Local Plumbers Ipswich Suffolk

Approximate Population: 128,000 (2007)

Ipswich is one of England’s oldest towns, and took shape in Anglo-Saxon times as the main centre between York and London for North Sea trade to Scandinavia and the Rhine. It served the Kingdom of East Anglia, and began developing in the time of King Rædwald, supreme ruler of the English (616-624). The famous ship-burial and treasure at Sutton Hoo nearby (9 miles, 14.5 km) is probably his grave. The Ipswich Museum houses replicas of the Roman Mildenhall Treasure and the Sutton Hoo treasure. A gallery devoted to the town’s origins includes Anglo-Saxon weapons, jewellery and other artefacts.

Around 1380, Geoffrey Chaucer satirised the merchants of Ipswich in the Canterbury Tales. Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, the son of a wealthy landowner, was born in Ipswich about 1475. One of Henry VIII’s closest political allies, he founded a college in the town in 1528, which was for its brief duration one of the homes of the Ipswich School. He remains one of the town’s most famed figures. In the time of Queen Mary the Ipswich Martyrs were burnt at the stake on the Cornhill for their Protestant beliefs. A monument commemorating this event now stands in Christchurch Park. From 1611 to 1634 Ipswich was a major centre for emigration to New England. This was encouraged by the Town Lecturer, Samuel Ward. His brother Nathaniel Ward was first minister of Ipswich, Massachusetts, where a promontory was named ‘Castle Hill’ after the place of that name in north-west Ipswich, UK.

The Tolly Cobbold brewery, built in the 19th century and rebuilt 1894–1896, is one of the finest Victorian breweries in the United Kingdom. There was a Cobbold brewery in the town from 1746 until 2002 when Ridley’s Breweries took Tolly Cobbold over. Felix Thornley Cobbold presented Christchurch Mansion to the town in 1896.
Former stables, reflected in the glass panels of the Willis Building. Owned by Willis Limited, the properly called the Willis Building but still often called the “Willis-Faber building” by locals, as the company Willis Corroon themselves used to be called Willis Faber. Designed by Norman Foster, the building dates from 1974. It became the youngest Grade I listed building in Britain in 1991 and at the time one of only two buildings to be listed and be under 30 years of age. Ipswich is set to be the main hub for University Campus Suffolk, which will give Suffolk its first university, though it is essentially a collaborative project between Suffolk College and two other regional universities. It is hoped that within a decade, a University of Suffolk in its own right will become established out of UCS.

Local Plumbers Ipswich Suffolk

Local Plumbers

Solihull West Midlands

Approximate Population: 94,753

Residential development in Solihull comprises a variety of housing types, but features a notable preponderance of semi-detached, detached and town houses, with little or no true terraces.   Many of the larger developments were constructed between 1950 and 1970.   One of the earlier large scale developments centred around Beechwood Park Road and Stonor Park Road with new detached houses selling for £4,000 in 1952.   Chelmsley Wood to the north of Solihull town centre is a large 1960s overspill estate for Birmingham, and is currently marketed under the name of “North Solihull”. In the early to mid-1980s, the new Monkspath district constructed east of Shirley (and close to the M42 motorway) was the UK’s single largest housing development of that decade.

Solihull offers a variety of shopping facilities.   It has an open-air 1960s-style shopping centre called Mell Square.   In recent years, the town has undergone much development, and the High Street has been pedestrianised since 1994. On July 2, 2002, a large new shopping centre, Touchwood, was opened by Queen Elizabeth II.

Solihull is the home of the four wheel drive car manufacturer Land Rover and a range of other major companies.

The National Exhibition Centre, commonly thought to be in Birmingham, is in fact within the borough of Solihull, as is almost all of Birmingham International Airport and the ever-expanding Birmingham Business Park.

Local Plumbers Solihull West Midlands

Local Plumbers

Salisbury Wiltshire

Approximate Population: 45,000

The first Salisbury Cathedral was built at Old Sarum by St Bishop Osmund between 1075 and 1092.   A larger building was built on the same site circa 1120.   However, deteriorating relations between the clergy and the military at Old Sarum led to the decision to re-site the cathedral elsewhere.

Thus the city of New Sarum, known as Salisbury, was founded in 1220, and the building of the new cathedral begun by Bishop Richard Poore in that year. The main body was completed in only 38 years and is a masterpiece of Early English architecture.   Some stones which make up the cathedral came from Old Sarum, others from the Chilmark Quarries from where they were floated down the River Nadder in small boats.   The 123 m (400 ft) tall spire was built later and is the tallest spire in the UK.

The cathedral is built on a gravel bed with unusually shallow foundations of 18 inches (46 cm) upon wooden faggots: the site is supposed to have been selected by shooting an arrow from Old Sarum, although this can only be legend as the distance is over 3 kilometres (1.9 mi). It is sometimes claimed the arrow hit a white deer, which continued to run and died on the spot where the Cathedral now exists.

The cathedral library contains the best preserved of the four surviving copies of the Magna Carta.  In 1386, a large mechanical clock was installed at Salisbury Cathedral, the oldest surviving mechanical clock in Britain.

Local Plumbers Salisbury Wiltshire