Best Places to Live 2022 East
award-winning music and arts
space that also hosts a free
music therapy group for
people living with dementia
and their carers.
“Saffron Walden really has
that village feel within a
town,” says Karen Oakley,
who has lived here for ten
years and opened Saffron &
Sage, a deli, last year.
Best place to live if... You’re
in the market for a smart,
arty bolt hole that confounds
the clichés.
Best address Families
gravitate towards the
Victorian houses around
Mount Pleasant Road, while
downsizers prefer to be in the
thick of the medieval centre.
£517,000WOODBRIDGE, SUFFOLK F
Always beautiful and buzzy,
with its lovely period houses,
picturesque stretch of river
and tasty foodie scene, these
days this market town is
almost — gasp — positively
cool. The pandemic hasbrought an influx of twenty
and thirtysomethings who’ve
hotfooted it out of Hackney in
search of cosmopolitan living
near the coast with all the
locally sourced organic
produce and fancy coffee they
could desire. The fact that it is
surrounded by Insta-worthy
countryside all around,
London is just over 1 hour 30
minutes away by train and
Farlingaye High School
appears in the Parent Power
guide means the housing
market is hotter than a
Bikram yoga class.
Practice your
downward dog at
yoga sessions at the
New Street Market,
where you’ll
find homeware
shop Pascale;
Homespun, which
sells Mongolian
cashmere; and
Canteen café. Honey +
Harvey café offers that
essential millennial flat
white fix and, although the
famous Cake Shop Bakery has
shut down, Two Magpies
opened this year to fill the
sourdough-shaped hole in
locals’ lives (and stomachs).
Most appetites are covered by
the smattering of well-
regarded restaurants in the
area, and The Unruly Pig, just
outside Woodbridge, can’t
stop winning awards.
There’s also a growing
sustainable scene: the vegan
Plant Cafe; Quay Street
Collective, a vegan, eco-
friendly hair salon that
opened in 2020; and the
zero-plastic refill shop
Cupboard Love, which has a
stall at the weekly market
outside the Shire Hall. For
other needs there are plenty
of independent shops to cover
the basics, including a farm
shop, butcher, fishmonger
and grocer, plus a violin
shop and antiques centre.
Along with several galleries
and the Riverside cinema and
theatre, Woodbridge gives a
stellar show.
Best place to live if... You’re
not Roy Keane, who quipped
it was a nice town, but only for
“a holiday weekend in
summer, maybe”.
Best address People fed up
with parking problems in
town will pay £1 million-plus
for a detached house on
Dukes Park. And the big
money goes after Pytches
Road, Ipswich Road and
Broomheath.
£430,000vintage market; the Riverport
Café has books upstairs you
can borrow to read with your
coffee or glass of wine. The
Norris Museum hosts events,
plus pop-up cafés in
partnership with Sense, a
charity that helps those living
with disabilities.
There’s an excellent small
art gallery (VK Gallery), while
the independent shops
increasingly promote
sustainability. Recent
openings include the Explore
Zero Waste refill shop and the
Filling Station — the latter is a
craft beer shop and taproom
that allows customers to refill
US-style one- and two-litre
beer growlers with their beer
of choice (there are more
than 200 to try). Cheers.
Best place to live if... You
like beer, boats and bicycles.
Best address The town is
informally divided into two
halves. Anything south of
Houghton Road and St Audrey
Lane commands a premium.
£303,000SAFFRON WALDEN, ESSEX E
This is not Towie country. The
uniform is less stilettos, more
Schöffel: pick up your gilet,
shooting socks and the
compulsory pair of Dubarry
boots at Jacks 1952 country
clothing store on the high
street. Here the multicoloured
medieval houses are
reassuringly expensive, while
Saffron Walden County High
is highly regarded and the
huge common is popular with
everyone from dog-walkers toROBERT HARDING; SIMON COLLINS/ALAMY; ALPHOTOGRAPHIC/GETTY IMAGES
Bell and
beautiful
The medieval
centre of
Saffron Walden.
Below:
skateboarding
in Woodbridge,
and bikes next
to the Great
Ouse in St Ives
On the up...
joggers to picnickers.
Shopping locally is the
done thing — and necessary,
as the nearest train station
is two miles away in Audley
End, with trains to Cambridge
from 15 minutes and
London Liverpool Street
from 52 minutes.
Residents take care to
patronise the butchers,
bakers, fishmonger,
greengrocer and wine shop
on the high street — but can
always top up in Waitrose and
Aldi. Market days are a big
deal. On Tuesdays and
Saturdays the streets thrum
with life and laughter as
crowds browse the stalls,
picking up olives, watch
batteries and their weekly
fruit and veg haul — or simply
stand and nurse a latte. There
have been closures: chains
such as Laura Ashley and
Carphone Warehouse have
gone, but shops don’t stay
boarded up for long.
Community spirit is alive
and kicking. Locals saved the
Railway Arms pub from
closure and now run it as a
community venture — and
there are clubs for every
enthusiasm, from choral
singing to model railways.
The town is also a
significant arts centre, with
the Saffron Screen not-for-
profit cinema; the 20th-
century specialist Fry art
gallery (reopening next
month); the local museum
(exhibits range from a cast of
an egg of the great auk to a
curl of Napoleon Bonaparte’s
hair); and Saffron Hall, anFor community spirit,
Aldborough, in Norfolk, is
hard to beat. There’s
everything from yoga to the
pantomime, plus a big village
green, a pub and a shop and
post office. Bures, straddling
the borders of Suffolk and
Essex and bisected by the
River Stour, is a popular spot
for families, with two
nurseries, a primary school,
plus amenities such as a
train station and
The Village Deli.
Look also to
Coggeshall, a
pretty market
town, right, in
Essex, three
miles from
Kelvedon
station, from
where the fastest
train to London
Liverpool Street takes 49
minutes. It may be the
biggest container port in
Britain, but Old Felixstowe
offers trad seaside charm
and Edwardian semis for a
fraction of the price of other
Suffolk coastal spots — and it
has a Blue Flag beach.
For connections, St Neots,
in Cambridgeshire, is hard to
beat: it’s about half an hour
from Bedford and Cambridge
and the fastest train to
London King’s Cross takes 40
minutes. The average house
price is £298,091 compared
with £561,560 to be close to
the dreaming spires.14 April 10, 2022