The town is clearly proud of its (apparently) antique slab. A shaped metal tray-like support with the angled metal flanges seen above protect the 'ecclesiastical' sign, despite the cracks in the stone. This milestone is sited close to the Co-op store.

The naive masonic script is redolent of a distant era when a journey to Ipswich or even London on horseback or by cart or carriage must have been quite an adventure. The stone must predate the arrival of the rail link between Ipswich and Lowestoft by a considerable time. Compare the early script with signs in East Bergholt and Stradbroke. All these reveries come down to earth with a bump as we learn from the Suffolk Milestones website (sadly defunct 2010; see Links) that this is reputedly a 20th Century cement replacement of the original.

Here's a further contribution from Richard at the Suffolk Milestones website [October, 2004]:

<<I don't have primary evidence of this [the 20th C. replacement milestone], but I have a letter dated Sept 1993 from PW Cotton, Clerk to Woodbridge town council to a resident about this.
The response was:
"To the best of my knowledge, the milestone is made of a cement mix inside an iron framework. I would not think that it is very old - it seems to have been a replacement for an old milestone of more traditional appearance which stood on the same spot, within the last 30-40 years as a guess."
This letter was passed to me by Carol Haines, which is why I used the reference to the report in her book rather than the infernal 'pers.comm'. I assume it is based on the same letter.

This sequence is odd around Woodbridge - the one before
http://www.milestonesweb.com/sites/tm261483.htm
looks authentically old in style to me, but curiously different to the others made by Garrett, say
http://www.milestonesweb.com/sites/tm281506.htm.
Something is different in the 7, for instance, and the lettering of Woodbridge is not radially aligned evenly with the arc, and something about the N and the O of London isn't right.
The closest date reference I have for the Ipswich to Yoxford A12 is a secondary reference to the inaugural meeting of the trustees at the Three Tuns in 1785. Stones of a roughly triangular pattern were used but eroded very bady becoming illegible, hence the move to mileposts in the early 1800s
regards,
Richard>>
Many thanks to him for adding to the debate.

Just round the corner past the public library is a curved building at the corner of St Johns Street and New Street. The estate agents business has clearly not always occupied this place. In the curved, bricked-up window (Suffolk whites, now honey-coloured with age, unless we're very much mistaken) in the centre of the first storey there is the fading announcement:

'ANTIQUE
FURNITURE
SHOW
ROOMS'

The reddish brown serif capitals (barely decipherable lower down - not helped by the angle bracket which once supported a hanging sign) demonstrate the use of condensed and extended letterforms to occupy the measure created by the window recess. In this way the space is nicely filled, but the most eye catching word, by dint of containing the smallest number of characters, must have been 'Show' when originally painted.

The Clock House at 42 Cumberland Street provides a fascinating sundial above the front door. the unusual pierced disc gnomon provides a small spot of sunshine to highlight the hour of the day, here picked out on the rendered, painted wall in Roman numerals: X, XI, XII, I, II, III distributed evenly on either side of an internal right angle. The helpful letters below the upright 'GMT' remind us that sundials take no cogniscence of Britain's arcane Daylight Saving practices. (See Links page for Suffolk Sundials and more sundials at Aldeburgh and Guildford.)

Nearby, the short, narrow Kingston Road contains the above painted lettering 'KINGSTON TERRACE' against a pale panel on the red brick. Important enough to have been lettered in the early part of the twentieth century (?), but also re-lettered on top - the ghost of the earlier lettering is visible. The encroaching modern cabling and slight damage to the name panel - an attempt to screw in a cable-hook? - marr the photograph. This end of the town contains some interesting houses of varying period and architecture. Once the main approach into the centre of Woodbridge on into the (even narrower) Thoroughfare which eventually opens onto Melton Hill, it's a sobering thought that until a few years ago, this was a two-way street carrying heavy traffic including the Grey-Green coaches from London to Great Yarmouth. We well recall travelling down the Thoroughfare on such a coach, watching the ancient eves on each side skim past the coachwork.

(Photograph left courtesy Daphne Lloyd, Woodbridge Local History Recorder

Above: not far from Kingston Terrace on Station Road once stood this building. Formerly a maltings, it was used as a warehouse for:

until demolition in 1989 to make way for housing. This photograph was taken about a year earlier.

Suffolk Seed Stores once traded from both Fred Smith & Co. in Princes Street, Ipswich and premises at 6 Church Street, Woodbridge. The 'leading edge' of this building still bears the advertisement which can be seen as you descend the hill towards The Cross (centred capitals on a cream background, the brickwork around the first word has been repointed; the rainwater downpipe is presumably a later addition) :

The Suffolk Horse Society had its office in the Suffolk Seed Stores building in Woodbridge for very many years but when the tenancy came to an end it managed to acquire the lease, through the generosity of Woodbridge Town Council, of the upper floors of the old courthouse building on Market Hill. High up above the shop fronts and the first storey, the company used the leading edge of the building to proclaim its trading position to those descending the steep hill from the Market Hill. Suffolk Seed Stores had a greengrocery business there, certainly as late as 1985. [Thanks to Daphne Lloyd, Woodbridge Local History Recorder for this information.]
[UPDATE 7.12.2011: "Wonderful web-site! I believe, though, that the office of the Suffolk Horse Society in Woodbridge was in the Church Street building of Suffolk Seed Stores (colour 'photo), and not the one shown in monochrome. Regards, Peter White." Thanks to Peter for information about the location which we had previously confused with the now-demolished Suffolk Seed Stores building.]

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stands at the crossroads of Church Street, Quay Street, Cumberland Street and Thoroughfare.  The former public house has one of the  earliest dates on this site and has often stood empty in recent years. The  sign is obscured by the inevitable street furniture, but it's good that someone cares enough to look after the lettering.  Meanwhile, three quarters of the way up Church Street is a building bearing an impressive  relief monogram:

A few hundred yards from the top of Market Hill as Theatre Street leads towards Burkitt Road, there stands the easily-missed sign above. These Houses of Correction were minor prisons, originally intended for minor offenders - the idle (regarded as subversive) and the disorderly. In addition to its function of a gaol for the rogue, it might also include a workhouse for the poor, hospital for the old, and industrial school for the young. Some date from the early 17th century, but this seems to be an 18th or 19th century building. The central projecting section, which narrows the pavement, carries the lettering incised into a bevelled stone tablet, then coloured/infilled; the weather is taking its toll. For more on this sort of institution and workhouses in general, see the Workhouse website listed in Links.

 

At the rear of Quay Street (behind the Woodbridge Quay Church), Crown Place dog-legs round in front of a remarkable building which has now been converted into accomodation. The view from Quay Street struck us some time ago and in 2011 we got round to photographing the lettering. Here's the view accross the graveyard:

The wall bears the legend in large caps:

 

 
Meanwhile on the corner of Quay Street and Quay Side (opposite the Riverside Theatre) is a long-established yacht chandlers - which seems to do something else these days - which features the surprisingly early date of

picked out in black paint on two Viking ship roundels against a wall of simple pargetting.

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