THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A BUSY EAST ANGLIAN SHED
Ipswich is an historic East Anglian town 66 miles north of London and ten miles from the east coast on the River Orwell. The county town of Suffolk, it is one of those claiming to be the oldest continuously occupied town in England. Certainly it has been occupied without a break since Saxon times – being previously known as Gippeswic (from an Old Saxon personal name or from an earlier name for the Orwell), Gyppewicus and Yppswiyche.
From the town’s Gippeswyk Park, which runs alongside the railway yards on the Norwich side of Ipswich station, the trainspotter in you can be within a few yards of the main railway lines to catch all the traffic going through.
Ipswich had an important engine shed for more than 120 years from 1846 until it finally closed in 1968, after which the location continued in railway use for a further 30 years.
The railway comes to Ipswich
The Victorian railway revolution came quite early to the south of East Anglia. London quickly became a hub of the fast-growing network of railway lines that marked the first 20 years after the inauguration of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830. Essex, located comparatively close to London, was an early beneficiary of the new technology. Suffolk was not far behind.
John Chevalier Cobbold, a true Victorian entrepreneur, was a celebrated member of the local brewing fraternity and also a prominent local political figure and, in due course, one of Ipswich’s two MPs. Cobbold was one of the prime driving forces behind the Eastern Union Railway (EUR). With his associates he endeavoured to get a railway built from an end-on junction with the Eastern Counties Railway at Colchester to Ipswich and on to Norwich and Great Yarmouth.
The new company
