Property News · May 12, 2017

Let’s move to… Thetford, Norfolk: ‘A rum old mix’


The streetscape fuses Stevenage surreally with Burnham Market – flinty cuteness jumpcut with 50s council houseWhat’s going for it? We’ve had Essex Man, Worcester Woman and the Man on the Clapham Omnibus. But these days, if editors of newspapers and broadcast news programmes want to hear “the voice of the people”, deepest, darkest Thetford seems to be where they dispatch their journalists. This microcosm is seen to somehow embody the state of the nation, a bundle of contradictions squished into one town. After the second world war it became an overspill town for Londoners, tripling its size. Listen hard and today you can still hear Cockney inflections grafted on to Norfolk burrs; the streetscape fuses Stevenage surreally with Burnham Market – flinty cuteness jumpcut with 50s council house. Two decades of European migration for agricultural work expanded the town further. Yes, it voted for Brexit. There’s a statue of Captain Mainwaring (much of Dad’s Army was filmed here). But Thetford was also home to Boudicca, gave birth to Thomas Paine (though the radical didn’t stay long) and voted in Britain’s first black mayor – in 1904! Told you, rum old mix.The case against A bit of a muddle. Its postwar reimagining wasn’t entirely successful: the ringroad rudely interrupts medieval streets. Its high streets are just keeping decline at bay. There have been ethnic tensions in the past. Continue reading…

Source : theguardian.com
Read more…Let’s move to… Thetford, Norfolk: ‘A rum old mix’

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