Constitution Hill: The highest point in Ipswich, Suffolk

East Anglia is a very flat part of the UK, and Ipswich is accordingly a very flat town - so what are the highest points of the town? 

A look at a topographic map of Ipswich and the surrounding area doesn't show very many hills. There's a plateau around RAF Wattisham that curves around to the Newmarket area containing the 136 m Great Wood Hill, the highest point in Suffolk. It lies on the same fold of hills that eventually becomes the Chilterns around London, but Wattisham is well outside the Ipswich town boundary. 

Within Ipswich itself, the highest point is at the Park Road / Elsmere Road reservoir and water tower, just at the top of the Constitution Hill road and just north of Christchurch Park. It lies at the great altitude of 57 metres. 

Water tower
57 m, at the base of the water tower. The 1924 water tower is now disused. 

It's not much of a mountaineering achievement, but it's at least nice to know that I've cycled up to the top of the town. Water towers form a common part of the East Anglian landscape because of the region's flat geography - this one was built in 1924 to an unusual modernist design, but is now disused. 

The Ipswich Society has a bit of history on the reservoir and the water supply of the town. The reservoir itself was built in 1902 and recently overhauled in 2011, holding water taken from a borehole at Whitton and providing the water supply for north Ipswich. The rest of the town is supplied by water taken from the River Gipping at Sproughton and stored in Alton Water, from which it is then pumped through the Orwell Bridge to feed a smaller reservoir at Rushmore Heath next to Foxhall Stadium. It then supplies Felixstowe, Martlesham and East Ipswich. 

The video below documents the visit to the hill. 



A footnote: The Ordnance Survey Explorer 197 map of Ipswich and the surrounding area doesn't contain very many hills. The tallest hill on the map is right in the top north-western corner just above Great Blakenham at the aptly-named Hill Top Farm, at the great height of 62 m. 
Location: Elsmere Rd, Ipswich IP1, UK

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