The Parish of St Matthew, Triangle and All Saints, Ipswich

 

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Rector

Revd Nick Atkins

 

Ordained local minister

Revd Ruth Best

 

Minister in charge of Triangle Church

Revd Jackie Sears

 

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Heather Gooding

 

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(01473) 251630

 

Triangle Church Office

(01473) 219407

 

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History of All Saints

All Saints Parish Church, Ipswich

Written by Revd Tony Wilcox

 

 

Beginnings

 

All Saints’ Church dates from the last quarter of the 1800s.   With the arrival of the railway, the building of the Wet Dock and work on the river to improve navigation, the town expanded rapidly, doubling its population between 1851 and 1901.   On the western side, a number of detached houses were built along Norwich Road, while rows of terraced houses were built along the roads to Bramford, and on streets running across them.

 

The idea of a second church in the parish of St Matthew was suggested, according to their records,  as early as 1850, and in 1870 it was resolved to put up a temporary church building.   However, it was decided two years later to drop that idea, and start raising funds for a permanent church.   A committee reported that “a site has definitely and most kindly been given by Mr J.C. (John Chevallier) Cobbold in Chevallier Street, immediately opposite the Waterloo Road”.   Mr Cobbold was the town’s MP and leading railway promoter.

 

Early in 1877, several prominent Ipswich clergy memorialized (their word) the Bishop - Dr Pelham, of Norwich;  the diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich was only invented in 1914 - to take steps to provide new churches in the town.

 

Which he did.   A large meeting was held in the Town Hall, and a committee was formed (of course!).   Two churches were proposed;  St Michael’s in the parish of St Margaret, and All Saints’ in the parish of St Matthew.   For the latter, the Ipswich Freehold Land Society, responsible for a number of houses on Bramford Road, offered cheaply a piece of land next to that given by Mr Cobbold.  

 

In May, the builders (JB and F Bennett, of St Clement’s) moved on to the site, and in about three months the Mission Room (now our church hall) was complete.   It was designed to accommodate 200 people;  people, or chairs, must have been smaller then.   Five years later, having become overcrowded within two years of opening, it was enlarged by the addition of what is now the area occupied by the stage, the kitchen, and the lobby in front of the toilets.   It was now reckoned to accommodate 320 people.

 

In the April, the Bishop had appointed the Revd Richard Cautley as curate-in-charge, and services were held in the Westbourne Mill (wherever that was) and in a corn chandler’s warehouse which is now part of the Westgate Ward Social Club in Prospect Street, while the Mission Room was being built.  

 

The first services in the new Mission Room were held on August 17th.   In the morning, the Vicar of Southwold (the Revd Proby Cautley) preached on “Bear ye one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6.2), and the collection was £4.15s.   In the evening, the Curate-in-charge “affectionately addressed his new parishioners (it says) and sketched out the work which he hoped to do among them.”   The collection was £1.16s.92d.

 

The Church and the Parish

 

The Church Extension Committee had meanwhile decided to build St Michael’s first.  They did this, and ran out of money.   However, with no capital, and collections of only about £2 per week, All Saints’ local committee undertook to continue to pay the minister and raise funds to build the church.   This was to cost around £2700, but, five years later, the chancel and about two-thirds of the nave were built, consecrated and in use.

 

For its design, a competition was held, with a £50 prize for the winner.   About ninety designs were entered anonymously.   They were exhibited at the Town Hall for a fortnight, and then sent to London to be judged by Evan (or Ewan - sources vary!) Christian, architect to the Ecclesiastical Commission.   Samuel Wright, of Morecambe in Lancashire, was judged the winner.   Roy Tricker comments that the design “has the flavour of many Victorian Lancashire and Cheshire churches and would have looked splendid had it been built in pink Runcorn stone”.   The pulpit stands on a block of Runcorn stone, so you can judge for yourself!  

 

The building is known in some quarters as the “Bricklayers’ Cathedral” because of the craftsmanship on display and, according to Caesar Caine writing in 1910, the bricks were made in the parish - presumably at the Dales Road Brickfields.   However, because of the many specially moulded bricks around the windows and doorways, the window tracery and quatrefoil pillars, it has been suggested (Victorian Society Journal, October 1998) that they were supplied by Guntons of Costessey.   The question is whether the local works had the expertise - and the moulds - to produce the “specials”.

