Conservation Matters - Spring 2007
45-47 St Nicholas Street
The Ipswich Building Preservation Trust have acquired this fine Grade II* building and is currently restoring it to create two retail units on the ground floor and two flats in the upper floor and attic with separate rear access. The restoration project is being carried out with grant aid from English Heritage and Ipswich Borough Council and loan facilities from the Architectural Heritage Fund. More information on the project can be found on the IBPT website at
www.ipswichbuildingpreservationtrust.comIpswich Museum
The Ipswich Museum in the High Street, dated 1880 and designed by Horace Cheston, was regraded from Grade II to Grade II* in July 2006. The regrading was in recognition of the outstanding exterior, the survival of the interior complete with original nineteenth century fitted display cases and for the historic interest of a complex public educational establishment, built by a municipal corporation, and combining both science and art. This brings the total of Grade I and Grade II* buildings in the Borough to 41.
Isaac Lord Complex
Planning permission and listed building consent has been granted for various alterations, extensions, conversions and general repairs to the buildings of the Isaac Lord complex. The approval is for a variety of uses including restaurants, exhibition/conference centre, retail and office space and a micro brewery.
The Isaac Lord group of buildings, retaining a merchants complex dating from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, with later buildings running down to what became the wet dock in the mid nineteenth century, is a unique survival in Ipswich and is of considerable national significance as a major and complete group of historic industrial buildings with continuity of ownership. The importance of the complex has been recognised by a Grade I listing of its earlier elements, with its later buildings partly listed as Grade II* and partly as Grade II.
Heritage White Paper
Heritage Protection in the 21st Century was published on 8th March and is the "first white paper on the historic environment for a generation" says the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The paper sets out the legislative measures required to produce a simpler and more open heritage protection system. It will streamline regulations by merging listed building consent and scheduled monument consent, and conservation area consent with planning permission. The white paper also proposes to devolve responsibility for the designation system in England from the DCMS to English Heritage. DCMS are seeking Parliamentary time for new legislation in the 2007/.8 session but a three month consultation period is now announced until 1st June.