The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
I’ve found England’s most perfect market town
With Roman remains, a grand Minster and even its own apple, the Nottinghamshire town of Southwell ticks all the boxes, says Sarah Baxter
Arecent “study” by money-saving website savoo.co.uk has named Southwell Britain’s most affordable and “Instagrammable” town. This comely Nottinghamshire settlement of 7,500 people has, apparently, been “hashtagged” almost 70,000 times, has a whopping 71 places to stay for less than £100 a night and boasts 64 free attractions – which, we’re told, is more than Manchester (53). Even by the standards of your typical press release, this is surely nonsense of the highest order.
But is there actually a nugget of something here? Southwell is undoubtedly an interesting place, with Roman remains, a disproportionately impressive Minster, a National Trust gem, good pubs, its own cooking apple … Might this questionable survey have stumbled upon a solid truth: that Southwell really is England’s most perfect little market town?
I’m unsure where those 70-odd £100 stays are hiding. With its fine Georgian buildings and handsome prebendal houses, once home to the Minster’s canons, this isn’t a cheap place to live: Zoopla puts the average property price here, in the “jewel of Nottinghamshire”, at £390,426 (the county average is £240,092). However, I found a cute bolthole that didn’t break the bank.
Kate Cronin grew up in the 18thcentury house at No 56 Church Street and now runs its annex as a small but niftily designed studio flat. It’s in a great location, too. Almost opposite is No 75, home to the original tree from which gardener Henry Merryweather propagated the first Bramley apple in the 1850s. The old, fungus-infected tree still stands; you can just about see it from the car park at the Hearty Goodfellow, where Kate invited me for a drink.
Kate knew everyone in the pub – Southwell’s that sort of place – and was soon reeling off recommendations: Reg Taylor’s Garden Centre, coffee at Alfresco Caffe, a walk along the rail trail from the Final Whistle pub to Maythorne’s All Mine Cakes by the Lake. However, I’d already had a tip-off for dinner. A vibrant young team had taken over the restaurant at the Saracens Head, I’d been told, and were creating a bit of a buzz.
The timber-frame Saracens is an institution, dating back to the late 14th century. Past guests have included Dickens, Byron and Charles I, who spent his last hours of freedom here in May 1646.
“I was a waiter here 15 years ago,” new manager David Newby told me. “I moved back in 2020 and saw its potential.” This spring, David opened the Oak dining room. It still has its wood-panelled walls and grandfather clocks, but now chef Simon Thornewill is in the kitchen, adding creative zing to the menu. “There will always be fish and chips,” David explained, “but Simon also wants to showcase what he can do.” That means a seasonal menu featuring dishes such as kaffir lime halibut and steak with truffled mac ’n’ cheese. “We want to merge traditional and modern,” David added. “The building is important to the town. And this town should have a great restaurant.”
I agreed. Because Southwell ticks all the other ideal mini-break boxes. Its compact centre is lined with perusable independents, while heritage trails add context to its streets and surrounding countryside. I spent a sunny morning wandering the (free) six-mile Bramley Apple Trail, crunching through the town’s pomological history via Norwood Park (where Merryweather learned to garden), the riverside Community Orchard and the Heritage Orchard, which nurtures 30 apple varieties previously grown by H Merryweather & Sons.
However, most visitors come to Southwell for the Minster. Free to enter (donations welcome), the complex was built from the 12th century on the site of a Roman villa and earlier Saxon church. With its two looming pepper-pot towers, Archbishop’s Palace ruins and grand State Chamber, where Cardinal Wolsey spent his final months, it’s inordinately big and important for such a small town. Best is the elegant gothic Chapter House, its capitals exquisitely carved with leaves of oak, maple and hawthorn, ivy, wormwood and rose – a symbolic woodland in stone.
It’s quite the contrast to Southwell’s other big attraction, which isn’t free – though was when it opened in 1824. “Welcome to the Workhouse,” National Trust guide John Bartle announced as he led us around the austere red-brick building. “It means you’ve reached rock bottom.”
Part of the country’s most ambitious welfare programme, Southwell Workhouse was supposed to be a last resort, with life inside so onerous and dull that only the absolutely destitute would apply – though the elderly, infirm and orphaned often had little choice. It’s a desperately sad and complicated story – the last resident didn’t leave until the 1990s – told in an engaging, thoughtful way.
In the 1970s the former women’s wing was still being used as temporary accommodation for mothers and children escaping domestic violence, and some rooms have been left dressed with peeling floral wallpaper and Top of the Pops records. It was here that I overheard an older man talking to a lady from the National Trust. He’d lived in the building with his mother in 1949 and was trying to remember which room had been theirs, where he might have had lessons, where he’d ridden his bicycle. It appears the story of the Workhouse, and this fascinating little market town, is still being written.