Moving to Bury St Edmunds area

[Nattie]

We're selling our flat in lovely Stoke Newington to move to Suffolk. We'll rent before we buy - we don't know the area terribly well and want to research schools, etc. (ds 4 3/4, dd 1 1/2). We don't even know if we want to live in a town or a village. We know if we move outside the commuter areas it will be cheaper. We want more bedrooms and a big garden!!

Any good ideas?

I should be in bed now - ds has school tomorrow........zzzzzzzz

Nattie that's brilliant how exciting. We are contemplating going to Kent from South Herts at the moment.

Go to www.dfee.gov.uk/performance tables/ for details of primary and secondary and independant school results. We have found this really handy.

We want to go to a village with a community atmosphere so we're looking for a nice kids play area/football pitch. Village hall/WI or thriving NCT although my kids are a bit old now.

The most difficult bit for me will be finding new friends without people thinking I'm a mad woman! HTH. R

nattie - no practical help, but i grew up near bury and it is nice. If you decide to move to a village though be sure to check public transport as in many areas it's rubbish (this is for when the children are older really though - it can be borinf as a teenager in a village).

hope you like it!

Nattie - I love in Suffolk & thoroughly recommend it; beautiful countryside, lovely people, great schools. We rented first whilst looking for a suitable area to live in. Have you commitment to any particular part of Suffolk - ie; a job where you would want to be relatively near to?

Lindy - do you LIVE there too?

Nattie, my stepkids all live in Haverhill which is a godawful town as far as I'm concerned (lots of council estates and no jobs or infrastructure) and there is no viable public transport from there to london. I'm sure Bury itself is much better.

GillW - yes, I do live in Suffolk!

Agree that Bury is really nice but it is still a town - how rural do you want to be Nattie?

Personally I wouldn't actually put public transport to London on the top of my list of priorities for choosing somewhere to live. More the opposite in fact. Bury's quite nice actually - and you're not far from Cambridge or Ipswich if you want to go out to a bigger town.

Bury is v. nice but it is getting built-up. Haverhill was developed to house the London overspill in the 1960's and it's like being in East London; however, the surrounding villages are nice and reasonably priced. Long Melford and Sudbury are nice, too, and there are some lovely villages around that area - Clare, Lavenham etc. Sudbury also has a branch line into Colchester which then has the mainline into London.

GillW, I agree, public transport to london isn't really an issue for most people. It's just that my dh spends 10 hours almost every weekend in a car picking up and returning his kids to haverhill, so I find the lack of alternatives very frustrating. Also given that haverhill was set up as an overspill town from east london, you would have hoped that the planners would expect that there would be a need for public transport for people to go back and visit their families in the east end.

My family moved from London to Suffolk when I was 9. We first lived in a village with a tiny school until I was about 15 and then moved to the nearest town (Woodbridge) because my parents were fed up with ferrying us around everywhere. I moved back to London in my early twenties to work. Now I have a young family I want to be in the country again. My dp has a teaching job in Bury St Edmunds so we need to be within easy reach for him. I can't make up my mind whether I want to live in a town or a village. It really depends on schools and what's available in the housing market. That's why we're going to rent first, to get a feel for the area.