Halesworth’s Portas Bid
As I discover more about my new home town of Halesworth I find they made a Portas Bid in 2012 but sadly weren't selected.
Folks ask me why I moved here and I tell them my story - On returning to the UK I was looking for a place to live which was on the train line, where eventually I would be able to do without a car, where I could walk to the shops, where I was close to the sea and the coast, which had a cinema and a good library. Loving the Suffolk coast but knowing I couldn't afford a place on the coast, I was looking along the Ipswich to Lowestoft train line when the estate agent selling my place near Saffron Walden said "Have you looked at Halesworth yet? You'll like it it is like a mini Saffron Walden" So I came, sat in the Coffee shop and watched the town go bye, walked up and down the Thoroughfare and loved it. There are two fruit and veg shops, two butchers, a fish stall in the weekly market and a traditional ironmongers and household goods shop which is rapidly becoming my favourite place to find things in and The Cut Arts Centre. For me having my daily shopping needs on the doorstep, some 5 minutes walk from my new home, is amazing! People here are very friendly. In this country, I have to go back to my childhood to have been in a place where I knew the shopkeepers by name and they knew mine.
The biggest issues raised in their video were the cost of parking which was felt to be a real deterrent to shoppers and the lack of variety in the shops. Parking is free for the first hour now, so hopefully that should help local trade and fingers crossed that some entrepreneurial youngster will bite the bullet and open an old fashioned traditional drapers for those ladies in the video who need to buy their smalls somewhere :) So far to me Halesworth has been a little gem.
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