The North of England’s most powerful baronial family, the Dukes of Northumberland (Percy) have ruled the land around Alnwick for more than seven centuries. Their descendants still reside at the magnificent ancestral home, Alnwick Castle, which was a shooting location for the Harry Potter movies and is bursting with priceless art. The castle’s garden has …
Where Kent’s North Downs tumble into the English Channel, Folkestone is a seaside town that reached its zenith in the Edwardian period just before the First World War. With masses of Victorian architecture, beautiful waterfront parks and a revitalised harbour, Folkestone has plenty to love. The history of the place is exciting too. France is …
Up there with the UK’s best towns for quality of life, Grantham in southwest Lincolnshire is most famous for producing a colossal historical figure. Sir Isaac Newton was born not far away in a tiny hamlet, and was a pupil at Grantham’s King’s School. There’s a solemn statue for this physicist in front of the …
In the 19th and early 20th century Dorset’s county town was intertwined with the life of Thomas Hardy, one of England’s greatest writers. His two houses are both looked after by the National Trust, while the town itself is fictionalised in his work as Casterbridge. The Dorset County Museum has lots of Hardy memorabilia, and …
The Second World War left the UK in desperate need of new housing, and this need gave rise to the 29 settlements known as New Towns. Stevenage in north Hertfordshire was designated the very first of these in 1946, and was laid out with a pedestrianised town centre that had never been seen on these …
The North Oxfordshire market town of Banbury is a prosperous manufacturing centre and the UK base of brands like Douwe Egberts. Banbury has always been a place where things get made, from plush fabrics hundreds of years ago to narrow boats on the Oxford Canal, which came to the town in the 1770s. Before that …
Officially the sunniest town in Britain, Bognor Regis is an old-school seaside resort in West Sussex. The first tourists arrived in the 18th century, and King George V convalesced from surgery here in the late-1920s, which is how the town gained its royal Regis suffix. Ever since the Butlin’s holiday camp opened in 1960 Bognor …
An irresistible market town, Arundel is on the steep west side of the Arun Valley as it drops to the river. High on the chalk ridge are Arundel Castle, seat of the Howards for nearly 1,000 years, and a Gothic Revival cathedral that could have been teleported here from northern France. Arundel has lots of …
A well-heeled residential district in Southwest London, Wimbledon has a fame that goes well beyond British borders for a certain tennis tournament in July. The Championships is unlike any other event in the ATP or WTA tours, standing for history and tradition, and strawberries and cream. If you miss the tournament you can always come …
Under the southern slopes of the Kent Downs, Ashford is a town near the very centre of Kent. Thanks to this location the town became the meeting point of five different railway lines, stimulating growth and employment in the 19th century. When the Channel Tunnel was finished in the mid-1990s Ashford also got an international …