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Charles Dickens in Ipswich
(Information from Visit Suffolk)
Ipswich was immortalised in Charles Dickens’ 1836 classic, The Pickwick Papers. The beloved author came to the town many times over the years, fishing in the River Gipping, exploring the streets, and meeting with the locals.
In 1834, Dickens stayed in Ipswich for the first time, at the Great White Horse Hotel in Tavern Street. He mentions the hotel in his novel:
“In the main street of Ipswich, on the left-hand side of the way, a short distance after you have passed through the open space fronting the Town Hall, stands an inn known far and wide by the appellation of The Great White Horse, rendered the more conspicuous by a stone statue of some rampacious animal with flowing mane and tail, distantly resembling an insane cart-horse, which is elevated above the principal door.
"The Great White Horse is famous in the neighbourhood, in the same degree as a prize ox, or county paper-chronicled turnip, or unwieldy pig - for its enormous size. Never were such labyrinths of uncarpeted passages, such clusters of mouldy, ill-lighted rooms, such huge numbers of small dens for eating or sleeping in, beneath any one roof, as
- Type:
- Literary Location