REBECCA SHAW

The market town of Barleybridge is old, mainly built in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Veterinary hospital is in the centre. The same mellow stone is used for each and every building. There are long terraces of houses both large and small, with pavements and street lighting and TV aerials, but retaining the same solid, familiar, prosperous, confident style of so many market towns in England. Luckily they still have their cattle market once a week, which attracts farmers and country folk from the surrounding area and turns a sleepy town into a hectic, bustling, up-to-the-minute town for the day. The people who live in Barleybridge with its reputable schools, its smart shops, its churches, its medical practices and its science park, believe themselves to be living in the best place in England. And they may very well be right!