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US$1 equals 0.64 British pounds .
This is classic English countryside. Between golden wheatfields, streams overhung with willow trees glisten in the autumn sunlight. Corn dollies hang up in casement windows like magic charms. In market gardens, red-flowered runner beans grow on eight-foot high poles. Strings of racehorses exercise on Newmarket Heath, village greens host cricket matches, and Greene King ale—real ale—comes straight from the cask. Let’s go visit Even for “let’s - go - visit” purposes,
you should allow Suffolk at least four days. However, if time is pressing,
you can get a taster of the county on a daytrip from hustle-and-bustle
London. Catch the tube to Liverpool Street, enter the mainline station,
and buy a ticket to Bury St. Edmunds. This cathedral town has a twice-weekly
market, a ruined abbey, and lots of beguiling inns and family-owned shops.
You’ll probably have to change trains at Ipswich, but you’ll still arrive
in around 90 minutes.
Walking off the shelves Although a minimum of $124,500 is needed to buy even the smallest Suffolk cottage, the commutability factor means it’s unlikely to prove a bad investment...provided UK house prices don’t completely collapse. Unlike mainland Europe, the UK has a tendency for booms and busts. Before telling you more about Suffolk’s homes, the situation in the UK housing market needs explaining. Americans will undoubtedly consider house prices steep. At the time of writing, the UK average was $172,000. That’s 23% higher than the same time last year. While some realtors are forecasting further rises of 18% over the next 12 months, these growth rates seem unsustainable. That said, period-style properties in Suffolk are still “walking off the shelves.” East Anglia is hot, hot, hot —and Suffolk is at the center of the frying pan. Every agent I spoke to emphasised that few homes linger on the market for long. In their summer report, Coulson Edwards stated that in the county’s most exquisite ‘wool town’ villages—places like medieval Lavenham and Long Melford—prices had jumped 30% over the last year. Here’s one home that I imagine will be snapped up very quickly: Neate’s Cottage. A 17th-century cottage with a partly timber-framed exterior, it’s in Woolpit village. This village is only seven miles from Bury St. Edmunds and has a good range of amenities—village shops, post office, bakery, inns, church, primary school, and doctor’s surgery. Priced at $218,000, the two-bedroom cottage has exposed wooden beams and a small courtyard garden at the rear. It’s small, though...living space is only around 700 square feet. Even so, it’s the kind of weekend retreat that suits many buyers from the capital. Get your Bury right Few English market towns are more oddly named than Bury St. Edmunds. Its 38,000 locals simply call it Bury, but this can be confusing to foreign visitors. You see, there’s another Bury in Lancashire, in northern England. Unless you have a penchant for drab industrial mill towns, for goodness sake don’t catch the wrong train and go to Lancashire’s Bury. It’s a prime example of why English southerners say “it’s grim up North.” Suffolk’s Bury—flowery, charming, and full of historic houses—couldn’t be more of a contrast. The ruins of what was once one of England’s most magnificent abbeys give a clue to its former importance. Back in 869 AD, it was here that Danish Vikings made a martyr of East Anglia’s King Edmund...he refused to relinquish Christianity and worship their pagan gods. The shrine that developed around the murdered king’s remains grew into the abbey, and eventually the town. Duck-chasing hippies Back in the early 1970s, I spent a few mad weeks living in lodgings with an Italian landlady on Well Street. In those days, Bury St. Edmunds was a magnet to hippies...something to do with ley lines, from what I remember. Some of my spaced-out and penniless pals spent a great deal of time trying to catch the mallard ducks in the Abbey Gardens, hoping to roast them on open fires. Not me, though. My motherly landlady had a relative working in the local lightbulb factory—she wangled me a job there. Fiddling around with lightbulb fittings sounds a desperate way to earn money, but the turkey factory would have been worse... As I haven’t been back since the 70s, I was thrilled to find I still recognized Bury—it still feels like a town that time forgot. Little unsightly new development mars its network of crooked streets and laneways meandering down to Angel Hill and the Abbey Gardens. These are lovely—cascading with flowers even in late September. Squirrels scampered around the trees...and there wasn’t a duck-torturing hippy in sight. At the same time, shopping has vastly improved, the library