fnarf999

What is the prettiest, quaintest, oldest, and/or most interesting place in Britain to see black and white timbered houses, narrow streets, and the like? Is it Shrewsbury, or are there other good candidates that are more off the beaten track? Someplace obscure in Lincolnshire or Yorkshire, maybe? Rail access and "northernness" (north of the Midlands, say) is strongly desired.

Thanks very much.

carolyn

I liked Chester. Local people use the old Roman wall to walk to work.

fnarf999

I've been to Chester, and loved it. This time I'm hoping for something smaller and a bit less touristed. Our primary location is Liverpool, but I'm looking for something a bit ancient elsewhere. Perhaps Ludlow?

I should probably mention that I'm not particularly interested in castles or royalty or knights in armor and all that good stuff. I'm interested in common people and the mundane, just old.

lazuliangel

Wantage in the south of Oxfordshire is darling, though it is out of your Midlands specification (as is Canterbury, which would definitely fit the bill for narrow streets and timbered homes). And of course, you get some lovely towns in the Cotswolds.

TuckH

>black and white timbered houses<

I don't think Ludlow would qualify.

The following would, I think... Great Budworth, Much Wenlock and Bridgnorth. Shrewsbury is a definite Yes.

As you go north, the vernacular tends toward stone rather than half-timber I believe.

An exception would be York itself, where you'll find many examples - although you say you want "something smaller and a bit less touristed".

henneth

Many timber framed houses can be found in Lavenham.

TuckH

Here's another one... Ledbury.

fnarf999

OK, that's something to go on. I've thought of York; I'd like to see it, and it's very accessible, but maybe too touristy. I'd LOVE to see Canterbury, but it's too far from where we'll be. I'll check out the others you mentioned.

My next request will be "Britain's Most Unattractive Concrete Monstrosities In The Center of Town", because I have a soft spot for those as well!

flanneruk

There's virtually nothing medieval, untouristy and easily accessible on a train from Liverpool. In fact, of course, it's by definition impossible to be on a railway line and off the beaten track.

Being on a railway line was a guarantee the Victorians would "restore" any town, and the few ancient towns on a line that escaped (like York and Cambridge) are now full of people who value the fact. Most semi-unspolit towns (like Stamford and Burford) aren't on a railway line.

And Liverpool's meagre railway links don't help: there's a relatively frequent direct train from Liverpool to Ely (though it takes forever), but that, and Chester, are the only ancient places directly connected to Liverpool

One alternative quest might be to see what Merseyside has to offer. Norton Priory has the finest medieval sculpture to survive the Tudors' iconoclasm. Little Crosby is an extraordinary demographic aberration: a largely Catholic rural village, with a 19th century church that's a copy of a proper medieval English country church, but covered in the kind of devotional wall paintings all English churches had before 1540. Or get a copy of Quentin Hughes' "Seaport" from Amazon or one of Liverpool's few second hand bookshops (the one under Lime St station usually has one) and follow the city's extraordinary 18th/19th century architectural heritage (the book's about 40 years old, but almost everything in it survived the Great Vandalism of the late 1960s)

Otherwise, it's a messy connection to Ludlow, driving a car round the untrained Shropshire villages (pickings north of the Mersey-Humber line are very slender) or lowering your age bar and taking the messy connection to newer, but pretty, places like Skipton.

Above all though, don't make the mistake of thinking if it's not medieval it must be a concrete monstrosity. England's real glory is the torrent of building between 1485 and 1914. A huge proportion of it still survives the worst Hitler and Labour local councils could do, and the big cities near Liverpool are full of it. Though you often have to blot the monuments to Harold Wilson out of your view.

fnarf999

We have a very well-loved copy of Seaport already, and plenty of plans afoot for exploring Merseyside. Your suggestions look very helpful.

Please don't think I was suggesting there's nothing between "medieval" and "concrete monstrosity". Just nothing (much that I like. Victorian architecture bores me to tears, and so does, mostly, the Georgian and Jacobin stuff. The concrete monstrosities are, in fact, a huge favorite of mine, because I am perverse.

I think I'm going to have to buck up and brave the tourist hordes in York, which sounds like the closest to what I want. Maybe I can avoid some of the crush by going in the cold and wet months, though that will cut into my seaside visiting!

PalenqueBob

What is the prettiest, quaintest, oldest, and/or most interesting place in Britain

oops you used the Q word and no Brit has yet scolded you for it. Whazz up Brits?

PalenqueBob

<In fact, of course, it's by definition impossible to be on a railway line and off the beaten track.>

Guess flanner's never taken the Fort William - Glasgow line across the desolate Rannoch Moor.

Josser

Well, now, if you want quaint, New England is the place rather than England.

Some of those villages look like something from a child's toy box.

