In November 2000, a food writer Damien McCrystal of the Sunday Business stuck the knife into the town's inhabitants. Here are just a few choice quotes:

"Hadleigh is a schizophrenic community, uneasily divided between commuters and the inbreds of the Fens"

"The "natives" are "shunted into miserable and ugly council houses, where their resentment festers and spills out in drug-taking and occasional bursts of violence"

"The City rich do not help matters by assuming all the locals are morons - a not unreasonable assumption, if I know East Anglia"

"The area has been crying out for an influx of new blood for several hundred years to help wean the locals off the unhealthy habit of intermarrying. (At the local comprehensive school there are only half a dozen surnames between all the pupils.)"

"Increasingly unemployable, unhousable and generally unviable, the true locals will in all probability die out by the end of the century"

All of which belong to the lesser school of journalism championed by Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Littlejohn and really don’t require a reasoned response. Presumably, the author is assured of a bit part in a future Channel 5 foodie programme reviewing …other food programmes.

Of course, the throwaway line from the webmaster of Simon's churches about Hadleigh being " a self important little town" also caused some consternation a few months ago. The place does seem to have its knockers.

As a relative newcomer to the town (I've only been here 7 years) I have a few thoughts on the reasons for these slanders.

The town is attractive on the eye and in the last century the poet John Betjamen wrote very eloquently of its beauty. Fortunately, unlike its close neighbour Lavenham it has not been completely preserved in aspic.

But the recorded history of the town seems to stop with the death of its martyr, Rowland Taylor and doesn't appear to restart until the Media turned up in force to record the demise of Tim Yeo.

Between the Tudors and the Thatcher dynasties nothing appears to have happened in the town.

For the casual visitor to the town who takes in the beauties of Benton Street, High Street, Angel Street and George Street, it can be a shock to wonder to top of Broom Hill and look down upon the town. They will find that beyond the Tudor façades, the other 6000 residents are crammed into mid- to late-20^th century houses.

The inhabitants of the town are not all retired City folk or Suffolk gentry but a mix of locals and the Diaspora that you find in virtually any town in England. Some of whose offspring hang around the main streets, swigging cider and blocking the pavements.

So amidst the beauty, there is ordinariness and for every weekend evacuee from the City, there are hundred Hadleigh residents doing perfectly mundane jobs and raising their families. For those who are interested, the monthly community news lists dozens of local groups and individuals making life more bearable for others in the town.

For those visiting Hadleigh, who expect to meet exceptional people to match the beauty of the jetted houses of Benton Street, there will only be disappointment.

For those visiting Hadleigh, who expect to meet the kind of thriving community that built the town's stunning wool church and murdered its vicar, there will only be disappointment.

However, if you visit the place and look for beauty in the ordinary you may well find. It may reside in the children's school productions, the masses swarming around the tills in Buyright discount store, the bar of Hadleigh United FC on a matchday, and for one glorious month, on the High Street when there is a forest of Christmas trees.

Happy Christmas Mr McCrystal.

December 2000