 

The foundation stone was laid in June 1886, and the chancel and the greater part of the nave, with a temporary west wall, were consecrated by the Bishop of Norwich twelve months later.   More fund-raising followed, and the remainder of the nave, plus the porches and the tower, were built.  

 

The foundation stone of the tower was laid in August 1892, and the completed church was consecrated by the Bishop of Norwich - still the same Dr Pelham - on All Saints’ Day (November 1st) 1893.   The total cost of the structure was £6000.

 

The district assigned to All Saints was extended, and made a parish in its own right, the process being completed by John Sheldon Jones reading himself in as vicar on the 12th February 1888.   The parish took in part of St Matthew’s - notice the milestone by the Norwich Road roundabout which declares “St Matthew’s Parish” - with areas from Bramford and Sproughton.  It thus included what is now St Thomas’, plus a small part of Whitton.

 

Caesar Caine’s book contains a wonderful description of the first ‘beating the bounds’ in May 1888, when the vicar, the churchwardens, a number of other gentlemen and most of the choir boys walked the parish boundary.   It involved walking along the centre of the Ipswich-Norwich railway line from the river crossing by the Boss Hall estate to the A14 overbridge, and then following the line roughly of Highview Road, Ulster Avenue and Waterford Road to Norwich Road.   The parish then took in Castle Hill Farm, crossing the East Suffolk railway line to take in the Brickfields, skirting the grounds of Brooks Hall and Westwood.   The description is all in terms of meadows, hedges, posts and large trees, and might take some finding now.   Even along the boundary with St Matthew’s, not everyone today will know where Albert Lane was.

 

In 1877 all but a very few houses in the parish lay on the town side of Chevallier Street.   In the nine years between the building of the hall and the foundation of the church, the parish population more than doubled, and by the time Caesar Caine wrote his Record it had doubled again.   In that period, most of the houses between Norwich Road, the river and the railway line were built, leaving the builders of the inter-war period to fill in gaps and to climb the slopes of Broom Hill.   Since then, new housing has replaced some of the earliest stock, as well as using ‘brownfield’ and floodplain sites.

 

In 1903, the whole interior of the church building was renovated, and the boundary wall on the Chevallier Street and Waterloo Road sides was built.   The Blenheim Road section was built only in 1936.

 

Other buildings

 

A second hall was built in Beaconsfield Road in 1883, and practically rebuilt and extended about thirty years later.   It went out of the church’s hands for several years in the 1920s, but was recovered.   It is now the HQ of the 1st Ipswich (All Saints) Scout Group.

 

In the early days, Sunday Schools were run in a number of separate places, including the Bramford Road Board Schools, a room in Brook’s Hall house, and a house in Deben Road.   In 1910, the Sunday Schools had about 800 children on their books.

 

In view of the housing development along Bramford Road, Cautley built a small wooden Mission Room in the back garden of a cottage in Eustace Road.   In 1902, an “iron Church”, dedicated to St Thomas, was built on a site described as being “on the right of the road proceeding from the town” and “beyond the arch (ie the railway bridge)”.   The site of the present church of St Thomas’ in Bramford Lane was chosen because, in the late 1930s, the expansion anticipated to the west had not come about.   St Thomas’ became a Conventional District (ie more or less independent, but still served by All Saints’) in 1928, and a separate parish in 1938.

 

All Saints’ has never had a ‘custom-built’ vicarage.   Around 1906 (he doesn’t say exactly), Caesar Caine secured the house then known as East Tower, and now as the Bentley Tower Hotel, on the corner of Norwich Road and Anglesea Road.   It served as the vicarage until 1954 when, finding the house rather big with the departure of his grown-up daughters, Frank Mitton oversaw a move to “Greentiles”, the present vicarage, which had been the show-house for the new development of Westwood Avenue in the mid-1930s.

 

People

 

Richard Cautley resigned, due to “a disastrous breakdown in health”, just before the dedication of the first stage of the church building.   John Sheldon Jones, when he became vicar, was granted “one yearly sum or stipend of one hundred and fifty pounds ... to be receivable in equal half-yearly portions, on the first day of May and on the first day of November”.  