is first-rate (members get free Internet access), and there’s a new bus station. And I don’t think any local would complain that the cinema no longer shows prehistoric films...I actually saw Michael Caine in Zulu here. Released in 1964, it didn’t reach Bury St. Edmunds until 1972. I can’t remember eating in any of the Indian restaurants that have now sprung up on Risbygate, but the town’s pubs remain pleasingly old-fashioned. Just about all sell Greene King ale—and so they should, as the brewery is in the town. Even if you’re not a drinker, you must visit The Nutshell...it’s on a street called The Traverse in the town center. England’s smallest pub, it only has bench seating for four people—though it has been known for over 50 stand-up drinkers to cram themselves inside. If you fancy a game of pool, go to the Grapes, across the road from the top end of Risbygate. Local agents Richard Green have an attractive cache of properties both in Bury St. Edmunds and surrounding villages. Within the town, three-bedroom Victorian townhouses with front and rear gardens are fetching around $264,000. A 17th-century townhouse with two bedrooms, exposed timbers, pegtiled roof, and walled garden was $272,000. Village properties included a pink-washed 17th-century cottage called the Red House at Rickinghall for $200,000. At Redgrave, a beautiful reed-thatched house of around 1,400 square feet with exposed beams and enclosed herb garden was listed at $357,500. The queen of Suffolk’s wool towns If one single Suffolk village stands out from all the rest, it’s Lavenham. With its streets of half-timbered guildhalls and houses leaning at crazy angles, this truly is Olde England come back to life. Most houses were built between 1450 and 1500, a time when Lavenham was listed as the 14th wealthiest town in England. Here’s a new word for you: pargetting. (Well, it was new for me.) It applies to timber-framed houses whose plastered exteriors were decorated in relief or with scratch patterns (pargetted), and then washed with color. You’ll see dozens of examples of pargetting in Lavenham. Don’t miss Water Street, where every house is photogenic. And there are no overhead wires to spoil your snaps—these went underground in the mid-1960s. Another gem is the yellow-and-white Little Hall, here since the 14th century. Not that it’s exactly the same as then...it was modernized in the 16th century. But it’s an uncanny sensation to know you’re looking at almost the same streetscape as in medieval times...and that most houses were built before Henry VIII, Bloody Mary, and Good Queen Bess ever came to the throne. Home to merchants, dyers, and weavers You may wonder how today’s village of 1,800 souls could have ever been richer than the likes of York, Lincoln, and Gloucester. The reason is wool: Suffolk is sheep country, and Lavenham was the county’s main Wool Town. It was home to an immensely prosperous community of merchants, dyers, and weavers who turned the wool into broadcloth. Until the advent of “King Cotton” and the industrial revolution (when emphasis on manufacture switched to northern England’s mill towns), Suffolk reigned as England’s premier cloth-producing county. Until the middle of the 18th century, a weekly market and four annual fairs were held in Lavenham. Those days are long gone, but the Market Cross still exists—stand beside it on the Market Place, and you get wonderful views of rolling farmland spreading out before you. The tourist office has a booklet ($1.50), worth buying for all the historic information. Constable went to Lavenham’s grammar school...there’s a house on Shilling Street where a young lady called Jane Taylor wrote the ditty “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”...the heretical Reverend Rowland Taylor was locked into the Guildhall for two days in 1555 before being burned at the stake. Potential home-buyers should head for the Market Toll Keeper’s Cottage. This now houses Sworders Estate Agency. Janice Scott put aside her sandwich lunch (“I eat on the hoof”) to chat. She told me any historic property in Lavenham “practically sells itself.” You’ll need to be exceptionally quick off the mark to buy a home here. The only historic timbered house on the books in Lavenham was priced at $543,000. Suitable for either commercial or residential use, it has a large sitting/showroom, kitchen/breakfast room, utility, two bedrooms, a charming garden, a studio, and parking. But the village is so popular that even modern homes with quarter-acre gardens on the outskirts sell for breathtaking prices—Sworders has a couple of four-bedroom detached properties for $373,000 and $412,000. However, prices are more sensible in other pretty villages nearby. At Little Waldingfield, an unusual converted Georgian