Ed Sheeran turned up at Ipswich Waterfront on Friday morning and started a surprise acoustic set in front of hundreds of fans, opening with Thinking Out Loud near the University of Suffolk building after telling followers on Instagram he would be there at 09:00.
The crowd had already been building for hours, and one of the earliest arrivals, Millie Kirkpatrick from Sudbury, got there at 05:20 hoping to see Sheeran for the first time. Kirkpatrick, a singer herself, said she had never seen him before and hoped he would play the classics, a feeling shared by many pressed to the front of the waterfront gathering.
The appearance gave Suffolk a rare live moment from one of its best-known musicians. Sheeran told the hundreds of people packed along the waterfront that he was “so happy to be back in Suffolk,” while Radio Suffolk broadcast live from the scene and added to the sense that the performance had become the morning’s main event rather than a quick stop.
Before Sheeran arrived, local singer Lianne Kaye took to the impromptu stage first. Kaye, from Holbrook and a music teacher, performed her original song Glow, which she said was “about empowerment,” before covering Sheeran’s Lego House. Her slot set up the expectation that the set would lean back toward his busking days, probably without a loop pedal, though that format was only rumoured before he began.
That uncertainty was part of the appeal. Wayne Bavin, speaking while live on Radio Suffolk from the waterfront, said he understood Sheeran would return to an acoustic style and had also heard that a local singer would join him during the set, but the size of the crowd and the speed with which it assembled made the morning feel less like a planned show than a public reset of the singer’s roots. Belle, Darcey, Jude and Esmay were among those at the front hoping for Castle On The Hill, and the scene underlined how quickly a single Instagram post can turn a city edge into a concert space.
What happens next is the simplest part of the story: Sheeran is already there, the songs have started, and the only detail still missing is how long he will stay at the waterfront before the crowd is left with the moment it got and nothing more.