 

Caesar Caine was responsible for much of the furniture and fittings, which are fully listed and described in his little book (‘A Record of Thirty Years’ Work’, of which we have three copies;  apparently there is also one at the Record Office).   Easter communicants in 1910, his last year here, numbered 638.   Samuel Key ministered through the upheavals and traumas of the Great War before moving to Great Blakenham in 1922.

 

The next three incumbents all died in the job.   William Badcock, vicar for only two years, died suddenly while attending a service in St Mary le Tower on St Andrew’s Day, 30th November 1924, aged 46.   Sydney Calver, after three years of indifferent health brought on, it was later said, by “the strain of the work entailed in the largest populated parish in Ipswich”, died suddenly in the autumn of 1935.   His successor, the much-loved and widely remembered Frank Mitton, died in January 1957, ending a ministry here of nearly 21 years.

 

What to see

 

The architectural style is described as Late Decorated (Caine), Perpendicular (Tricker),  Perpendicular Revival (the listing document), and by Anne Riches (in Victorian Church Building and Restoration in Suffolk) as “watered-down Perpendicular”.

 

The church is built in red brick and terracotta, as noted above, with a nave and two aisles under double pitched roofs.   The tower is octagonal at the second stage, the parapet is pierced with quatrefoils, with a lead spirelet on top.   Note the terracotta sound hole to the south under the bell openings.  

 

At the base of the tower (outside, facing Waterloo Road) is a (very worn) copy of the dedication stone of a mediaeval All Saints church.   This is believed to have stood somewhere near Handford Bridge, but it had already been annexed to St Matthew’s when Thomas Moonie was instituted as Rector there in 1383.

 

The Memorial Cross in Portland stone in the south-west corner of the churchyard was put up in 1921.   The boundary wall was topped with iron railings until they were removed for the war effort in 1942.

 

Inside, the building is surprisingly light and airy, and, in the view of some at least, far more attractive than the exterior.   The most striking feature is the arcades in brick with terracotta quatrefoil piers, the arches echoing the window shapes.   Note too the slightly ridged chamfers to the arches.

 

The foundation stone for the first stage of the building is at the base of the column closest to the Holdich organ (Caine’s Record, pp 9-19).   The small design at the foot of the pillar, copied (inaccurately) from the single stone remaining from the mediaeval church, is of a wild boar.   Psalm 80.13, Acts 8.3 and Revelation 7.14 should together provide clues to its meaning;  it has to do with the persecution of God’s people.

 

The foundation stone of the tower can be seen in the south porch (the main entrance).   The intention was to have a peal of five bells, but only the smallest was hung - and even that has not been rung for some years at the time of writing.

 

Caesar Caine’s book describes the bell, the chancel screen, the reredos, the organ and the pulpit in detail.   The organ in the chancel, built by James Binns and dedicated in January 1907, is now out of use.   The Holdich organ on the north side came from the redundant church of St Lawrence’s in the town centre, and is undergoing a thorough restoration.   The pulpit, designed by the church’s architect, stands on a block of Runcorn stone.   The carved figures are of the apostles Peter and Paul, whose ministries to the Jews and the non-Jewish world respectively represent all the saints.

 

An item in oak, variously referred to as a Credence Table and a Litany Desk - we keep the offertory plate on it - was given in 1915 by the officers and men of the London Rifle Brigade, who had been stationed in the area.

 

The East Window was dedicated on All Saints’ Day (1st November) 1938, and the church magazine carried a full description of its design ‘as you may see it’.   The design is based on the Te Deum, from the Morning Service.

 

Such photographs as we have of the interior (in Caine and Mitton) show chairs, and the only text reference so far found (Caine p53) is also to chairs.   No record has yet come to light of there ever being pews.   This means that we have always had greater flexibility than most, in the use of the building and the ordering of worship, to meet current needs.

 

The church building has been listed since 1988.

 

Ministry and Mission

 

This section in particular deserves much more research than you will find here - and one day will get it!

