Tipps End, Tipp's End, Tips End, Tipsend ....

Introduction

So, where is it and what's the correct spelling?

"Where Is Tipps End?
My wife and I moved to Tips End just in time to celebrate the millennium. As newcomers to the area, it struck us as curious that Tipsend was regarded as so insignificant that someone had drawn the county border right through the middle of it. This border runs along the road past my house. My neighbour opposite and I both live in Tipps End but are in different counties and have different MPs. I’m told that the border even runs through someone's garage.

Tipp's End, we concluded, is an anomalous sort of place. For a start, it doesn't have a definitive spelling. I have encountered all of these in print: Tips End, Tip's End, Tipps End, Tipp's End and Tipsend, and one must assume that they are all correct (the latter seems to be the Post Office's preferred version). On the road nameplate by the telephone kiosk I read: 'Wisbech Road (Tipsend)'. This sign is old, faded, and not visible to a driver. Down the other end of the Wisbech Road, at Lakes End, is a clean, modern sign pointing to 'Tipps End', but this is usually half-obscured by a bit of tattered cardboard advertising a horse show. This is the only sign that directs the traveller. Short of getting out of the car and asking, there is no way of knowing when you've arrived. There is no sign. Everyone who lives there has experienced the desperate phone call from a head-scratching delivery driver or visitor who has driven right through the place and ended up in Welney, Manea or Christchurch. Why is it that there is no sign to tell you when you are entering Tip's End? Why are the authorities so coy about where it actually is? Is it because erecting a sign means you have to decide on a spelling, and no one knows what the correct spelling is? Or is it that no one knows where the boundaries are?

At this point one has to confront the fact that Tipps End has a split personality: it is part Norfolk and part Cambridgeshire, partly the responsibility of Fenland district, partly that of King's Lynn & West Norfolk, partly in Christchurch parish, partly in Welney.

Tips End shares with large cities the privilege of being represented by two MPs: it lies on the border of two parliamentary constituencies. This explains why some of us got the wrong election literature last year. And how many places in the country can boast two MEPs? We must be unique! Odd, isn't it, that on each side of the county boundary the exact location of Tipsend is such a secret. Even Lakes End (entirely in Norfolk) is thought worth a sign. Can it be that each authority is so mean, so penny-pinching, that it hopes the other side will take on the expense of erecting the two or three signs that would put the matter to rights? Who cares about Tipp's End? Only people living less than ten miles away know where it is; go fifteen miles and they haven't even heard of it. Three Holes they'll admit to knowing, even Lakes End. Go any further and people start giggling when you say where you live. By the time you get to Cambridge they're falling about with hilarity and can't believe such a place exists. Mention it on the telephone and people wonder if you're being rude.

All the more reason to put up signs to show people where it is and let them know when they've reached it. Interestingly, almost every road atlas shows where it is; they may not agree on the spelling, but they acknowledge its existence, so two cheers at least for the AA, the Ordnance Survey and the AtoZ.

The trouble with Tipsend is that it isn't even a parish in its own right, hence the boundary problem (but that didn't prevent Lakes End from having a sign). There's no church, school, post office or shop, so it would be giving itself airs to call itself a village. It once had a pub, a chapel even, which, though now a dwelling, still proclaims 'Zion' to the 21st century heathen from its gable end. I suppose the most it can aspire to is the status of hamlet (two hamlets, perhaps, one for each county). As if splitting the place in two weren't enough, I find that although I live in Fenland, my rubbish is collected by West Norfolk who issue a much meaner wheelie-bin than Fenland. To add to the identity crisis, my postal address is Tipsend (Cambridgeshire/Norfolk) in Welney (Norfolk) whose postal town is Wisbech (Cambridgeshire). If the EU had dreamed up this arrangement, the Daily Mail would have had a field day. But it's nothing to do with Brussels; it's just a good old British botch. I have no idea whether it is more advantageous to live in Cambridgeshire or Norfolk, in which county the council taxes are worse or the services better. But surely it is time to allow Tips End its own identity. Perhaps a local referendum would allow the inhabitants to decide in which county they would like to be situated. At the same time people could vote for their preferred spelling, and this decision could be celebrated with the installation of three smart new signs at the newly identified limits of Tips/Tip's/Tipps/ Tipp's End (or Tipsend!) and perhaps a couple more direction signs at Welney and Christchurch. Or people could choose to keep the spelling flexible: each sign could have a different spelling, just to make the point; this would be the 'cool' option.

Sadly, I am on the point of leaving Tips End. But I shan't be far away. And I, - like the swans who know where the campaign to protect them started, - will always care about Tipps End, wherever it is and however it's spelt.  David Lewis"

Whats happened since 2002 ?

Commerce

And finally .....

"What a wonderful part of the world we live in! A group of villages in the middle of the countryside which is used mostly for the production of food. I say group as there is Christchurch, Tipps End, and Welney that all share access from the B1100. And each village has a sense of community which is clearly seen in publications like The Heron and Welney News. Tipps End is the smallest of the three, but no less important than Christchurch and Welney.

The whole area is mostly farming country and life here is dominated by the seasons and the farming cycle. The fields appear brown and lifeless during the winter months and then spring brings out the colour and growth of the new years crops which bloom throughout the summer until harvest time. Its that time now and the harvesters and tractors and trailers are out and about everywhere, going from field to field bringing in the newly grown produce. Oil seed rape, wheat, barley, potatoes and sugar beet can all be seen growing in the area. You can also smell onions too!

It is an ongoing process which repeats year on year. Following poor weather last year and an overlong cool damp spring this year, the cycle appears to have slowed a bit but tell-tale plumes of dust from different fields in the area show that harvest is in full swing.
Soon it will be over, apart from the beet, and ploughing will take place and the countryside will be quieter for a spell, brown and lifeless supposedly.
Several residents of Christchurch, Tipps End and Welney work on farms locally and long may they continue to do so! Those of us who only look on and marvel at the whole process, should never loose sight of all the hard work and time involved that goes into producing the food we eat. And to me, that is why this is such a wonderful part of the world to live in! "
Andy Height, Isle Farm