Pull Up a Chair: The Story of the Roots Founders’ Table

Martin and Mandy with our new Founder's Table plaque.

Roots was never meant to be just somewhere just to grab a coffee.

Obviously, the coffee helps. And cake rarely makes a situation worse.

But at the heart of Roots is community. A place where people can eat, talk, meet, learn, share stories and, every now and then, find themselves chatting to someone they might never otherwise have met.

And right at the heart of the café sits our Founders’ Table.

A table made for talking

Our Founders’ Table is a big, shared table. There’s no requirement to know everyone sitting around it. In fact, that’s rather the point.

Pull up a chair to meet a friend. Bring your laptop and stay for lunch. Sit beside someone new. Swap stories. Discover that the person opposite grew up somewhere completely different to you. Learn something about somebody’s culture. Put the world to rights over coffee. Or simply sit quietly with a slice of cake while life happens around you.

Because some of the best conversations don’t begin with an agenda. They begin with:

“Is anyone sitting here?”

That’s what we hope the Founders’ Table will become. A place for conversation, connection, curiosity and community. A table where Ipswich can sit down together.

Here's the Founders' Table in action hosting a Blankets for Ipswich gathering.

A little bit of Ipswich history comes home

We are incredibly fortunate that the Founders’ Table has been sponsored by Martin Pike from Toothbrush Apartments, in memory of his good friend Basil de Beaufort.

And there’s a wonderful story behind it.

Basil made a series of brilliantly funny films featuring faces and places that people from Ipswich might just recognise.

From local legends including Diki Mols, Lee Barnard and Rowan James, to familiar locations around Ipswich, the films are a funny, affectionate and wonderfully eccentric slice of the town.

On the Founders' table you will find a QR Code.

Scan it, pull up a chair and spend a few minutes in Basil’s wonderfully odd world. You might recognise a face or two.

You might recognise a street. You might wonder what on earth you’ve just watched.

We hope you do all three.

But there’s another reason having Basil at the heart of Roots feels particularly special.

Basil de Beaufort was actually Mark Lucas, who sadly passed away some years ago.

And Mark was one of the original founders of The Museum Street Café, the much-loved vegetarian café that once occupied this very space and was the original home from which Roots has grown.

Back when Roots was Museum Street Café

Mark ran the Museum Street Café with his partner, Nell Rose, creating a place that many people in Ipswich still remember with enormous affection.

Long before Roots arrived, people were already gathering here to eat, talk, laugh and spend time together.

So there’s something beautifully circular about the Founders’ Table being dedicated to him.

The café has changed. The name above the door has changed. New people are coming through it and new stories are being created. But the idea that a café can be somewhere people come together has been here for a long time.

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Martin placeing the plaque on the table he has sponsored.

The Founders’ Table gives us a way of honouring what came before while making room for what comes next.

We hope thousands of conversations will happen around this table over the years. Friendships might start here. Ideas might be hatched here. Cultures might be shared here. Someone might sit down as a stranger and leave knowing another person a little better.

And amongst all of that, Mark gets to remain part of the life of the café he helped create.

We can’t think of a more fitting place for him.

A huge thank you to Martin and Toothbrush Apartments for making that possible.

Take a seat. Literally.

The Founders’ Table isn’t the only bit of Roots with a story attached.

A huge thank you also goes to Edward Creasy and Penny Creasy, who have each sponsored a chair in the café.

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We call it Take a Seat.

For £150, you can sponsor a Roots café chair and have your name or a loved ones name attached to it.

It sounds simple. It’s a chair.

But think about what might happen in it.

Someone might make a new friend in that chair. Have lunch when money is tight. Practise their English. Attend a workshop. Have their first day volunteering. Learn a new skill. Meet someone from a completely different background. Or simply have a coffee and an hour of company when they need it.

That is quite a lot for one chair.

Put your name into Roots

And you don’t need to buy a whole chair to become part of the Roots story.

We wanted to create different ways for people to help build Roots, quite literally from the ground up.

For £20, you can become a Brick in the Wall, with your name added to our Supporters Board. A small contribution that, alongside lots of others, helps build something much bigger. A huge thank you to Mayuri and Eric’s partner, who are already part of our wall.

For £50, you can Plant a Little Joy, joining Ginny in our Garden of Supporters. Because Roots isn’t just about opening a café. It’s about creating something that can grow.

For £150, you can Take a Seat, as Edward and Penny have done, sponsoring one of the chairs where all those conversations, coffees, lunches and new connections will happen.

And for £500, there’s The Roots Blend. We’ll create a speciality coffee blend named in your honour and serve it at Roots for a whole month. Eric Philbert has already become part of Roots in this rather delicious way so watch out for Eric's special blend coming soon.

We’re also incredibly grateful to Doug Betts, who has supported Roots with a generous £100 donation through the Big Give.

Different amounts.

Different ways of getting involved.

But every one helps us create the same thing: a café with community at its heart.

Help us put down Roots

Everything we are building at Roots is designed to create opportunities and connections for local people.

Because when you support Roots, you’re helping create the place where things happen.

Martin’s gift to the Founders’ Table feels like the perfect example of that.

It remembers someone who helped make this place what it was, while investing in everything it can become.

Roots may be growing, but we haven’t forgotten where we were planted.

Find out more about supporting Roots on our website.