Haverhill, Suffolk

[WhimsyWoo]

AIBU to think it just isn't the place for raising a mixed family?

Thank you!

I just don't want my child to be the only POC in school really, hearing a family member say that she wanted blonde hair and blue eyes for years as she grew up really plays on my mind.

I'm not sure we'd live on an estate, even if it was a new/newer build. Our goal is a 3-5 bedroom house, ideally detached. We want more kids and hopefully to never have to move again but the places I'm looking at do tend to look pretty much like villages where there may be a contrast between good schools and diversity versus what we want in a house.

How do does Bury St. Edmonds and Cambridge fair for diversity? We're not looking for London or city type diversity, we know that's not going to happen. Any good areas with good schools you can suggest?

@SisterAgatha it’s seriously rough. There is a large ex-prison population, as it’s only a few miles from a men’s prison, and is very cheap. If you walk down the high street at 11am any weekday morning, you’re almost guaranteed to encounter pissed up blokes, and all the usual markers you’d expect of a rough area really. It’s got an awful vibe. Although bizarrely the Arts Centre on the High St is great.

Cambridge is somewhat diverse, and lovely generally. Bury St Edmunds is very white, quite middle class.

Cambridge is very imbalanced. There are an awful lot of rich people and an awful lot of poor people. The divide is huge but massively glossed over. You can pretty much draw a line though the centre and the north and east side is where the deprived areas are and south and west are where the richer people are. You can look at an election map of wards to see the line, the north and east will be voting labour and UKIP with the south and west voting Lib Dem or green. Cambridge likes to pretend it has no crime but it does. I lived in one of the NE estates for 6 years, it’s rough. One of my neighbours was selling the big issue as a cover for his drug business I called the police on another neighbour at least twice when they started smashing their windows and because of where we were the police just told us to let them get on with it. Trying to get the doctors to take you seriously in this area was a nightmare because they were over stretched and a lot of the locals had drug problems. If you can afford to live in Trumpington, Great Shelford and other areas to the south, then Cambridge is quite lovely. Otherwise it’s a shithole. More to the point, it pretends it’s not a shithole and is pretentious about how great it is. Mill Rd is probably the most diverse area. However, you’re very close to the centre so house prices are high, houses are small, car parking is tight.

If you can’t afford to live in areas live Trumpington (or you know, you’d like to actually have a garden and spend less than £500,000) then I would probably look at Bury St Edmunds. It’ll take longer to get to London by train and there are still some rough areas, like anywhere, but the difference between the haves and haves nots is not as significant. Bury St Ed’s is a bit more open to accepting that it has social deprivation problems. The high street in Bury St Edmunds is nice, has quite a few independent shops (which Cambridge doesn’t due to high rent rates).

Haverhill has a reputation. Honestly though, like most places around Cambridge it’s just filled with people who can’t afford to live in Cambridge and commute in. I know a few people who live there and they haven’t experienced crime like we did when we were in Cambridge. They haven’t experienced any crime at all in years of living in Haverhill.

Wow, thank you MawnyStannit. The way my friend goes on you’d think it was the picture of country idyll. I remember his first house being quite breeze blocky but he’s moved twice and stayed in Haverhill. Just goes to show you can make anything look good on SM. His house is definitely enormous though, I guess if he’s out of town a lot it doesn’t matter so much. We grew up in a rough London area so maybe by comparison it’s still good iyswim?

Personally I'd pick Cambridge if you want cultural diversity, or going further out Norwich. Cambridge is expensive though. Bury St edmunds is lovely with some nice schools, but its very very white. I've some mixed race friends who moved as children from Cambridge to Bury St edmunds and whilst they never experienced any particular racism they just 'felt out of place' in Bury St Edmunds and just never felt 'at home' there....the children moved to Norwich as soon as they were old enough to move out alone.

@MawnyStannit

It’s seriously rough. There is a large ex-prison population, as it’s only a few miles from a men’s prison, and is very cheap. If you walk down the high street at 11am any weekday morning, you’re almost guaranteed to encounter pissed up blokes, and all the usual markers you’d expect of a rough area really. It’s got an awful vibe. Although bizarrely the Arts Centre on the High St is great.
......,......

This is seriously the funniest thing iv read on here for 15 years

@MawnyStannit

Have you been to London?
Apart from places like Kensington or Chelsea?

Have you been to parts of Liverpool, Manchester, Blackpool, Rochester? Newcastle? Among a million other places

Haverhill, really IS NOT that bad

For access to London, you can’t go wrong with Norwich at all. It is a direct train every half an hour.
The city is beautiful the Schools are mostly good.
Also worth taking a look at Diss and Stowmarket fans surrounding villages. Fantastic schooling and good rail/road links too.
I would avoid a Ipswich, just feels really run down and stuck in the 60’s/70s.
I also would recommend Bury St Edmunds. But as mentioned above, you would need a swap of trains at Ipswich or Cambridge for access to London.
Cambridge is extortionate! We have friends in Cambourne on the outskirts and couldn’t believe the price they paid for their 3bed detached on a newish estate. Although they have choice of 3 good primary schools by all accounts.

