This
jolly building sits on one of eastern Ipswich's
arterial roads surrounded by late 19th and early
20th century housing. I am not aware that it
replaced an earlier chapel on the same site, and
the inscription on the end of the frontage tells
us that To the Glory of God this foundation
stone laid on 15th June 1957. The foundation
stone concludes Ubi Christus Ibi Ecclesia,'where
there is Christ, there is the Church', which
seems curious to find in Latin on a
Congregational church.
Hatfield Road Congregational
did not join the new United Reformed
Church in the early 1970s, when the
Presbyterian Church of England came
together with the majority of former
Congregational churches. For a time in
the 1990s, there was a sign outside
saying Church of Christ, which I believe
is a large American denomination, but
this has now been taken down.
Interestingly, Ipswich has another
Congregational Church, St
Clement's, less than a mile
off into town at the bottom of the hill.
The
style of the building is very much that
of the Johns, Slater Haward Partnership,
who added a number of fine, interesting
buildings to the Ipswich townscape in the
late 1950s and early 1960s, although I am
not aware that this is one of theirs.
However, Hatfield Road Congregational has
echoes of the glass mosaic wall at their Castle
Hill Congregational of
the previous year, and the canted roofs
begin to suggest those at the practice's
most important single building, Sprites
Schools, of 1960-62, so perhaps they were
at work here after all.
Simon Knott, September 2009
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