Alexandra Park is situated between Grove Lane, Kings Avenue and Back Hamlet,

Ipswich Ipswich () is a port town and borough in Suffolk, England, of which it is the county town. The town is located in East Anglia about away from the mouth of the River Orwell and the North Sea. Ipswich is both on the Great Eastern Main Line r ...

History

In 1903, the

Ipswich Corporation The Ipswich Corporation was a historic local government that owned property and governed in Ipswich, Suffolk. Since its foundation in 1200, the corporation has kept often highly detailed accounts of their operation. A great deal of these survive t ...

purchased one of six packages of land which was formerly part of the Hill House Estate and home of the Byles family. The land became parkland and was named ''Alexandra Park'' after the wife of

Edward VII Edward VII (Albert Edward; 9 November 1841 – 6 May 1910) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Emperor of India, from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910. The second child and eldest son of Queen Victoria an ...

. In June 1904, the park was officially opened to the public.

Features

The park is mainly gently sloped grass area. It includes a children's play area and public toilets. It also is host to the

May Day May Day is a European festival of ancient origins marking the beginning of summer, usually celebrated on 1 May, around halfway between the spring equinox and summer solstice. Festivities may also be held the night before, known as May Eve. T ...

Festival in Ipswich, held usually on the closest Sunday to May 1. The park has a natural slope from Grove Lane down to Kings Avenue. This permits views of the surrounding areas, including the

Orwell Bridge The Orwell Bridge is a concrete box girder bridge just south of Ipswich in Suffolk, England. Opened to road traffic in 1982, the bridge carries the A14 road (formerly the A45) over the River Orwell. History Design The main span is 190 metres w ...

, the docks area and many of the town's ancient churches such as St Mary le Tower and its prominent

spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spires are ...

Memorial Fountain

The fountain was presented to the town by Alderman Charles Henry Cowell as a memorial to his mother, Marianne Byles Cowell.

External links

Government website
* {{coord, 52.05356, N, 1.16798, E, region:GB_source:enwiki-osgb36(TM173442), display=title Parks and open spaces in Ipswich