Parliament Road, Upper Orwell Courts, Northgate Street
'PARLIAMENT ROAD' is a (presumably) cast iron sign
which must have been
fixed to the brickwork of the end-of-terrace on the corner with
Freehold
Road. The later pebbledash finish provides a snug frame for the sign
which
the present owner (again presumably) keeps sharply painted (in
negative!)
to catch the eye.
A street name redolent of times gone. This small lane
off 'The Wash' as
Upper Orwell Street was once known*, now reaches right back to the
parallel
Bond Street: the only street to link the two above Falcon Street. Now
virtually
a mere footway, it is blessed with this impressive (and unusually
shaped)
thick, cast iron sign at The Wash end. Someone cares enough to maintain
the paintwork of the relief lettering; it contrasts strongly with the
neglect
of the similar vintage Bridge Street
sign.
We read with some interest that in a past century such was the flow of
water
down this way from Majors Corner, past Stepples Street towards the Wet
Dock,
that a man was prosecuted for erecting an illegal water wheel.
[*It's a moot point as to whether the street was renamed after Upper
Orwell
Courts.] Just up the road on the other side is Union Street down
which is the ancient trace of the sign for Charles
Court.
The same cast iron style street sign can be seen opposite The
Halberd Inn: 'NORTHGATE ST.'
-
Here the studs fixing the sign to the rendered
brickwork are clearly visible,
as is the fact that the Alexandra Hair Designs salon has covered the
whole
thing in their beige masonry paint! The unusual superscript 'T' above a
full stop in
'ST.'
marks this street sign out as a partner to the now extinct Bridge
Street near Stoke Bridge and the Lower
Brook
Street sign. Before metal street and road signs, the names were
sometimes painted onto brickwork; see Lancaster
Road for some vestiges.
Just for interest's
sake,
here's a period image of that 'Northgate St.' wall, when the street
sign was sited lower down: a riot of drop-shadow capitals - probably in
two colours against a tinted cream-washed (probably) rendered wall:
'GREEN & HATFIELD
ANTIQUES [vertical]
LARGE
SHOW
ROOMS
THE OLD
CURIOSITY
SHOP'
Green & Hatfield's 'Old Curiosity Shop' on the
corner of Northgate Street and St Margaret's Street (a squib of a
street running unnoticed from St Helen's Street at Major's Corner and
into Crown Street) was once a well-known landmark of Ipswich. You can see the shelves of antiquarian books through the
front window - as you used to be able to do in the window of the
collector's shop 'Atfield & Daughter' (the wonderful building The
Sun Inn) in St Stephen's Lane. Mr Green retired from the business and
in the early 1980s was still living in the large house built in 1850
(it had it's own chaise house in the large garden, which still stands
today) which stand on the corner of Belle Vue Road and Woodbridge Road
between Russell Villas and Shaftesury
Villas.
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Historic Lettering site: Borin Van Loon
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