Ipswich; Sunday, 11 July, 2021

I was able to have a bit of lie in this morning as my first port of call didn’t open until 11am, so I had a relaxed breakfast and then a slow wander through the city centre to the museum. Ipswich museum is that classic Victorian cover everything museum with displays on local flora and fauna, a large collection of stuffed and mounted hunting trophies/wildlife exhibits depending on your view, mammoths, Romans, Vikings, Egyptians and a world cultures gallery – it really does try to be the British Museum, but in a fraction of the floor space.

Having looked round the museum I headed into the centre of town for a quick lunch before continuing on to my second stop of the day at Christchurch Mansion. This is a large stately home, that is now part of Ipswich Museum, with it’s grounds having been turned into a pleasant town centre park. The mansion has a large exhibition space, which houses temporary exhibits, as well as the house itself which you can walk around.

From the Mansion I walked across town to the station and picked up an early afternoon train to go two stops up the line to the market town of Stowmarket.

This is a pretty market town on the River Gipping is home to the Museum of East Anglian Life, an ethnographic museum that brings together a number of rural buildings from across East Anglia. The land is part of Abbot’s Hall which itself has been turned into the main museum part of the site telling some of the history of the area and rural life in East Anglia.

You can walk around the site and visit most of the buildings, as well as see the small farm that contains a number of local breeds of pig, sheep and goats.

I spent a good couple of hours wandering around the site before heading back over to the station to catch the train back into Ipswich where I headed out for dinner and then an early night.