If you’re looking for something fascinating to do during the summer, then I have just the thing. Pop along to the Thomas Wolsey exhibition at The Hold in Ipswich. It’s absolutely brilliant!
The exhibition, entitled Wolsey’s Ipswich, offers a unique insight into the fascinating world of the man from humble beginnings who became an immensely powerful figure in Henry VIII’s England.
It opened a couple of weeks ago, launching with the arrival of Wolsey’s Cardinal’s hat (well, a very good replica, actually) which was paraded to The Hold by local schoolchildren, the Mayor of Ipswich and the Cardinal himself (ok, a brilliant re-enactor).
The real hat is a stunning centrepiece of the exhibition, which I have now visited twice, and I can thoroughly recommend a visit. It tells the story of the life and times of Ipswich’s most famous son in a family-friendly way. One for the young ones during the summer holidays, perhaps?
The exhibition continues for the next three months, until October 29, and is free to visit. Just go to Suffolk.archives.co.uk and click on the What’s On section to book your place.
In fact, while you’re on the Suffolk Archives website, you’ll see there are so many activities associated with Wolsey and the Tudor period more generally. So much to do!
My second visit to the Wolsey exhibition coincided with the official opening of the John Blatchly Local Studies Library at The Hold, which was performed by eminent Oxford University history, Professor Diarmaid McCulloch, who is the patron of the Wolsey 550 project. After the opening, he delivered a fascinating lecture on the subject of Wolsey and his protege, Thomas Cromwell.
I had the pleasure of having a cup of tea with Diarmaid before the official opening. What a lovely man, who is very committed to supporting our project and full of great ideas to make it as successful as possible. Diarmaid grew up in Suffolk, and is a great friend to our county.
The other big news from Wolsey 550 in the last week or so has been the awarding of our Community Grants to local groups and organisations.
As part of our £250,000 grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, £30,000 was earmarked for grants to community organisations. We received a total of 23 applications, and our independent panel had a tough job to decide which were going to be successful.
After much agonising, our panelists managed to come up with a list of 11 groups who will receive grants from the Wolsey 550 project. Each and every one of them is a great initiative, many of them making use of links with Wolsey and the extraordinary history of Ipswich.
I don’t have enough space to list them all in detail, but I will try to give you a flavour. There’s Together for Ipswich, an organisation which offers support for refugees and asylum seekers, including people who have been displaced by the conflict in Ukraine. Then we have a brilliant play entitled Thomas Wolsey: The Rise and Fall, which will be staged in Ipswich between the autumn and next spring, including in one of the historic buildings in Silent Street, Ipswich - literally a stone’s throw from Wolsey’s most likely birthplace.
There is a free concert by the Ipswich Choral Society next July, featuring new work from local composers, and hopefully being performed in an iconic Ipswich location.
The final event I’ll mention is the Saints Tudor Heritage Fahrenheit, to be held on September 24.
It will feature a farmers’ market, artisan craft area, street entertainment, and Tudor re-enactors and, again, it will be staged in an historic part of Ipswich which was very familiar to a young Thomas Wolsey.
There are many more initiatives which will benefit from Wolsey 550 Community Grants, all which will take place in Ipswich during the next year or so.
All the details are at thomaswolsey550.co.uk.
Our grateful thanks to WTW (formerly Willis) for financially supporting the Community Grants scheme.
Finally, this project has young people at its heart, and I’m delighted to say that we have already engaged with 3,000 children through school assemblies, with much, much more to come in the new school year starting in September.
Our ambition is for every school pupil in Ipswich to learn about Wolsey, and his incredible story, and be inspired by it. In that way, we hope to increase aspiration, and social mobility, in our county town - and thus create a new legacy for the man himself!
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