Aldeburgh is a small town on the Suffolk coast, in the east of England, with about 2,500 inhabitants, pastel-coloured houses facing a long shingle beach and fishermen's huts selling the catch of the day. Quiet and a little melancholy, it is inseparably linked to the music of the composer Benjamin Britten, who lived here and founded one of the country's leading music festivals.
Britten and the festival
Benjamin Britten, one of the greatest British composers of the 20th century, settled in Aldeburgh in 1947 with his partner, the tenor Peter Pears. His most famous opera, Peter Grimes, is set in a fishing village inspired by Aldeburgh and is based on a poem by George Crabbe, a poet born here in 1754. In 1948 Britten, Pears and the writer Eric Crozier founded the Aldeburgh Festival, held every June. Since 1967 the main concerts have taken place at Snape Maltings, old maltings converted into a concert hall with excellent acoustics, among the reed beds of the Alde estuary, a few kilometres away. The Red House, where Britten and Pears lived until their deaths, now holds their archive and can be visited; both rest in the village churchyard.
What to see
On the beach, to the north, stands The Scallop, a large steel sculpture in the shape of a scallop shell made in 2003 by the artist Maggi Hambling as a tribute to Britten, engraved with a line from Peter Grimes. In the centre stands the Moot Hall, a timber-framed building from the early 16th century, once in the middle of the town and now almost on the beach because of coastal erosion, which houses the local museum. To the south, on the narrow spit of Slaughden, is the northernmost Martello tower in England, built against the threat of Napoleon. Aldeburgh was also the town of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first woman to qualify as a doctor in the United Kingdom, who in 1908 became England's first female mayor.
Food and surroundings
Aldeburgh is famous for its fish and chips, considered among the best in the country, and for the beach huts where you can buy the day's fish. A few kilometres away are the village of Thorpeness, with its artificial lake and the curious "House in the Clouds", a water tower turned into a home, the castle and village of Orford, the Minsmere bird reserve, the town of Southwold with its pier and, above all, Sutton Hoo, where in 1939 the extraordinary ship burial of an Anglo-Saxon king was discovered, with the famous helmet now in the British Museum.
Practical information
The nearest station is Saxmundham, on the line from Ipswich, about ten kilometres away, linked by bus and taxi. From London the journey takes about two and a half hours. The best time is from May to September, with June for the festival.
See also Colchester, Cambridge and British cities.