The largest town in West Berkshire, Newbury forms a pair with Thatcham on the River Kennet by the North Wessex Downs. The UK headquarters of Vodafone and a couple of other high-tech firms are based in Newbury, and the town’s business acumen goes back a long way. In the 16th century the cloth trade was …
Where the River Wear enters the North Sea, Sunderland is a city that has found a new path after the decline of coalmining and shipbuilding in the 70s and 80s. Nissan opened the largest car factory in the UK in Sunderland, and while that might not sound touristy, this former zone of heavy industry has …
One of the most affluent places in the UK outside London, Solihull is a leafy town southeast of Birmingham in the West Midlands. Inside the borough are Birmingham International Airport, the National Exhibition Centre, the National Conference Centre and the burgeoning Birmingham Business Park. The town’s prosperity is reflected in the shopping options at the …
The smallest cathedral city in England, Wells is home to 10,000 people at the southern foot of the Mendip Hills. So called for natural springs in the cathedral grounds, Wells became a bishopric in the 10th century, and since the 13th century has shared a diocese with Bath. The walled ecclesiastical precinct, made up of …
Dating back more than 1,300 years, Ripon claims to be England’s oldest city. Whether or not this is true, you can’t deny the weight of its historical wonders. Ripon Cathedral is an Early English masterpiece concealing the remains of an 7th-century Anglo-Saxon basilica in its crypt. Fountains Abbey, three miles outside the city is the …
An affluent town on the Middle Thames, Marlow was an important crossing on the river as early as the 13th century when the Knights Templar built the first bridge. The town has a prestigious rowing club (founded 1871), and one of its members is the Marlow-born Steve Redgrave, the most decorated male rower in Olympic …
Sharing the name of a hill range and the spring water that bubbles from it, Malvern is a town and district near the Worcestershire-Herefordshire boundary. The old spa resort of Great Malvern is the pick for holidaymakers, just as it was for Victorian travellers seeking water cures. The hydrotherapy doctor James Manby Gully set up …
In one of the richest boroughs in England, Maidenhead is a market town on the Thames, not far upriver from Windsor. The Prime Minister Theresa May’s constituency, Maidenhead has a tidy town centre that was redeveloped after the Second World War. A lot of the town’s charm comes from its riverside, where there’s an epoch-making …
A small coastal town on Lincolnshire’s low-lying fens, Mablethorpe springs into action in summer as a family tourist resort. The headline is the vast golden sandy beach, many miles long and tracked by dunes and a nature reserve to the north. There’s a lot for kids to get up to, whether it’s the simple joys …
Famed for its three-spired cathedral and profuse Georgian architecture, Lichfield is a glorious city 16 miles north of Birmingham. The cathedral is the obligatory first port of call, for its Gothic lines, invaluable Flemish stained glass and an 8th-century carving of an angel. Enveloping this monument is one of the UK’s most unspoilt Cathedral Closes, …