is a museum devoted to the Suffolk Punch, a breed of heavy working horse, in the Shire Hall on the Market Hill. Local folklore has it that the route from the river to the top of Drybridge Hill (via Church Street, the Market Hill and Seckford Street) is the hill which was marched up by the Grand Old Duke of York in the popular Nursery Rhyme. Woodbridge is also the location of two prisons: HMP Hollesley Bay is an open prison for adult males, while HMP Warren Hill holds male juveniles.

Heavy Haulage Woodbridge Suffolk