Co-op

The Ipswich Industrial Co-operative Society, later the Ipswich and Norwich Co-operative Society (or INstore) and now the East of England Co-operative Society, has a long history in the town. See updates on this page for the sorry tale of the town centre store in Carr Street. Here are photographs from September 2010 to record the lettering on the buildings before they deteriorate. We go backwards in history from Major's Corner (named after a timber-framed merchant's house which stood there belonging to Mr Major - what a pity it wasn't preserved, as it would be a great improvement on what we see there today).  The most recent 'functional' extension to the store lies to the left behind the white lorry. It has no lettering, but housed Victoria's Bakery (an instore franchise) in the food shop, with soft furnishings and divi offices upstairs. The queue of people - mainly women -  down the stairs and out onto the street via the ground floor door at the corner on 'divi day' was a familiar sight. The Co-op these days send shareholders dividend 'cheques' by post.

Next up Carr Street is a white tiled frontage bearing the deco-style monogram:

This connects with a pale brick extension of similar size, which doesn't bear any lettering. Soaring up from this we find the much more decorative frontage shown below. Cased in white tile with blue lettered shield - a different configuration of:

This takes us up to the mouth of Cox Lane (itself spanned by two bridges between the above building and (below) the original Co-op town centre store. The corner spire - which echoes the long-demolished

- and rooftop wrought iron railings surmount a veritable white brick cathedral of retail. In 2010 the only Co-op presence in this building (apart, presumably from some offices above) are the travel agency, chemist and optician down Cox Lane.

A final glance back towards Major's Corner show the curve in Carr Street as the buildings descend in grandeur and age.


In 2004 partial renovation of the Carr Street Co-op gave the whole store a facelift, but sadly the original gothic palace of retailing that was the first of the main Co-op stores was sold off to Shoefayre and Poundland.
[UPDATE: 2009 - The East of England Co-op seems to have started a chain of events which has had a major effect on this series of shops in Carr Street. Midlands Co-op purchased the Somerfield food store chain, thereby losing some prime sites, e.g. in Saxmundham where it was thought not appropriate for a second Co-op owned food shop, so Somerfield went and Waitrose jumped in. Even more bizarrely, as the Co-op food shop in Carr Street had been shrunk to a third of its original size to accomodate electrical goods after the loss of the original Co-op store further up the road to Poundland, a Midland Co-op owned Somerfield food store opened up a hundred yards away across the road, opposite the now defunct Woolworths. Most of the non-food Co-op stores in the region have been sold off, including that in central Ipswich, to a company called Vergo. This makes all the lettered signifiers of the Co-operative movement

A 'lost' part of the Co-op, perhaps? During the facelift of the string of linked shops in Carr Street (which consists of new doors and a big white strip above all the windows on the ground floor...), we noticed this ghost of lettering: 'CO-OPERATIVE', surely, hovering above the entrance to Argos over the road. Does anyone remember a time when the Co-op occupied this realtively new building, which presumably went up after demolition of the East Anglian Daily Times printworks and the erection of 'Carr Precinct' (boo!)? Perhaps the sign caught fire - hence the marks on the beige brickwork.

Meanwhile, the very heart of the Co-op beats in its smaller local shops and neighbourhood premises. Here we see an interesting repeat of the symbol and motto high above the Foxhall Road branch (close to the junction with Back Hamlet) where the triangular upper section suggests a much bigger building than that which actually lies behind it:

Here the suitably cuffed, obviously male, clasped hands appear from beneath a furling banner in a slightly surreal conjunction. The banner bears the motto:

The whole is set in a semicircular moulding and flanked by smaller versions containing sculptural scallop shells. The scroll is particularly flamboyant, its pointed pennant ends terminated with bobbles.

[Update November, 2004: the whole of the above shop on Foxhall Road disappeared! No chance of reistatement of the above lettering. Here's the void prior to rebuilding during 2005 and the brand new shop, now set back from the pavement in September. The only lettering built into the frontage is the dated roundel which comemorates the buiding of the original shop in 1906. More roundels.]
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From here it is only a short walk to Ruskin House and the Blooming Fuchsia on Foxhall Road.
And just to prove that the Co-op consistently adorned the most modest of its buildings:

These beautifully designed art-nouveau influenced monograms stand high on light coloured brick pillars at either side of a goods entrance beside the Co-op shop in Cauldwell Hall Road. The importance of this branch and depot (the central bakery was close by on the site of the present Springlands Close, off Upland Road) may account for such splendid lettering. To the left we surely have the word 'BUILT'; to the right the date '1896', both are intertwined and include a vine/leaf motif. A metal roller door now occupies the entrance between. It's interesting to compare this with the rather more florid '1900' date further down Cauldwell Hall Road on the corner of Freehold Road. [The monogrammed capitals on the above building find echoes on a terra cotta house fascade on Aldeburgh's seafront (1898) and Sudbury's Masonic Hall (1886).]

Reading
The published history of the Co-op in the area provides many interesting facts and photographs from its inception in 1869 to the end of the twentieth century:
'People & Places: A pictorial history'. Ipswich and Norwich Co-operative Society Limited, 2000 (ISBN 0953966305). This was, suitably, offered to those distinguished Ipswich residents who maintain the fine tradition of daily milk delivery and copies of the book were delivered to their doors by their roundsmen and roundswomen, so they got their divi, too.  [Update 2009 - sadly, going hand-in-hand with the selling off of the main store in Carr Street, the Co-op sold their milk business to Dairy Crest and their roundsmen are becoming franchisees, no longer employed by D.C.]