 

Caesar Caine reports that, after 1904, church income fell, reflecting both a change in the social composition of the area and a period of economic depression, especially in the building trade.   In the winter of 1905/6, he records that, in the space of a week, there were 170 calls at his door - 30 in a single morning - by people asking for help.   It was becoming increasingly, he says, “an artisan and labouring” population, of “the very poor”.   In January 1907 he wrote: “the poverty and distress just now surpasses anything I saw during the first three winters of residence here”.   He, and the church, were clearly doing whatever they could to help, but without great funds.

 

The magazine for January 1910 carries a long list of organisations, activities and representatives - Sunday Schools, young people’s groups (CLB and GFS), Men’s Society, Communicants’ Guild, Adults Bible Class, Temperance Society, Mothers’ Union, Working Party, children’s weekday activities, Coal Club (which appears to have worked rather like a modern Christmas Club, but with dividends), Missionary Societies etc.

 

“We have now a considerable number of soldiers billeted in the parish” says the magazine for April 1915.   The church offered recreation nights, and generally did its best to welcome the men.

 

The first air raid on Ipswich (30th April 1915) hit Brook’s Hall Road.   The magazine for June reports that “we have deemed it necessary to insure our Church and adjacent property against destruction or damage by aircraft”.  

 

In the October, “some of our parochial organization meetings will have to be postponed indefinitely, owing to our Church Rooms having been requisitioned by the Military Authorities as a feeding centre.”

 

The town’s worst-recorded floods in January 1939 affected many in the parish.  The church gave a hundredweight of coal to every affected house.

 

During World War 2, the hall was again requisitioned for army use.   Apart from an entry in the annual accounts - the War Department paid well - little is said in the parish magazine about this, perhaps because of a warning in the diocesan insert along the lines of ‘careless talk costs lives’.   There are, however, comments about the increase in numbers attending church services;  and the Electoral Roll in 1942 carried 611 names.  

 

Several have spoken of an air-raid shelter under the car park (tarmacked in the 1970s), either between the church and the hall, or with its entrance facing that of the car park (to Blenheim Road).   Inside the church, one of the battens screwed to the wall, presumably for black-out curtains, is still in place near the Holdich organ.   However, there is a comment in a magazine in 1942 that, during the winter months, the time of the evening service was changed to the afternoon, partly because people were not keen to come out in the black-out, but also because of the high cost of effectively blacking-out the church.

 

All Saints’ supported town-wide evangelistic campaigns in February 1908 (led by the Church Army), in October 1921, in June 1941, in October 1981, in 1984, 1993 and 2002 (and very possibly at other times too).   In Frank Mitton’s time, the church supplied teams to assist with evangelistic campaigns on the new estates in the parishes of Whitton (1949), All Hallows (1950) and St Mary Stoke (1954).   For an account of current activities, the most recent Annual Report, as presented to the church’s AGM, should be readily available in a format similar to this.

 

Sources

 

A Record of Thirty Years’ Work               Caesar Caine                 1902/10

Ipswich Churches Ancient and Modern     Roy Tricker                    1982

All Saints Parish Magazines, parishioners’ letters, newspaper articles

Simon’s Suffolk Churches                       (website)                       2001

The Church Year Book - a calendar/blotter  produced for the Golden Jubilee  F Mitton                                    1936

Ipswich Through the Ages                       Lilian Redstone              1948

 

 

Incumbents of All Saints’

(Curate-in-charge, becoming vicar with the formal creation of the parish in 1888)

 

Richard H Cautley                      April 1877 - January 1887

 

J Sheldon Jones                        February 1887 - 1901

 

Caesar Caine                             November 1901 - October 1910

 

Samuel W Key                          November 1910 - October 1922

 

William J Badcock                     November 1922 - November 1924

 

Sydney C Calver                        May 1925 - October 1935

 

Frank Mitton (Canon 1947)          March 1936 - January 1957

 

Peter J Disney                           May 1957 - July 1962

 

O Maurice Darwin                      December 1962 - September 1968

 

Robert Wisken                           March 1969 - February 1974

 

H Gerald Harrison                      September 1974 - February 1981

 

Tony (AG) Wilcox                      September 1981 - September 2006

 

 

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