A Day Out with Elspeth in ...Ipswich

Suffolk's county town often gets brushed over or aside for the more famous cities of the region or the pretty East Anglian countryside around it. Ipswich takes a few years perhaps to get used to - like the seemingly inferior wine you put in your cellar and forget about - to uncork it one day and have a pleasant surprise.

I recommend meeting the docks first, although sadly not by walking along the river path which needs developing into the pleasant walkway it could be. The towers at the docks will beckon - new supposedly desirable homes, replacing one set of skyward concrete (the former flour mills) with another - the flats and Dancebase regional headquarters. And you'll see the chequered University building and wonder... probably in words I won't be permitted to write here... quite what has been allowed. It's not modern or shocking enough to be interesting, and it is not in keeping with the red brick warehouses which make this among the country's most impressive historic quaysides.

The mid 1970s to early 1990s brought Ipswich some notable new buildings. We'll soon meet Norman Foster's early work which perhaps advanced his career, and the thoughtful shopping malls; the space age meets Jazz age Odeon cinema... and here, Contship House. A Victorian warehouse had shiny black glass added to its jutting water face, and is now Savills property company offices. This to me cries out to be a public building connected to the arts, and that dark glass should be the café window, looking over the yachts and occasional historic ships to the old Brewery and former maltings. The Brewery - Tolly Cobbold - dates to Georgian times and is still going and can be visited on the tour bus route. Stoke Maltings, unlike nearby Snape, have not been turned into the major arts venue that they could be, but at least they are restored. The happy part of the Warehouse That Could be more is that that glass, whilst keeping external eyes off the metal joists and wooden posts that are no doubt within, does reflect its neighbours rather wonderfully. The Custom House - an Italianate 19th century edifice with a portico and curios little alcove - sits next door, and only Dundee's can rival it in Britain.

Ipswich's waterfront development has been well behind the rest of the country/world: Liverpool started on its Albert Docks in the 1980s and is now (at least, they claim) an internationally known destination. Ipswich, a score later, has the advantage of watching everyone else make their mistakes and I hoped (as I urged the council and developers) avoiding them. The new dull mini skyscrapers and supposed cutting edge dance centre are not examples of this. But the reply to my letter did make this point which I am rather glad of: that being behind other cities also allowed the style bars and chains that have seized waterfronts elsewhere to find other homes. This leaves Ipswich's characterful waterfront to be used by restaurants and bars that are more distinctive. So far, there's only two chains. There's an art gallery up a side alley - but I must moan at the Salthouse Hotel with its glass penthouse - the barnacle that pervades so many perfectly nice-as-they-are buildings these days. To prevent myself going into an affordable housing moan, I shall merely pose my question as to why sleeping in a hotel or in your home has to cost so much; and why towns seek to have these plush places to aid their prestige over offering something useful and practical.

Immediately on leaving this most pleasant and evocative area, you'll discover that Ipswich has many timbered buildings - more than any of Britain's ports (as counted by me). Fore Street includes the Neptune Inn, whose 15-17thC joys include a baronial feeling dining hall and courtyard. It can be rented as self catering accommodation. There's a carved bresumer beam if you walk east, further away from town, and more on the corner of Grimwade Street, but the interest is chiefly in the other direction (ie west). Merchant Isaac Lord's old premises claim to be one of the few timbered warehouses left; and is part of a restaurant.

You could be tempted to go up Fore Street to the town centre. You'd meet one of the 12 town parish churches - closed and apparently not owned or opened by anyone; an Edwardian Public Bath, still available for a swim; and your first taste of what an Ipswich window is. There's a big wooden carving of a mermaid on the side of a small timbered house; and by the neo-Elizabethan almshouses, the low ruins of the last religious house left in Ipswich. Fore Street and the adjoining streets at the top (north) end are Ipswich's nearest to an independent shopping area, but alas these are not what they could be.

If seeing the county council offices in a former castellated prison, or a few old buildings including some pubs interest you, then turn right at the top of Fore Street and have a mooch. But there's not really anything to explore. The sadly empty former Odeon I mentioned - a silvery update of the signatory Harry Weedon 1930s style is also here, by a listed cinema which is now the Regent Theatre. Ipswich's current film viewing offering is the multiplex in Cardinal's Park which you probably passed between the station and the docks, or the Film Theatre, which we meet shortly. The other theatre is the new Wolsey; other arts and entertainment are in the Corn Exchange.

Perhaps a nicer route is left (west) along Key Street. St Mary's church is occasionally open and owned by the Churches Conservation Trust - there's a note on the door about how to obtain a key. It is used for art installations and plays (e.g. on locally connected anti slavery campaigner, Thomas Clarkson).

