Martin & Newby R.I.P., The Unicorn,
Palmer's Door Mats
An old established business, suffering closure due to
the rise of
warehouse
DIY outlets in the town - provided customer service and the
availability
of small quantities of screws, other fitments, hardware, electrical
goods
and tools - Martin and Newby proclaimed their business on manifold
signs,
dated 1873. While these are all bolt-on signs on a linked string of
individual
shop premises (The Bull pub on the corner, a newsagents, a fruiterer)
which
ostensibly fall outside the brief of this website, the architectural
detail
at the top of the building (shown below) qualifies it.
-
The edifice itself is Commemoration Buildings, dated
1897 to coincide
with
Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. We wonder where Martin and Newby was
based
during the first twenty four years of their existence. Below: the shop
frontages
on Orwell Place (formerly Stepples Street) and the side entrance on
Fore
Street, photographed shortly before the business closed its doors for
the
last time in June, 2004.
-
[March, 2005: during a snow shower (see also Unicorn
update below), we
see the sad sight of Martin & Newby bereft of its midriff. The shop
section demolished down to the basement and netted off from the
pavement was presumably unlisted, as were the warehouses behind and to
the left, also gone. It's doubtful that any new retailer will display
so proudly the word 'HARDWAREMEN'.]
Just accross the road from the M&N vehicular
entrance above: the
carved
wood 'MEREMAYD' on the front wall of 17 Fore Street can be seen. The
Mermaid public house was closed at an indeterminate date and is now in
residential use.:
The attractive frontage of The Unicorn at the corner of
Orwell Place
(formerly
Stepples Street to commemorate the stepping stones, used by walkers to
avoid
flood waters from The Wash) and Foundation Street obviously deserved a
proclamation
of it existence. These huge upper case slab serif letters (complete
with
square full stop) stand in relief and have been preserved long past the
existence
of the Unicorn itself. The carpet shop which used to occupy the ground
floor
has been succeeded by a number of businesses. The Unicorn was a hotel
which
was
part of the sizeable brewery behind it dating from the early to mid
19th century. We have already discovered that
brewing took place behind the Rose &
Crown,
not to mention the historic Tolly Cobbold brewery on Cliff Quay - now
sadly
no longer brewing beer. The whole group of impressive Unicorn buildings
(which included a small theatre, we're told) embody an important part
of
Ipswich history: brewing. There was also a brewery owned by Tollemache
opposite, on the site
of the car park behind the former Woolworth store. The Unicorn brewery
and public house was owned by Catchpole and Co. Ltd until it was bought
in 1923, along with several other hostelries in the Ipswich area
(including the Coach & Horses), by
Tollemache jointly with Cobbold's before they became Tolly Cobbold in
1957 and the brewery was closed in the 1960s when production was moved
to Cliff Quay brewery. The Unicorn Inn was situated at 2-4 Orwell Place
and it pulled its last pint in 1976.
Above: a view in 2012 from Cox Lane down Foundation
Street of the Orwell Place 'UNICORN.'
frontage and brewery rising behind it.
Below, we see the Unicorn, with lettering proudly in
place, in 1897,
the
flags flying for the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. All the
buildings
to the left have gone and the very Stepples Street opened up. The
junction
to the left (below the awnings) which is opposite the mouth of
Foundation
Street is Cox Lane, when it led to dense housing of the poorest
quality:
Permit Office Street, Barclay Street and Union Street . The Unicorn
brewery
closed in 1923, but it remained as a public house until 1977. The
Suffolk CAMRA site (see Links, also on that
page see our Reading List - James, T.: 'Ipswich inns, taverns and
pubs') provides a list of many of the landlords of the inn.
[Below: updating the story to the late snows of March,
2005 (you can
see the falling flakes on the images). The building has been cleaned
and extended during major refurbishment; this olde worlde sign was
added high above and facing the Foundation Street car park. The
postmodern twist that the building - now so proudly named in condensed,
serif, gold capitals on a black ground - ceased to be brewery many
years ago may have escaped the developers.]
Upper Orwell Street (formerly 'The Wash' to mark the
almost constant
flows
of water from the springs around Christchurch Park, also Spring Road
via Majors Corner down to
the
Wet Dock) has been ill-served by 'progress' in recent years. Planning
blight
has left many shops empty and boarded up. The Baipo Restaurant
occupies
a high building which is home to one of the most obscure advertising
sites
in town (enhanced but barely readable on this photograph):-
Slightly
enhanced image.
' - FOR -
PALMER'S
DOOR
MATS
&C [?]'
This capital lettering fits the triangular
shape left by the
adjoining roof. There is a
decorative
flourish rising up from the roof level next to the word 'Door' also
above the 'ME' of 'Palmer's' the lower part of the word
'FOR'.
Clearly there was a shop or dealer name above this; perhaps the upper
wall
was remodelled - or at least cleaned. The following ampersand is
puzzling: unless it is '&c.' which stands for 'et
cetera', it can only mean that the pitched roof next door was built at
a later date obliterating the lettering. This does seem unlikely given
the way in which the advertisement is laid out in the available space.
See Links
for the Lost Pubs Project which has another view of this building,
revealed as the former Eagle Tavern - not to be confused with the
nearby Spread Eagle - which was at 61-63 Upper Brook
Street. This pub ran from 1855 and closed in 1977.
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Historic Lettering site: Borin Van Loon
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