Ipswich has a lot of lovely old buildings, but a lot of them are also, sadly, either under-used or long neglected.  The Great White Horse Hotel falls into both categories.

Originally built in the 16^th century, the Great White Horse Hotel found a degree of notoriety when it featured in Charles Dickens’ first novel The Pickwick Papers.  Mr Pickwick famously strays into a female guest’s bedroom when he is searching the hotel’s labyrinthine warren of corridors for his own bed-chamber.

In truth, Pickwick was no great lover of the Great White Horse Hotel.  The description of his stay is far from complimentary:

“…clusters of mouldy, ill-lighted rooms, such huge numbers of small dens for eating or sleeping in, beneath any one roof…”

And of the hospitality:

“…the worst possible port wine, at the highest possible price…”

Nevertheless, I feel that Mr Pickwick, great philanthropist that he was, would have been moved by the Great White Horse Hotel’s decline and current closure.  Neither private enterprise––Starbucks––or Lottery funding have yet seen any marked improvement in the poor building’s fortunes.

Sons––or daughters––of Ipswich––Ed Sheeran; Ralph Fiennes; Richard Ayoade––is there a Pickwick among you to restore the Great White Horse Hotel to its former state of… I want to say “glory” but truthfulness only permits me to write “dishevelled decrepitude”?

© Fergus Longfellow

Fergus Longfellow could do with a bit of restoring himself.