England · United Kingdom
Where to stay in Ipswich
Ipswich is a city in England, United Kingdom, home to about 152,000 people. This guide covers 2 hotels in Ipswich, with about 166 rooms between them. Every one carries a published guest score, and the list below is ordered by it.
- Places to stay in this guide
- 2
- Best months
- June to September
- Nearest airport
- SEN63 km · London Southend Airport
- Currency
- GBPpound sterling
- Time zone
- Europe/London
- Language
- Cornish, English, Irish
About
About Ipswich
Ipswich ( ) is a port town and borough in Suffolk, England, located on the River Orwell. It is the county town, and largest in Suffolk, followed by Lowestoft and Bury St Edmunds, and the third-largest population centre in East Anglia, after Peterborough and Norwich.
Ipswich was one of the most prosperous cities in the UK since Saxon times. During its heyday it was a major trading port, being on the estuary of the Orwell River on the East Coast. Ipswich fell into rapid decline after the opening of the new ports at Felixstowe and Harwich and stayed that way until the 1970s when much of London's financial services industry used Ipswich as a hub for their secondary offices with names such as Royal Bank of Scotland, Willis Group (aka Willis Faber & Dumas), Norwich Union and AXA opening shiny new skyscrapers in a new CBD development just north of the river.
Wikipedia and Wikivoyage contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0; excerpted.
Things to do
What to see and do in Ipswich
See
Ipswich sits in a beautiful area of East Anglia - "Constable Country". In fact, the setting of Constable's most famous painting, "The Haywain", is only a few miles down the A12 road (heading towards London) in nearby Flatford. Click here to see how the site looks today. There is a National Trust centre in Flatford that is worth a visit, if only for the good home-made cakes on sale. Further out of Ipswich, Orford Castle (12 miles outside Woodbridge, on the B1084) is worth a visit in good weather. The castle is over 800 years old, in good condition for a building of that age.
- Christchurch Mansion and Park
- The Ancient House
- The Willis Building
- The Ipswich Museum
- Ipswich Art School
- St Mary Le Tower
- St Peter's
- St Margaret's
- St Mary Elms
- Ipswich Blackfriars
- Unitarian Meeting House
- St Pancras
Do
- Ipswich Town FC
- Suffolk Leisure Park
- Ipswich Market
- S B Thalatta
- Orwell River Cruises
- Cineworld
- Corn Exchange
- The Regent Theatre
- Wolsey Theatre
Wikivoyage contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0; excerpted.
Where to stay
The best-rated places to stay in Ipswich
Ordered by guest score as each operator publishes it, weighted by the number of reviews so a handful of perfect scores does not outrank thousands of very good ones. Scores are shown on their own scale.
| # | Place to stay | Rooms | Guest score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Travelodge Ipswich Central hotel | 98 | 4.2/5 352 reviews |
| 2 | Travelodge Ipswich hotel | 68 | 4.0/5 1,040 reviews |
Schematic: the city centre in orange, each place to stay as a dot, distance rings in kilometres.
Where to stay
More hotels in Ipswich
75 hotels within 25 km of the centre, as recorded in Wikidata; the 40 best known are shown, by the number of Wikipedia editions that cover them. Each name links to its encyclopedia article where there is one.
| Hotel | Opened | From centre |
|---|---|---|
| Belstead Brook Hotel | 3.5 km | |
| Great White Horse Hotel | 0.2 km | |
| Kesgrave Hall | 7.0 km | |
| Seckford Hall | 9.4 km | |
| The Woolpack Inn | 0.4 km | |
| Alma Inn | 15.3 km | |
| Arbor House | 0.4 km | |
| Best Western Claydon Hotel | 5.9 km | |
| Coach and Horses | 0.3 km | |
| County Hotel | 0.5 km | |
| Crown and Anchor Hotel | 0.3 km | |
| Dolphin Hotel | 17.1 km | |
| Dove Inn | 0.7 km | |
| Fludyer Arms | 17.9 km | |
| Former Queens Head Inn | 11.2 km | |
| Golden Hind | 3.5 km | |
| Golf Hotel | 4.0 km | |
| Halberd Inn | 0.0 km | |
| Highview House Hotel | 1.4 km | |
| Kings Head Inn | 11.4 km | |
| Melton Grange Hotel | 11.8 km | |
| Old Bell Inn | 0.9 km | |
| Orwell Hotel | 17.0 km | |
| Ostrich Inn, Wherstead | 3.0 km | |
| Oxborrows Hotel | 0.7 km | |
| Pier Hotel | 15.3 km | |
| Plough Inn | 0.4 km | |
| Red Lion Inn | 9.1 km | |
| Salthouse Harbour Hotel | 0.8 km | |
| Station Hotel | 1.2 km | |
| The Anchor | 11.6 km | |
| The Angel Inn, Woodbridge | 11.4 km | |
| The Black Horse Inn | 0.5 km | |
| The Boot Inn | 5.3 km | |
| The Bramford Cock | 4.3 km | |
| The Bull Hotel | 11.5 km | |
| The Chequers Inn | 18.2 km | |
| The Cross Inn | 11.6 km | |
| The Crown Hotel | 11.6 km | |
| The Crown Inn | 6.0 km |
When to go
The best time to visit Ipswich
The most comfortable months for a city stay in Ipswich are June to September. July is the warmest month, with average highs of 22 °C; November is the wettest, with about 67 mm of rain.
