Property News · March 16, 2018

Let’s move to Spalding, Lincolnshire: there’s that slightly bleak Fenland feel


The countryside is all Mondrian fields of peas, tulip bulbs and potatoes, sliced up by long, straight, grey-watered dykesWhat’s going for it? With my surname, I always fancy that one of my ancestors was up this way some time in the 17th century, dressed in muddied breeches, my dyke-building great-great-great-etc-grandads coming over from Middelburg in the Netherlands to show the Brits how to drain the splodgy Fens. To this day, Spalding seems to have more in common with Holland than Holland Park. The countryside is all Mondrian fields of peas, tulip bulbs and potatoes, sliced up by long, straight, grey-watered dykes, drawing the eye to infinity. In town, the river Welland masquerades as a canal, its banks bordered by grand, lofty, 18th-century townhouses that might have come straight out of a Rembrandt. No edam, but there is the occasional whiff of weed. And until the Coalition cuts bit in 2013, Spalding had its own Tulip Parade, with flower-floats of gigantic elephants, Mr Kipling fondant fancies or Chinese dragons. H2O, round here, as in the Netherlands, is both enemy and income source. The town is keeping its head above water, in every sense, but only just.The case against Isolation: you’re very much out on your own out here by the Wash. There’s that slightly bleak Fenland feel, which you’ll either love or hate. Much of the town centre is humdrum: it’s nicest along the Welland and the east side of town. Folks round here are yet to see how the agricultural economy will be affected by Brexit. Continue reading…

Source : theguardian.com
Read more…Let’s move to Spalding, Lincolnshire: there’s that slightly bleak Fenland feel

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