Ipswich Museum no longer has a curator of natural history. Twenty years ago there were five. David Lampard, the sole remaining natural historian at the High Street Museum has left to take another post at Dundee and will not be replaced while the Museum is involved in a merger with Colchester Museum Service. It is not clear how long this process will take, or what the new structure will be like but at best it will be reduced to one natural historian covering both towns and at worst it may have none. Few people are aware of this. It’s not surprising that Ipswich Borough Council have been keeping quiet. They are probably ashamed, and if they are not they should be.

There has been a natural history museum in Ipswich since 1824. It was adopted by the Town Council in 1853 and moved to its present site in 1880. There are many fine collections housed in the museum, several of international importance. The most noteworthy are the Coralline and Red Crag fossils, studied by researchers from all over the world; the Ogilvie Collection of mounted British birds; very important early botanical collections with specimens dating back to 1790 and the invertebrate collections of about 250,000 specimens. Ipswich is exceptional amongst local museums in having representative collections of insect orders such as flies, bees and wasps, grasshoppers, dragonflies, bugs and smaller orders. The historical cores of the collections are those collected by Claude Morley, about 150,000 specimens, and J H Hocking. Collections must be maintained to keep them in good order – mites feeding on the specimens are one of the big problems – and they must be catalogued and stored for reference. Without a curator the collections will neither be looked after nor be accessible to be looked at. So it seems inevitable that the next step will be the complete closure of the museum.

This newsletter rejoices the efforts of Suffolk’s young naturalists. How sad that any of them who go on to become serious naturalists will be deprived of the assistance and resources of the museum. Is David Nash (see contents 2 above) mistaken in his belief that the Elliott collections would have fared better in Ipswich than Hastings?

It’s clear why this is being done—a small cut, if one of many, contributes to a big saving of money. But this is not a small cut, it’s a huge loss; and what will the money be spent on that can possibly substitute for the loss of this big part of Ipswich’s intellectual heritage? We must hope the IBC is not too short-sighted to see the consequence of this philistine policy and reverses it before it is too late.