chapel with large gardens, sitting/dining room, kitchen, cloakroom, bathroom and two bedrooms was $263,000. And at Glemsford, $124,500 buys a historic terraced cottage—but at that modest price it only has one bedroom. Antiquing in Long Melford Most English villages would consider themselves lucky to possess one Tudor mansion—Long Melford has two. Now owned by the National Trust, the turrets of Melford Hall overlook what was originally a medieval hunting park. Moated Kentwell Hall is the setting for Tudor pageants and an open-air summer theater, where Shakespeare’s plays are performed. Separating the two mansions is Long Melford’s mile-long village street. This is England’s longest village street and it will probably take you at least a couple of hours to walk it. That’s not because it’s steep or difficult. No, what will almost certainly slow you down are the antique shops. Almost every other business is involved in selling memories of times past: everything from furniture and fishing creels to art deco and silverware. I browsed amongst the four floors of the Antiques Warehouse, an Aladdin’s Cave of treasures. Stuffed songbirds in glass cases...19th-century spinning wheels...art deco mantelpiece decorations...a garden lantern adorned with leaping bronze dolphins. No space to list every eyecatching artefact, but you can spend anything from $30 for a Victorian boat plaque to $19,500 for a Bechstein piano, made in 1900. While Long Melford is a showpiece village, it does have a life beyond antiques. There are butchers, bakers, a post office, inns, a sadlery shop for horse enthusiasts. The church of the Holy Trinity is of cathedral-like size—built in 1484 with the wealth generated through the wool trade. Look out for the tiny window showing three rabbits with only three ears between them—this is an ancient symbol of the Trinity. Remember the village folk Long Melford is a sheer delight to wander, but what struck me was how much effort is put into keeping village life going. Wherever I looked there were notices for choral sessions, amateur dramatics...even morris dancing. But overshadowing the smaller notices were calls for people to join the countryside march to London, which was set for the following Sunday. This march wasn’t solely about the right to hunt foxes with hounds. Many rural people feel the Blair government is too urban-focused, paying scant attention to the countryside’s needs. Although the Suffolk villages I visited were thriving, this isn’t the case nationwide. Issues include the closure of cottage hospitals, primary schools, and village post offices; low farm incomes; and the paucity of public transport. The least expensive home I saw for sale here was through Sworders: a cottage in the village center for $140,000. However, it only had one bedroom. For something really characterful, you’re talking hefty sums...there’s no likelihood of three-bedroom thatched cottages or period properties going for bargain prices around here. A short distance away, at Kersey village, Water Well House is on the market for $427,500. With three bedrooms, this semi-detached cottage is Grade II listed... meaning it’s historally important. Oxblood-colored, it comes with architectural features such as exposed ceiling timbers, an inglenook fireplace, and herringbone brick flooring. Set around a horse chestnut tree, the enclosed garden is stocked with blooms you’d expect in an old-fashioned English cottage garden: foxgloves, ladies mantle, and honeysuckle. Kersey has a couple of inns, a church, and a ford (The Splash), running through the village center. Gig House near Hadleigh is a restored Victorian farmhouse with views across Kersey Vale. It has three bedrooms, a sitting room, drawing room, garden/dining room, and its huge kitchen (12’10 by 11’0) is definitely farmhouse-style. There’s a larder and you can cook on a double range Alpha stove, (similar to an Aga) which also fuels the heating. The rear garden is around 175 feet long; a brick terrace at the front features climbing roses and lavender. Price, $583,000. Horsing about in Newmarket
