The story
Ipswich & Suffolk Building Society
The Ipswich & Suffolk Building Society originated as part of the forty-shilling freeholders movement, a project which aimed to make home ownership an option for ordinary people rather than just the landed elite, in October 1849. Initially called the Ipswich & Suffolk Freehold Land Society, its first land acquisition was the Cauldwell Hall Estate, which it divided into 282 plots, selling each to a society member for £23, following a ballot. It then made similar acquisitions and sales in various towns across Suffolk. From 1868 the society started purchasing houses in addition to buying land, its first properties being located on Lancaster Road in Ipswich which it described "high quality, 2-bedroom, workman's houses".
Ipswich & District Building Society
The Ipswich & District Building Society was established in 1875 as a Starr-Bowkett Society. It held an inauguration meeting held at the Ipswich Lecture Hall, featuring a speech by Richard B. Starr, one of the architects of the Starr-Bowkett model. Starr stated that the society was not intended to be a rival to other building societies in the area, but to offer a new model of financial assistance for working-class people.
Merger
The Ipswich & Suffolk and the Ipswich & District merged in June 1975, with the new entity trading simply as the Ipswich Building Society. In January 2004, after almost ninety years based in Upper Brook Street, Ipswich, the society moved its headquarters to a new venue at the Ransomes Europark. The old headquarters were retained as a branch, however, until 2009. By November 2011, the society had reached 65,000 members with assets of more than £50,000.
In January 2020, the Ipswich Building Society launched a proposal for a further rename, to the Suffolk Building Society. At the 170th Annual General Meeting (held on 25 March 2020), 92.8% of members who voted were in favour of the name change and so as of 9 November 2021, Ipswich Building Society became known as Suffolk Building Society.
From Wikipedia’s article on Suffolk Building Society, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5