You're approaching [Cardinal] Wolsey's college - or the quite modest, worn gate which is all that's left of it. Often in films and television, Henry VIII's father-like advisor is jibed for being an Ipswich butcher's son. Here is the site of the college he set up in the 1500s. It is a school colege in the manner of Eton/Winchester, not a university. Sadly, Suffolk College has only recently got full university status - nearly 500 years later. St Peter's church was a priory chapel and that of the college. Empty for years, St Peter's is happily reopened as an arts centre.

The next bit is one of the best. St Peter and Nicholas Streets are the historic corner of central Ipswich. It's also where interesting restaurants reside, such as a tapas place, Zizzi - the Italian chain, and Turkish restaurateur's The Galley. The disguised bulk of the Department of Work and Pensions offices are hidden behind a mock Georgian front on Silent Street. The bright painted timbered houses on the corner are sometimes wrongly credited with being Wolsey's birthplace, but the plaque actually reads it was 'near this spot'. The walking tour leaflet from the Tourist Information Centre (TIC) states that his birth was on the site of the Queen Anne (early 1700s) Sailor's Rest opposite.

The Buttermarket Shopping centre is anther bulk you'll see, and also the intriguing glass offices of the Willis Group. Oh - and the unfortunately reputed 1960s eyesore, St Francis Tower, which has been given a new look, next to more tall Government and insurance offices. But let us focus on the black glass insurance offices built in 1971-5 by the Norman Foster partnership. This curvaceous mass covers a road island on the site of one of the 5 priories of Ipswich. Its makers claim it as an early ecological building. Whilst filing in a nearby office, I was surprised to spot the hedge on top which I'm told is not only a roof garden but helipad! By day, it refracts a wonderfully distorted Unitarian meeting House; by night, the building appears to change shape and reveals its contents. The Meeting House, c1700, is something that Ipswich is rightly proud of with cobweb shaped windows and a plain wooden interior complete with box pews. The other nonconformist chapel of note is Bethesda - a grandly porticoed early 1900s Baptist close to the park gates I will take you to shortly.

The church that houses the TIC (should you need it) is best seen at the top of an escalator in the Buttermarket Shopping centre through the fan shaped glass entrance. This square lets you sneak up on one of Ipswich's best buildings - the Ancient House. The locally styled jutting windows and plasterwork faced on Buttermarket are mid 17th C, but within you'll find older parts, including a courtyard of a decoration reserved for the West of England, and the remains of a hammerbeam room of the great hall. Although now a plastic shop (not the delightful bookshop it once was) there's a gallery in the attic and you are free to roam as a would be customer.

Best to turn left or up from Ancient house. Left, you go towards the Market Square at Cornhill and Ipswich's mini grand buildings - banks, former Post Office and Town Hall, now a gallery: again, a rare showcase of something from West England - Bath stone. Round the back is the Corn Exchange for comedy and concerts, and in its bowels, Suffolk's independent art house cinema. Up takes you down Dial Lane and past the 1880s chequers of another former parish church recently reopened for public use - a hint of Norwich/York with narrow streets, overhanging buildings and church towers.

This might be a good point to go shopping in what the town's marketing team call the Golden Mile (a la Great Yarmouth's beach!) though truthfully, the improving facilities here cannot be so termed. Tavern Street, with the 1930s Carolean copy houses and little walk (the Thoroughfare), Westgate and into architecturally undistinguished Carr Street and Upper Brook Street are where you should head. The town's Museum's not far from here, but its address of High Street is confusingly not the shopping artery of the town. The red brick Victorian building houses a huge mammoth and information on the Anglo Saxon adventures in the area. Having seen this free museum (closed Sun/Mon) you are recommended to head right a few minutes for Christchurch Park and the mansion within. Home of firework displays, outdoor concerts and Shakespeare, Christchurch is a lovely space right in the centre. The gates are by perhaps the most interesting town church - St Margaret's - with its painted roof. The gabled mansion is mid 16th C though updated in mock stone panelling and chequered floor boards and with several Victorian rooms. The only two rooms of the right date are not original to the house.

By now you'll have encountered enough timbered buildings to know that Ipswich is old and so I shall only point out a couple more. Leaving the Mansion, go into Northgate where the neo Gothic library stands opposite Pykenham's Gatehouse, once home of the Archdeacon (now a country club), and the restored Oak Hall (a solicitors') with its long elevation view down a lane to Ipswich's mother church. The small church yard is very peaceful and good to escape to if the parallel shopping street gets all too much.

You can wander back to the station via the corner of St Mary at Elm which encapsulates Ipswich - medieval church and cottages by the curving Sun Alliance Insurance building and unfortunately on to drab, functional Princes Street (and another attempt at a pent house on top of a Deco apartment block, Churchman House). Ipswich is many things, and perhaps the frustrating mixture of old, nearly grand, new and occasional thoughtlessness is part of its characteristics.