Best place to live in suffolk...

RedfordML

If you have a young family?

Good schools, ideally a town or a large village with good local aminities?

ty:beer:

Biggles

It's quite a large county, what part are you likely to be in?

RedfordML

Would consider anywhere that suits our criteria, maybe not so Far East as Ipswich...

Lived in Haverhill for 20 yrs, but left in 2002 so out of touch of areas...

fairytinkerbell

I'm buying a house in lowestoft. all depends on you budget and if you want a town, village, rural etc

Lizling

RedfordML wrote: »

If you have a young family?

Good schools, ideally a town or a large village with good local aminities?

ty:beer:

I don't know much about the schools, but Clare's very nice and has a pretty good range of amenities (bank, doctors, a few pubs, co-op, grocer, butcher, cafe etc) for a village/small town of that size. You'll probably know it a bit already from having lived down the road in Haverhill.

woodsdevil

We used to live in Bury St Edmunds and it's beautiful. Everyone is really nice. Great town center, and countryside around, and of course good schools too.

Better_Days

Bury St Edmunds has a lot to commend it, good schools, nice town centre, lovely Abbey Gardens, recently restored Georgian Theatre (Theatre Royal - DH is playing there in a month in 'A Bedroom Farce'), railway station, does well every year in 'Britain in Bloom', The Arc for concerts etc. All the usual clubs and societies and a local paper - The Bury Free Press, the letters page can be quite entertaining - there are a few professional moaners who seem to get published a lot.

On the minus side it is quite expensive to buy in Bury, but of course it depends on your budget. Just don't buy anywhere around 'Spring Lane', low lying land that used to be massive lake in the winter until it was built on. Also have a look at the St Edmundsbury website for their 'Vision' of Bury in the future - especially with regards to development for housing in Bury and the surrounding area. There are some ambitious plans which may well alter the whole 'feel' of Bury in the future. Certainly current infrastructure is struggling with current housing levels, let alone thousands more. How this compares to other similar sized towns I don't know.

Traffic bad at peak times, and has got noticeably worse over the last 10 years. The LA deals with this by simply putting up the parking charges, but public transport is expensive. On the plus transport size Bury is very near to the A14, and has 3 exits off.

Sugar beet lorries can be a pain during the 'campaign', especially if they are not netted, or not netted properly. Sugar beet is like concrete and can make a nasty dent in your car. I did once make DH turn round once and check what I thought was an injured hedgehog on the side of the road, he was not impressed when it turned out to be a sugar beet! Also, depending on the the time of year and the wind direction, there is sometimes a very strong 'sugar beet' smell in and around Bury. No where near as bad as the 'Woolpit Whiff' which originated from a pig farm, but which fortunately only affected a relatively small area (unless of course you happened to live there)

Conservative with both a big and small c, unlike Ipswich. Some social deprivation, but not as nearly as bad as Ipswich or somewhere on the coast like Gt Yarmouth or Lowestoft.

There are some nice villages around Bury where it is a bit cheaper, but I would avoid Elmswell and Stanton. Public transport is both expensive and infrequent around the villages.

GL in your continued quest.

mrchiggles

Better_Days wrote: »

Bury St Edmunds has a lot to commend it, good schools, nice town centre, lovely Abbey Gardens, recently restored Georgian Theatre (Theatre Royal - DH is playing there in a month in 'A Bedroom Farce'), railway station, does well every year in 'Britain in Bloom', The Arc for concerts etc. All the usual clubs and societies and a local paper - The Bury Free Press, the letters page can be quite entertaining - there are a few professional moaners who seem to get published a lot.

On the minus side it is quite expensive to buy in Bury, but of course it depends on your budget. Just don't buy anywhere around 'Spring Lane', low lying land that used to be massive lake in the winter until it was built on. Also have a look at the St Edmundsbury website for their 'Vision' of Bury in the future - especially with regards to development for housing in Bury and the surrounding area. There are some ambitious plans which may well alter the whole 'feel' of Bury in the future. Certainly current infrastructure is struggling with current housing levels, let alone thousands more. How this compares to other similar sized towns I don't know.

Traffic bad at peak times, and has got noticeably worse over the last 10 years. The LA deals with this by simply putting up the parking charges, but public transport is expensive. On the plus transport size Bury is very near to the A14, and has 3 exits off.

Sugar beet lorries can be a pain during the 'campaign', especially if they are not netted, or not netted properly. Sugar beet is like concrete and can make a nasty dent in your car. I did once make DH turn round once and check what I thought was an injured hedgehog on the side of the road, he was not impressed when it turned out to be a sugar beet! Also, depending on the the time of year and the wind direction, there is sometimes a very strong 'sugar beet' smell in and around Bury. No where near as bad as the 'Woolpit Whiff' which originated from a pig farm, but which fortunately only affected a relatively small area (unless of course you happened to live there)

Conservative with both a big and small c, unlike Ipswich. Some social deprivation, but not as nearly as bad as Ipswich or somewhere on the coast like Gt Yarmouth or Lowestoft.

There are some nice villages around Bury where it is a bit cheaper, but I would avoid Elmswell and Stanton. Public transport is both expensive and infrequent around the villages.

GL in your continued quest.

+1 - would have said the same!

gil13

Bury is a nice place, you could also consider coming across toward Sudbury (birthplace of thomas gainsborough etc.) which is a lovely market town or even Great Cornard which is on the edge of Sudbury and which is an up and coming area. Both are on the Suffolk /Essex border with the river stour separating the two counties.

Kathy535

I used to live in Sudbury (for 31 years!) and would happily move back, lovely countryside within easy access, good links to bigger towns and a decent town centre and out of town shopping. Bury is also lovely.