The Crown & Anchor
The Crown & Anchor Hotel at 10-14 Westgate Street
stands
as a palatial monument
to what once was in the town centre. Until refurbishment and
modernisation of
the
interior and rear buildings in the nineties the
Crown &
Anchor
Hotel had struggled to regain its position as a top hotel in the town
centre. The stables and out-houses
stretch right back to Tower Ramparts where All Fired Up now have
premises;
the side bar, The Crown & Anchor Tap, used to open onto Providence
Street and many will recall it being busy and noisy with lunchtime
business drinkers on a weekday. The key to its demise is probably that
modern visitors want to drive to their hotel
and
park for free. A nineteenth century hotel inthe town centre based on
horse and coach traffic just
couldn't
provide this, so it was converted into shops.
Once again (see also the Old Post Office)
we
have a decorative fascade emblazoned with its name, function and date,
yet
it's a branch of W.H. Smith. A banner at the top right above a window
(see close-up towards the bottom of this page) gives the date of '1897'. However, this characteristically
spired
and decorative frontage features on an 1859 deguerrotype by
W. Vick taken from Cornhill. It appears
from
behind the American Stores (a building demolished in the 1870s to make
way
for Grimwades clothier's shop, now Clinton's Cards) when Westgate
Street
was much narrower. Moving to the left of this old view, we would find
the
site of Mannings public house.
Next door to the hotel is the Palladian fascade of
Waterloo House, later Footman's store which morphed into the
present-day Debenham's. One can only wonder what might have been if
this building hadn't been torn down.
1859 view
Very little around the Crown & Anchor remains: the
austere red brick
frontage which becomes the new Debenhams store to the right of the
colour
image (above) has replaced the original Footman Pretty building.
However, the architectural lettering abounds on the old hotel frontage.
'THE
CROWN
& ANCHOR HOTEL'
in 'gothic' lettering lies on the furled stone
banner
high above a regal looking shield, crown and lions couchant in the
centre,
flanked by roundels featuring the crown and anchor motifs. The name of
the
hotel is repeated without the definite article in pierced plain
capitals
with latticework surround on the portico above the central door.
2012
images
The close-ups below show the rather weathered dated
scroll, which can be seen above the top right window of the building,
and the pierced name over the frront door.
The reason for the difference in dates mentioned above is that the
decorative design of the hotel front is by Fred Russell, an
architectural artist whose work was much in demand locally. It
was rebuilt and enlarged in 1897 – hence the rather unusual,
off-centre placing of the date. It incorporated in its Venetian-Gothic
style two older inns, The Chequers (at one time known as The
Rampant Horse: a name that reappears on our Needham Market page) and the 16th
Century Griffin. The Griffin was renowned for its role as one of the
town's earliest theatres; in the early 1700s the Duke of Grafton's
players performed there regularly. (Source: Twinch, C. see Reading List)
The man resposible for this Victorian gothic sonework re-fronting of
The Crown &
Anchor
Hotel was one of the foremost 19th century Ipswich architects, Thomas
W.
Cotman, nephew of the famous watercolourist, John Sell Cotman. His use
of
stone – not a characterisitic local building material in Ipswich
– for
business
premises is unusual and can be seen in other fine town buildings: the
nearby
Lloyds Chambers on Cornhill, the Chelsea
Building
Society offices at the corner of King Street
and Princes Street, as well as Harvest House in Felixstowe, schools,
commercial
premises and houses in the area. (This last paragraph based on an
'Evening
Star' interview with Ipswich Borough Conservation Officer, Bob Kindred,
relating to the recent renovation of the interior and exterior of the
Chelsea
Building Society's Normandy Gothic building, 14/1/04)
As so often with hostelries and hotels, the Suffolk CAMRA website is
invaluable in providing additional information:
'The current building stands on the site of earlier pub(s) known to
date back at least to the 16th century. A report in the Suffolk Chronicle on 13 March, 1813
states that: "Crown and Anchor Tavern, Hotel and Coffee House, Ipswich.
Announcement that the landlord, George CRISP will shortly open his new
Billiards Room."
Listed in 1823 as a commercial inn, and 1855 as a posting house, and in
1874 as the "Crown & Anchor Family & Commercial Hotel &
posting house". A report in the Ipswich
Journal on 20 Sept. in 1861 states that: "The Crown &
Anchor, Ipswich, to be let. Basement ; Excellent Wine & Beer
Cellars; Ground Floor : Entrance Hall, Lobby & Open Staircase,
Commercial - Room, Bar & Bar Parlour, Pantries, Kitchens, Large
Market-Room; Above are 3 sitting-rooms, 17 bed-rooms & 2 large
Attics; Spacious Yard & Stabling, containing 26 stalls & 2
loose boxes, open & lock-up Coach-Houses & Harness Rooms; a
Billiard Room & Tap." In 1912 it was listed as a commercial hotel
& motor garage. The early 20th century fine stone façade
hides a much older building.'
(Note: the '1897' dated stone scroll on the facade seems to contradict
this last point.)
Just across from the former hotel at 11 Westgate Street is a deco-style
shop frontage with an intriguing date at the top: '19 EH 22'. We know that owners of newly built or modernised property,
or the architect, sometimes put their initials at the top of dated
buildings (see other examples in Freehold
Road and in Hadleigh). So who is 'EH'?
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Historic Lettering site: Borin Van Loon
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