On your left is the Cock and Pye... a pub with a name that sounds charming, until you learn what the “cock” part used to mean. Yep.
This place was already on Ipswich’s official pub list back in 1689, noted in what was then St Margaret’s Parish. Picture Upper Brook Street in those days: gravel underfoot, the smell of horse sweat and wet wool, and a steady clatter of coaches pulling in. The Cock and Pye started life as a proper coaching inn, the kind of place where travelers ate, drank, swapped gossip, and waited for fresh horses. By the late 1800s, though, it had shrunk down into a much smaller pub... the big travel business fading as the town changed.
Now, about that sign. Traditionally it showed a BIG pie with a cock perched right on top-like the world’s oddest bakery display. Subtle branding, Ipswich. A local writer in the 1880s described the design as once-common, and he didn’t mince words about what it advertised: cockfighting. In the 1700s, this wasn’t hidden away-it was actively promoted, even in newspaper ads, as if it were a harmless night out.
Then came 1835, when the Cruelty to Animals Act banned cockfighting. And at this very pub, the proprietor-Mr Birch-tried to sell up, because one of his main “attractions” had just become illegal.
When you’re set, Ancient House is a 1-minute walk heading south.
