Ipswich Ragged Schools
The philanthropist and
Quaker banker, Richard Dykes Alexander set up the Ipswich Ragged School
in a cottage in St Clements Church Lane in 1849. The purpose-built
school in Waterworks Street remains today and came under the influence
of Joshua George Newman who taught reading, writing, domestic skills
and craft trades to up to 135 destitute children at a time over
nineteen years at the school. The Boys' School is a
well-known survivor of a bygone era standing on Waterworks
Street, or rather it would stand in the middle of the current
Waterworks
Street, had the fascia not been moved back from the road and the
building
shortened by by about ten feet when the street was widened in the
eighties
as part of the Ipswich 'Eastern Gyratory' traffic scheme (which also
turned
the most ancient part of the town around the Wet Dock into a
race-track).
-
The rather impressively sited commemorative plaque in
the upper Dutch style
frontage shows: 'IPSWICH RAGGED SCHOOL, FOUNDED 1849, RENOVATED 1903'
with
'BOYS SCHOOL' on the stone mullioned windows below. It has received at
least
a couple of facelifts since then and is now housing accomodation with
accesses
at the side. It was set up by the Quakers who did much philanthropic
work
for the poorest in society during the Industrial Revolution.
This photograph from 1960 shows the original position
of the school standing
shoulder-to-shoulder with its long vanished Waterworks Street
neighbours.
-
- (marred only by the promotional
banner)
The Ragged Girls' School stands further up the road in Bond Street.
Variously:
'IPSWICH RAGGED SCHOOL - (GIRLS SCHOOL) - FOUNDED 1849'. Formerly used
as
Mick Blackwell's martial arts school, it is now a private nursery. The
building
dates from the early twentieth century and it displays several
lettering plaques and is a more recent and impressive
building
than the Boys' School.
-
'THIS STONE WAS LAID BY
THE MOST HONOURABLE
THE MARQUIS of NORTHAMPTON
PRESIDENT of THE
RAGGED SCHOOL UNION
November 29th 1900'
See also:
Smart Street School
More schools (Argyle
Street, Clifford Road, Bramford Road, Ranelagh
Road, Spring Road, Springfield Junior, Grey Coat Boys)
Ipswich High
School.
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Historic Lettering site: Borin Van Loon
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