@MawnyStannit

The prison is about 7 miles away from Haverhill and prisoners are there from all over the country, When they get released they tend to go back to where ever they live.
They dont come to Haverhill to live
To say Haverhill has a large ex-prison population is the funniest thing iv heard

@WantToLiveByTheSea I’m from London. Lived in Manchester in the 80s for 4 years. Very well travelled, thanks. I stand by every word.

I’m speaking from experience re the prison population, by the way. Courtesy of my job.

@MawnyStannit don't be daft! I have never encountered anyone pissed up other than at night and even then it's good natured enough on their way to the chippy or take away. I would happily walk home by myself after a night out whereas in London there no way that would happen.

Havnt lived around there for years but around Mildenhall was quite multicultural due to the American airforce base nearby

The ex-cons in Haverhill tend to represent a particular area of criminality, one which usually brings with it a great deal of shame around the families and friends of the con. They are often not particularly welcome in their place of origin, and as Haverhill is quite affordable and has several sources of casual work in factories etc., it then becomes a decent stop-gap for them.

@luanmapo

For access to London, you can’t go wrong with Norwich at all. It is a direct train every half an hour. The city is beautiful the Schools are mostly good. Also worth taking a look at Diss and Stowmarket fans surrounding villages. Fantastic schooling and good rail/road links too. I would avoid a Ipswich, just feels really run down and stuck in the 60’s/70s. I also would recommend Bury St Edmunds. But as mentioned above, you would need a swap of trains at Ipswich or Cambridge for access to London. Cambridge is extortionate! We have friends in Cambourne on the outskirts and couldn’t believe the price they paid for their 3bed detached on a newish estate. Although they have choice of 3 good primary schools by all accounts.

I beg to differ.....I once needed to get a train back to Liverpool Street from Norwich (was in Norwich for a meeting, late for train), all fine train still on platform, hopped on, found my seat. Only realised it was Liverpool bound when the conductor checked my ticket. I mean who would have guessed they'd be a train to Liverpool from Norwich!!!!!

You can go very very wrong!!! 😂

@PutYourBackIntoit

Wow!! One completely different direction indeed!
Hope you managed to get off and divert in time before reaching Liverpool as opposed to Liverpool St London? 😂

I think I had to change at Peterborough, but it meant I missed the last train to South London/Surrey and had to get a night bus. Such was most of my twenties (spent in places I shouldn't have been!) 😁

@MawnyStannit

Ok

Just to pick up on someone who mentioned Mildenhall for being more diverse due to the American bases, whilst this is true within the community most children are educated on the base too so the local schools remain very white. Not saying that's a negative necessarily, most schools would be pretty tough on racism, but perhaps not what the OP is looking for.

They are now nine years old but the 2011 census breakdowns for Haverhill might be interesting.

Scroll down to the lower half for ethnicity / origins data.

www.suffolkobservatory.info/population/report/view/ee489418b671413781b16e8cd2bfd856/H31a/

Similarly the deprivation data is interesting.

www.suffolkobservatory.info/deprivation/report/view/2ac282c51eb340609885bede95cc2fb6/H31a/

The deciles (tenths) are yardsticks for how comparitively deprived / well off the area is (and its varied component lower level statistical areas).

What catches my eye: absence of extreme deprivation, lack of top end qualifications, healthy, isolated, pleasant environment.

I agreewith @TipsySquirrel, Cambridge is very imbalanced and tries very hard to cover it up. Some wards are in the top 20% of deprived in the country. Its quite multi cultural because of the University but the academics tend to gravitate to University accommodation so just increase the town and gown disparity. Even the shopping centres are divided - Grand Arcade posh shops, Grafton Centre cheap shops. Its also overrun with tourists, so much so that anyone that actual lives in Cambridge avoids going into town during the weekend unless its only a quick trip and first thing as the shops open - but none of this is a problem at the moment!

Diss has a lovely small market town feel but have had a big influx of young Eastern European men which has caused some problems.

Schools around Haverhill aren't great either. Cambridge and Bury St Edmund's are more mixed and much nicer areas. I'm in coastal Suffolk - gorgeous but a bit too white and v gammony!

Context: I live in rural Essex not far from a medium sized town and know Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambs fairly well. I am in Haverhill about once a year. My mother is Eastern European and I have a good Slavdar for spotting different languages like Bulgarian and Polish and know when someone is speaking say Albanian or Romanian instead.

I'm White. Haverhill is very white. Using the first census link I posted, doing some rounding, if you lined up 100 people from Haverhill in 2011 : 95. would be white (91 British/Irish to 4 Portuguese, E European etc.), 2 Asian, 1 Black, 1 Mixed and 1 is lost to rounding errors.

This will have change a little in the last 9 years due to internal migration, births v deaths, post Jan 1 2014 opening of UK job market to Bulgarians and Romanians, the Brexit vote and so on. I doubt it will have changed much.