Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722Defoe, Daniel
History
Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722
Defoe, Daniel
England -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
It is true here is no settled manufacture. The French refugees when they
first came over to England began a little to take to this place, and some
merchants attempted to set up a linen manufacture in their favour; but it
has not met with so much success as was expected, and at present I find
very little of it. The poor people are, however, employed, as they are
all over these counties, in spinning wool for other towns where
manufactures are settled.
The country round Ipswich, as are all the counties so near the coast, is
applied chiefly to corn, of which a very great quantity is continually
shipped off for London; and sometimes they load corn here for Holland,
especially if the market abroad is encouraging. They have twelve parish
churches in this town, with three or four meetings; but there are not so
many Quakers here as at Colchester, and no Anabaptists or Antipoedo
Baptists, that I could hear of—at least, there is no meeting-house of
that denomination. There is one meeting-house for the Presbyterians, one
for the Independents and one for the Quakers; the first is as large and
as fine a building of that kind as most on this side of England, and the
inside the best finished of any I have seen, London not excepted; that
for the Independents is a handsome new-built building, but not so gay or
so large as the other.
There is a great deal of very good company in this town, and though there
are not so many of the gentry here as at Bury, yet there are more here
than in any other town in the county; and I observed particularly that
the company you meet with here are generally persons well informed of the
world, and who have something very solid and entertaining in their
society. This may happen, perhaps, by their frequent conversing with
those who have been abroad, and by their having a remnant of gentlemen
and masters of ships among them who have seen more of the world than the
people of an inland town are likely to have seen. I take this town to be
one of the most agreeable places in England for families who have lived
well, but may have suffered in our late calamities of stocks and bubbles,
to retreat to, where they may live within their own compass; and several
things indeed recommend it to such:—
1. Good houses at very easy rents.
2. An airy, clean, and well-governed town.
3. Very agreeable and improving company almost of every kind.
4. A wonderful plenty of all manner of provisions, whether flesh or
fish, and very good of the kind.
5. Those provisions very cheap, so that a family may live cheaper here
than in any town in England of its bigness within such a small distance
from London.
6. Easy passage to London, either by land or water, the coach going
through to London in a day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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