Roll up to a market town
They’re full of life, chatter and community spirit — no wonder buyers are paying over the odds
OLD- FASHIONED and attractive, with retro charm, market towns are the Morris Travellers of the property world. They are also popular with housebuyers,commanding a premium of more than £30,000 over neighbouring towns, according to Lloyds Bank research. And that is down to a traditional sense of community. ‘Typically they are full of independent shops and cafes, where young and old mix, giving them an inclusive quality you seldom find elsewhere,’ says Luke Morgan, director from Strutt & Parker’s Country Department. ‘Smaller than cities and bigger than villages, they offer rural life but with added amenities.’
Carol Peett, of West Wales Property Finders, has found country market towns are ideal for those wanting to be part of a vibrant community.
‘If you walk into a market town to do some shopping and have a coffee, you can guarantee you’ll end up getting to know people,’ says Peett. ‘You don’t get that in a suburban supermarket.’
There is also a commercial energy behind our best market towns. They are the optimum size to revive the fortunes of the High Street, under threat from online shopping and out-of-town supermarkets.
‘They are extremely adaptable,’ says James Greenwood, of Stacks property search. ‘Hipsters in Hackney imagine they are doing something new when they open small, independent specialist shops, microbreweries and bakers, yet the market towns have been doing the same thing — satisfying niche markets — for years.’
Narberth in Pembrokeshire is a prime example. It was a busy little place until the Eighties, when businesses started to close. Happily, it was small enough for the local people to plot their own revival.
THE council cut business rates to a minimum and a new generation of imaginative traders moved in. Today it is full of life, well known for its shops, galleries, jewellers, artisan ice creamery and deli-tapas bar.
The average sold price for a detached house in the town was £251,477 last year and terraced houses went for £126,733, according to Rightmove.
Similarly, Ludlow was in decline by the middle years of the last century, its wool trade having faded away. Again, the local people came to the rescue, developing the tourist trade and making Ludlow a foodie capital, with a food and drink festival as well as a Medieval Christmas Fayre.
On Rightmove, the average sold price for a detached house in Ludlow was £287,912 last year and terrace houses sold for £181,418. Grade II-listed Stone House, designed by Charles Cockerell, who was also the architect of Oxford’s Ashmolean
Museum, is one of Ludlow’s finest houses and is on the market for £975,000 with struttandparker.com.
Today’s market towns are highly individual, even in the same region
‘In the South Hams of Devon, Totnes is a wonderful market town — arty and bohemian,’ says Prunella Martin, of local estate agents Marchand Petit. ‘It’s different from Modbury, which is rural with field sports or Kingsbridge, which is more water orientated with a yachting community.’
Some of the best market towns are found in Yorkshire. Helmsley, in the Ryedale district, with its market square packed full of specialist shops and tea rooms recently won the market town category in the Great British High Street awards.
Prices reflect the town’s desirability. Detached homes sell for £441,375 and the average sold price of a home has risen 37 per cent since 2010.
Thirsk, situated between the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors is at the heart of James Herriot country.
The cobbled market square and the mix of independent shops give it a rugged charm. While Knaresborough in the borough of Harrogate, has medieval streets, its own castle and museum. A three-bedroom terrace house is for sale for £185,000, stephensons4property.co.uk.
The typical market town’s broad social mix has opened up an abundance of plot- lines for writers of television dramas. Hence Midsomer Murders being shot in Wallingford and Thame, two Oxfordshire market towns and Stephen Fry’s Kingdom being set in the market town of Swaffham, Norfolk.
What is their attraction? ‘ They simply offer a better way of life,’ says writer Mandy Blake, 37, who has sold her two-bedroom terraced house in Sandwich, Kent, for £350,000 and bought a four-bedroom detached house in Narberth, Pembrokeshire for the same price.
She says: ‘You can commute to London with the same people every day without even making eye contact. In a market town, everybody talks to one another.’