MissPrism

I'd go for small cathedral cities such as
Rochester, St Albans, Bury St Edmunds, Ely, Norwich, Lincoln, York, Durham, Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford, Lichfield

flanneruk

"Guess flanner's never taken the Fort William - Glasgow line across the desolate Rannoch Moor."

So tell me which station on that line you'd recommend as a quaint place for strolling around. Crianlarich?

It may be hard to believe, but before the railway line those places were even more desolate.

PalenqueBob

flanner: your statement was:

<it's by definition impossible to be on a railway line and off the beaten track>

and this rail line lets you get off the beaten path - it stopped out in the middle of nowhere where there was just a hotel and miles and miles of moorland to get off the beaten path - nothing to do with having a quaint place to stroll. Trains can take you off the beaten path...even though i recently read a remark by a national rail official or whatever body saying that folks should take a cab to the country after getting off the train - as this modern day Beeching wants to axe all country lines and says it would be cheaper to pay for cabs from main stations than to maintain the trains and tracks of sparsely used local 'branch' lines.

Even in dense Kent trains can take you to remote places. Maybe not for long.

semiramis

Conwy in Wales

fnarf999

I've been to Conwy as well. It's a lovely town, though I had a truly frightening pizza, or should I say "pizza" there.

I'm avidly checking out all the recommendations, thanks to you all. If I've started another fight between flanneruk and PalenqueBob, well, that's fun too!

I apologize for using the Q word, and assure you it was largely tongue in cheek. If the purpose of language is communication, and you all know what I MEANT, then i don't see that any harm was done.

My definition of "quaint" might be different than yours, though; mine includes, indeed revolves around, any kind of cafe or milk bar or chip shop that hasn't been remodeled since 1972, especially if it is in a state of disrepair or at least genteel shabbiness. I don't think castles or stately homes are "quaint" but I do think excitingly seedy or vile seaside tourist shops are.

flanneruk

What is a railway line but a beaten path? That's the trivial semantic point I was making. Sort of a joke really.

Actually in most of Britain, trains do go only to relatively developed areas. Ask the would-be wide boys who think we're squandering fortunes keeping untrafficked rural lines going to show you one and they usually point to just a couple of famous scenic lines (like your West Highland line).

Or they talk about lines anyone who ever travels knows are perpetually overcrowded (like the one - oddly, to Hereford - I've just got off, where a 550-capacity train - one of three on the route within a 70 minute window - was standing room only on a relatively quiet travelling day).

The financial problems with Britain's railways aren't underused lines, but overspecified operating procedures, excessively short operator contracts (so investments have to be amortised over little time), inept micromanaging by civil servants and preposterous consultancy contracts with practically every Arthur Anderson spinoff on the planet.

Does all this have anything to do with fnarf999's question?

Yes. Because all Miss Prism's list are on railway lines (though only Ely, Durham, York and Norwich are on direct lines from Liverpool, and Ely and Norwich take forever to get to). And, although only York is "touristy", personally I'd say none but Ely and Bury St Edmunds (and even there you've got to look hard) are remotely near qualifying as "prettiest, quaintest (wash your mouth out), oldest, and/or most interesting place in Britain"

Because glorious though most of the cathedrals and their closes are, all are highly developed cities. Worcester, in fact, contains some of the most hideous modern buildings in Britain (stuff they'd feel guilty about in Novosibirsk), within a couple of feet of the cathedral itself.

Even Durham - whose cathedral I'd rather see the Mrs F or the flannerpooch perish miserably than see altered in the tiniest way - is just another parade of Nexts and Bootses a hundred or so yards from the cathedral itself. Hereford's not ugly, but is mostly dull once you've left the cathedral.

If you want a Siena, you won't find one on a British railway line. Most of our great cathedrals are accessible by train (Worcester and Hereford relatively painlessly from Liverpool if you don't mind changing at Birmingham New Street, which makes O'Hare look quaint, soothing and calm, and Lichfield* if you can work out why it takes so long and so many changes to get to a station that's actually on the Liverpool-London line).

But you have to avert your eyes half the time from the muck we've surrounded them with over the centuries.

*<i> We mention Lichfield so rarely here I have to point out its most interesting feature. St Chad, its patron saint, after whom its cathedral is named, is of course the patron saint of bent elections. Sadly, his remains aren't in Lichfield any more - though the shrine they were once preserved in is - and some of them are now in Birmingham's Catholic cathedral.

But his feast is still celebrated in the Archdiocese of Birmingham, which includes my Cotswold hideaway. And in 2004, it coincided with Super Tuesday in the US.

Now tell me the Saints in Heaven don't influence events below </i>

janisj

PQB - really nit picking there. Sure the Ft William to Mallaig train stops at Rannoch Station, and that single station is pretty remote - but the entire rest of that line, every stop, is on a very beaten path.

&quot;Off the beaten path&quot; to me would be a small village in a valley or something, not an isolated station in the middle of a vast bog. Heck, at Rannoch Station, there isn't even a path to be off of . . . .