I was out on the morning of the 22nd December capturing pre and post-sunrise images around Ipswich and the Wet Dock. The pre-dawn bustle of activity as people arrived for work at the Willis building was in stark contrast to the laid up vessels on the future ‘enterprise island’ and the as yet forlornly empty  apartments at Stoke Quay.

There is nothing more lifeless than a vessel in a cradle on a hard standing. They are like fish out of water. I know that regular maintenance is a necessary part of keeping a vessel ship shape and Bristol fashion and the winter months are when a great deal of effort goes into making this so. The same cannot be said for the apartment blocks being slowly stripped of their concealing wrapping and scaffolding. The slow reveal has been going on for a few weeks now and they do look rather ship shape at the moment. But for how long ? Will they all be let? Will they be kept as sharp and colourful as they are now, just like butterflies emerging from  pupae, or will they degenerate in part to become chrysalis and robed in some shabby cloak, dormant, waiting for some life to be breathed into them? So many new apartments are in this state of torpor in Ipswich.

There is a housing crisis across the nation and it is good to see new stock being built but I cannot help but wonder at the target market for these properties. The very fact that the dock houses several marinas speaks volumes about the perceived target market. There was a time when this part of Ipswich was populated by slum-like dwellings with inhabitants who grafted in the workings of the wet dock. Now, those communities and indeed the labour market have all but disappeared. Maxwell stripped Ransomes of its assets on the West Bank many years ago and a workforce became extinct almost overnight. I suspect that was the last vestige of heavy industry left in Ipswich at the time apart from Crane Fluid Systems whose foundry site is now that all too common mecca to the new industry we are known for nationwide – shopping.

Much is changing in Ipswich, yet much is as it was hundreds of years ago. A town centre still laid out on an Anglo Saxon grid pattern but no manufacturing, a loss of the high quality printing industries that were rife in these parts and indeed garment and cigar making trades.

I wonder what progress we are making in the long term.

We seem to be all at sea.