Are there any diverse market towns?

[MuswellBill]

Just been watching Escape to the Perfect Town on BBC which was quite interesting. A London couple with 2 kids looking to move to Yorkshire to get more fur their £250k than a 1-bed flat. As someone in (almost) their initial position, I can see lots of benefits to finding a lovely market town somewhere and moving outside London to grow our family. But I can't think of anywhere that isn't 99% white. Are there any ethnically diverse market towns in England? I suspect the answer is no and cities like Bristol or Brighton are a better choice.
Are there any people of colour on here who have made the move to a market town?

Bradford, Blackburn, Burnley = all have the same problem, it's not exaggerated!

I’m assuming you live in one of them?

If by “problem” you mean a difficult history in terms of race relations, then absolutely. If you mean “no go areas if you’re white” then it’s exaggerated certainly in Bradford. I’m not familiar enough with Burnley or Blackburn to comment.

I'm from Bromsgrove which is between Worcester and Birmingham. Brum is very diverse and Worcester less so but it's much more diverse than it was 20 years ago.

Bromsgrove has become more diverse than it was when I grew up.

Jus down the road is Redditch which is far more mixed.

Absolutely roaring at the idea that wanting diversity is racist

@OctoberLovers - I refer to myself as brown as I am. Indian is a bit of a misnomer as I have family that can pass for white (as a lot of Gujarati / Punjabi people often can do).

What is the problem for you living somewhere 99% white?

If you have to ask that question, you may need to get out a bit more.

I came on to say Hitchin, and see someone has just done that. It might not be diverse compared to some cities bearing in mind it is only a smallish town, but it has a very established Sikh community, as well as a reasonable representation of other ethnicities and faiths. It's also got a long history of alternative music culture. Becoming more gentrified but not red-trouser type sort of place you'd find in other parts of the Home Counties. It's obviously got it's fair share of small minded types, but I'd say pretty diverse and getting more so as more people are moving in from London. Not cheap though...

I was basing my discomfort on the fact that I was alone, lost in a strange place with c. 10 men on the road chatting who all stopped, glared at me and started walking towards my car.

Brown people just sounds awful, and so racist

@octoberloves - wow, so it’s racist for us brown people to refer to ourselves as brown when white / black people can refer to themselves by their skin colour? Sorry but I’m not about to take lessons on racism from someone who clearly doesn’t understand the racism behind that statement.

Loughborough is totally not a city. It doesn't even have a proper M&S or department store.

Or a professional football club or an Asda! The first Lidl opened just a few months ago, so it’s definitely not a city.

Sorry @GrumpyHoonMain but I dont get your post? You're saying that all market towns in Hertfordshire and Bu is are ethnically diverse, and the only reason I've never seen another brown face there is because I've been visiting at the weekends when all the minorities leave?

A quick look of Marlow on the census site a pp posted for example states the population as 5.5k and black or mixed people come in double figures - so actually 99% white in fact.

Yeah it's crazy for people to want their dc to grow up mixing with and seeing a diverse group of people instead of just one homogenous group isn't it! People of colour are just being racist to want their dc to see other people who look like them on a daily basis...?

Have lived in both Henley and Marlow, they’ve lovely places but not remotely diverse. I’ve also worked in Slough, Reading and High Wycombe and the diversity in those places by comparison is huge,

It’s just that Slough and Reading are both pretty deprived with high crime. Might not be what someone is looking for moving to the commuter belt.

@OctoberLovers you sound as if you are white and don't speak to many people of colour. It is common for some POC to call themselves brown in certain contexts- eg a friend walked into a party and said "at last another brown face!". That is not "racist" as you suggest. Just in case you didn't know.

Yes @JoJoSM2 definitely agree- Slough not what I had in mind picturing the perfect market town!

Neither Henley nor Marlow are remotely diverse - ethnically or otherwise

I don't know how Maidenhead is these days, as I haven't been in for decades, but Slough is definitely diverse. (I was born on the High Street when God was a lad, and it was diverse then too, though nowhere near as much as now.)

Or - wild card here--Durham? Very diverse for a small market town, largely because of overseas postgrads and their families. Somewhere else - along with Wycombe, Marlow, Henley, Slough, Reading, Aylesbury - I wouldn't personally want to live, but again, not for ethnic diversity regions.

Luton is another highly diverse market town. I don't know about Northamptonshire nowadays, but that also might be worth looking into.

Generally, OP, chocolate boxy market towns seem to have one or two families of colour - those with greater diversity tend to be much more built up for some reason.

I don't think anyone's linked to this map yet, and don't know if it's any good, but it does give an idea...
projects.andrewwhitby.com/uk-ethnicity-map/
Add map labels for town names of course.

Durham's a city!

Reading’s not really rough though is it?

@TinklyLittleLaugh

If you go on police.co.uk, you’ll see that Reading does have crime rates significantly above the national average.

It is amazing how many British towns are so white/ I was in Harrogate a while ago and it struck me how white it was. It struck me, from Ireland, how white Harrogate was. Harrogate lovely btw, but it is a bit strange. Like, you can picture people thinking about moving there and then changing their minds at the last minute.

The ones I know of are: Luton, Bedford, Northampton and Wellingborough, but here's a list of English districts and their ethnic composition:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_districts_and_their_ethnic_composition

"If by ‘market town’ you mean a place which is clearly and obviously affluent and middle-class"

That's not what market town means, at least not in Wales. It means a smallish town that has a market drawing in the wider area on market day. They tend to be the semi-urban focus of rural areas so are mainly white.

Someone mentioned Warwick above, but I thought that was a city.