Comfortable means average daytime high between 18 °C and 29 °C and under 80 mm of rain in the month. Averages for 1991–2020 over the surrounding area, a grid square about 50 km across, so a coast or a nearby mountain can make the town itself warmer or cooler. Data: CRU TS v4.10, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia (Open Database License).
Getting there
Getting to Ipswich: airports and arrival
The nearest airport with scheduled flights is London Southend Airport (SEN), about 63 km from the city centre in a straight line; London Stansted Airport (STN, 66 km) and Norwich Airport (NWI, 69 km) are also within reach.
Getting in
Ipswich has good connections to both London Stansted (STN) and Norwich International (NWI) airports. From Stansted, there is an express bus service (X5) which runs between Ipswich Old Cattle Market Bus Station and Stansted Airport Coach Station every 2 hours, 24 hours a day; taking about 90 minutes. Expect to pay around £75 for a prebooked minicab and over £100 for a metered taxi. Norwich Airport can be reached in 1-1½ hours. From the airport, take a local bus or a taxi to Norwich Railway Station and from there it's about 40 minutes by train to Ipswich. A taxi will be £50-60.
Getting around
Local urban bus services are provided by Ipswich Buses and First Eastern Counties and radiate from the Tower Ramparts Bus Station. The green and purple Ipswich buses cover most urban routes and link to surrounding suburbs and retail parks. Most services run every 10–20 minutes during the day time and every 30–60 minutes in the early morning and late evening - most services start around 5:30AM and finish around 11PM.
Wikivoyage contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0; excerpted.
SEN · London Southend Airport
STN · London Stansted Airport
NWI · Norwich Airport
Local knowledge
Eating, drinking and staying safe in Ipswich
Eat
St Nicholas Street in Ipswich has several restaurants. You can eat Turkish, Italian, French, Thai, Chinese, Indian and modern British cuisine. Another good area to eat in is the waterfront with an abundance of local choices, lots of good British cuisine and also a French restaurant.
Drink
For daytime summer drinking the only place to be is Isaac's along the waterfront, a fantastic establishment with huge outdoor area and 4 separate bars to reduce queuing. Churches, Zing Bar, Barcoda, The Swan, and Keo's are the pick of the town centre bars.
Stay safe
Despite the sensationalized news reports about the Suffolk Murders and the nightclub shootings in Ipswich, crime is no more rampant here than in any other similar-sized town. Avoid getting into confrontations, particularly in bars, as things get a bit nasty. There are several no-go areas at night - most notably Chantry, Gainsborough and Greenwich, as well as the residential areas around Norwich Road, although the average tourist will find no need to go to these areas, and if you stick to the main arterial roads you'll be safe.
Wikivoyage contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0; excerpted.
Good to know
Accessibility, parking and families in Ipswich
How many places to stay in this guide offer each, in their operators' own words.
of 2 places
of 2 places
of 2 places
Questions
Ipswich: questions travellers ask
What are the best-rated hotels in Ipswich?
By published guest score: Travelodge Ipswich Central (4.2 / 5 · 352 reviews · www.travelodge.co.uk (operator's own guest score)); Travelodge Ipswich (4.0 / 5 · 1,040 reviews · www.travelodge.co.uk (operator's own guest score)).
When is the best time to visit Ipswich?
The most comfortable months for a city stay in Ipswich are June to September. July is the warmest month, with average highs of 22 °C; November is the wettest, with about 67 mm of rain.
Which airport is closest to Ipswich?
The nearest airport with scheduled flights is London Southend Airport (SEN), about 63 km from the city centre in a straight line; London Stansted Airport (STN, 66 km) and Norwich Airport (NWI, 69 km) are also within reach.
What currency is used in Ipswich?
pound sterling (GBP).
Nearby
Destinations near Ipswich
Sources: city facts from Wikidata and Wikipedia; airports from OurAirports; climate from CRU TS v4.10 (University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit), 1991–2020 monthly means, 0.5° grid; places to stay, guest scores and amenities from each operator's own public pages. How this guide is made.