Wrapping the Corn Exchange

Received a few e mails about my last post. Questions on the history of the Corn Exchange, and what did I mean by talking about a piece of art covering the scaffolding.

At the top of this post you will see the massive covering that I mentioned, this superb item was produced by Les Bicknell who has his own blog that can be found here.

On the history of the Corn Exchange building, it was built in 1882, in 1888 the fruit and vegetable market moved in and remained there till 1970. The last corn market was held in June 1972. The Corn Exchange was reopened as an entertainment venue in 1975.

But it has never looked like it has now - with the corn field on the outside!

Up on the Roof!

As the 'Drifters' would have sung, today I found myself "Up on the Roof," whilst on a site visit to the Ipswich Town Hall and Christchurch Mansion.

Ipswich should be and I believe is very proud of both the Town Hall and the Mansion. At present we have a scaffolding covering both (and the Corn exchange) as major repairs and cleaning go on with all three buildings.

Once cleaned the Corn Exchange will look fantastic and we will also see new windows, and they will even get rid of the nasty roof over the entrance to the Corn Exchange. The building also has seen the building and scaffolding covered in a large piece of art work by commercial artist, Les Bicknell this is quite a common site whilst building are being worked on in such places like Rome, but other than a few places in London has not been seen much in the UK so far. Once the £1 million refurbishment of the Corn Exchange is finished it will make the building look even more fantastic and the new roof should mean that visitors to the Corn Exchange and the Town Hall do not have to dodge buckets put in place to catch the drips!

The Mansion is also covered in scaffolding as a new roof is placed on this much older building, this was a fantastic chance to see the roof once the tiles were off. the problem they are finding is that it is hard to date previous restoration and repairs. This will not happen again as the present restoration is carefully record, with a large number of digital pictures to compliment the recording of the work

The view from the roof of the Town Hall also gave us a great chance to photograph Ipswich from 'above'. The picture above is a view of the old Hospital on Anglesea Road and the more modern Ipswich Prep School. The pictures below are of the tower on the top of the Town Hall and the roof of Christchurch Mansion.