Ipswich

Introduction

Port, borough and county town of Suffolk, Ipswich is by far the largest settlement in the county and historically was built around the lowest crossing point of the tidal river Orwell (known as the river Gipping to the west of Stoke bridge). The modern town has expanded far beyond the fortified medieval port and today many large modern urban and industrial estates surround the older central shopping, administrative and decayed port areas which are slowly being redeveloped.

It's often claimed that "Ipswich once had a pub for every day of the year". However this claim (which is probably made for many similar-sized towns) doesn't stand up. Borough police records show that the town's drinking estate peaked in about 1870, when there were a total of 313 taverns and beerhouses. As police records did not differentiate between beerhouses with either on- or off-licenses, the maximum number of drinking premises was probably between ten to twenty fewer than that.

BREWING IN TOWN…

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