Ipswich, Suffolk

King of the beasts

The white hart in my previous post is a prelude to this animal sign, from the Golden Lion Hotel in Ipswich, another picture sent to me by my reader Bob Kindred, and received with many thanks. The lion occupies an appropriate place for the king of the beasts, as high as is feasible on a little stone plinth above cornice level. Mr Kindred reports that years ago the lion was golden in fact as well as name, but in a regilding exercise about 20 years ago some kind of gold paint was used, which has now worn away, leaving the lion looking the worse for wear. And yet, if properly regilded, he could look magnificent again, and would make a striking and eye-catching sign for the hotel whose building he surmounts.

He looks a characterful beast, and a fitting emblem for the 18th and 19th-century structure of the hotel, which also has tiny lion heads on the guttering. But I don’t know whether he’s a one-off or a mass produced lion, perhaps made in Coade Stone, the artificial stone produced in Lambeth, London, and widely used in the Georgian and Regency periods. There are many lions on buildings around the country, but I don’t recall seeing one exactly like him. I wonder if any of my other readers have seen a lion cast from the same mould?

Ipswich, Suffolk

Turning a corner – once more

Regular readers will have noticed my liking for buildings that deal stylishly with an acute angle, giving builders the excuse for a tight, neat curve or even a tower. One such reader* has sent me a photograph of this kind of building in Ipswich (a place I don’t know at all well) and as he guessed, it’s very much up my street (or up my acutely converging thoroughfares). It was built in c. 1903 as the premises of H. Sneezum & Co to designs by a local architect, Harvey Winkworth. My correspondent tells me that the original design (of which there’s a drawing in the Suffolk County Record Office) had the building coming to a sharp point, but that this was modified, with the curved wall and pointed roof that we see now.

Pedimented sash windows and fairly orthodox early-20th century shop fronts form a facade that’s made just that bit special by the corner feature with its pointed roof. It stands out, that roof, and I should think Mr Sneezum must have liked the way his roof line stood out from the architectural and retail crowd. Perhaps other locals did too. “I’ll meet you outside Sneezum’s” or “Turn right at Sneezum’s” – I can imagine people saying things like that as they got used to this turret-like feature, standing guard at its corner and becoming something of a landmark. I too am pleased to make its acquaintance.

*Thanks to Bob Kindred for altering me to this building and supplying the picture.

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Postscript In my post above I avoided saying anything about what Sneezum's sold in their large shop. I'd seen online references to them operating as pawnbrokers, also to a shop (but it was unclear if it was this shop) selling clothing. A reader (see comments section) has come across another online reference, which includes an early photograph and says that someone bought a tennis racket, hockey stick, binoculars, and a camera there. A modern business called Sneezums operates as a jeweller and photographic retailer in Bury St Edmunds.