The Town Plate Race And if Malcolm is your guide, you’re in for a treat...a former amateur jockey over the jumps, he’s chock-full of stories. If you don’t get him, be sure to ask your guide to relate the curious history of the Town Plate Race—still run for the not-so-princely prize of five pounds of sausages! Of course, I wasn’t in Newmarket just to admire the stallions and darling foals who will see a racecourse for the first time in 2004. (By the way, Malcolm’s tip is to watch for the offspring of Silver Patriarch.) So, stalwartly ignoring the Horseracing Museum on the High Street, I went looking for an estate agent. Unfortunately, I found Ladbrokes first. Ladbrokes is one of those dens of iniquity better known as “the bookies.” Me and bookmakers are old acquaintances—I probably wasted seven years of my life poring over horseracing form books, trying to fathom a winning system. (Don’t bother, I learned the hard way that there isn’t one.) Way back when, bookmakers were also called turf accountants, and you visit them to gamble—on horses, on dogs, on soccer scores. Bookies offices have improved since I lived in England. Nowadays they’re far less dingy, and punters can watch all the action on banks of TV sets. Plus they sell tea, coffee, and snacks. Floors are still littered with losing betting slips and cigarette ends. And a fool and her money are still easily parted...poking my nose inside for a look-see, I was tempted by a greyhound called Derby Ball racing at Brough Park. (I was born in Derby, and its name seemed auspicious...plus the 5/1 odds were tasty.) Sadly the wretched dog tumbled out of its trap like a sack of Suffolk potatoes. But enough of my bad habits...I did eventually get into an estate agency. If you fancy living here, terraced houses within Newmarket (two to three bedrooms) range from $152,500 to $210,000. Through Cheffins, cottages in nearby villages start at $163,000 rising to $894,000 for a pink-washed Grade II listed cottage with oak beams, four reception rooms, four bedrooms, and landscaped gardens. Rental properties include a two-bedroom terraced house in Newmarket ($777 per month) and a two-bedroom thatched cottage in Dalham village for $1,243 monthly. The right to buy is not the right to reside U.S. citizens can freely buy (or rent) UK property. But how long you can live here each year depends on personal circumstances. The so-called “special relationship” doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll automatically receive Right of Abode. As things stand, you can enter the U.K. on a tourist visa and stay up to six months in any one year. United States citizens wishing to live in the U.K. on a permanent basis must apply for entry clearance at the nearest British Embassy or Consulate in the United States. Approval is normally based on the fact that the individual is a person of independent means (for example a retiree) who won’t need to rely on public funds or employment to support himself. You must satisfy the entry clearance officer that you have a net annual income of not less than $39,000 and can support any dependents. Entry clearance is not, however, granted solely because these financial conditions are met. Applicants must also show a close connection with the United Kingdom (for example, the presence of close relatives here or periods of previous residence) or that admission is in the interest of the United Kingdom. Three thatched picks
Fees, council tax, and estate agent contacts The U.K. doesn’t have realtors, it has estate agents...and they don’t charge commission fees to buyers. However, budget for legal fees and stamp-duty on any property costing more than $93,000. On a $233,000 home, additional purchase costs (legal fees and government duties) would amount to around $3,650. On a $311,000 property, around $4,500. Householders have to pay annual council tax. Effectively a property tax, the amount is set by local councils. There are differing bands according to property value. Nationwide, the average amount is around $1,400 annually. In Suffolk, Friars Cottage at Hadleigh village is a two-bedroom single-storey property, part of a farmyard conversion. On the market for $388,500, it falls into Band C; the annual council tax of $1,400. A detached four-bedroom farmhouse at Rattlesden listed at $668,000 comes under Band F; the tax levied is $2,145. The following agencies will help,
but also pick up the Thursday edition of the East Anglian Daily Times,
which contains a thick property supplement. In towns like Ipswich and Stowmarket,
studio apartments start at $62,000.
Where to stay A 20-minute walk from the town center, Bury St. Edmunds’ Priory Hotel has a country-house ambience. The name comes from deep in history...it was built on the site of Babwell Friary, founded in 1263. Nothing of the abbey remains, but the flintstone walls around the grounds make it feel like you’re entering a secluded place. I ate one evening in its Garden Restaurant—if you enjoy “posh nosh” like smoked seafood terrine and grilled sea bass, you’ll have no complaints. However, the three-course menu is
pricy at just under $40...and that’s without wine. Doubles with breakfast
cost $154 nightly. Priory Hotel, Tollgate, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk IP32
6EH; tel. (44)1284-766-181; fax (44)1284- 767-604; e-mail: reservations@prioryhotel.co.uk;
website: www.prioryhotel.co.uk.
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