The Stuff We Can't Fit In Somewhere Else in Haverhill, Suffolk*

The things which can't be categorised

You can tell us more about Haverhill.

• There is a pressure group trying to get a rail link re-built from Cambridge to Sudbury via Haverhill called the Cambridge To Sudbury Rail Renewal Association (CSRRA)
• growing diversity of people, from different places and different races
• vgfgrelsgntrhj
• Whatever road you take into Haverhill you go downhill into it. Is it just a big hole where all the crap slides into it??
• Haverhill is a wonderful place to live - low crime, close to Cambridge, an excellent nightclub and a town of the twenty first century attracting new industries and business. The people of Haverhill are a big fan of the Chief Executive of Anglian Water - there is a standing invitation for him to visit our wonderful town and sample the many delights on offer, including a quick swim in the local sewage works
• Haverhill is just plain normal, admit it. All the councills money goes on bury st edmunds, thats why haverhill looks and smeels the way it does.
• Someone said on your page that Haverhill is a quiet place with no clubs. We have a club now and Haverhill has never ever been quiet. It once had such a reputation for fights and hooliganism that if anyone was found outside Haverhill, in say Newmarket for example, and they were discovered to be from Haverhill they would be beaten to a pulp to make up for whatever ills their fellow Haverhillians had been responsible for.
• There is a web site dedicated to our brilliant town ... Check out www.Haverhill-UK.com Its got loads of info about Haverhill,with a photo library so that outsiders can actually see what were on about. I generally like Haverhill. It does have it's problems, but no more than any other town in the country. It's not a rough place as everyone thinks it is. Trouble is everywhere (If you are looking for it). Well done to the guys who set-up the Haverhill-UK web site. At last someone in Haverhill, doing something positive for it's image.

  (Do we think the writer has anything to do with the website? ed.)

• Ok, Haverhill is not a place if you want to be in show business but it is a great place to live.
• There is NO REASON to visit Haverhill. There are no record shops and no good places to eat (that I know about). There may be some good places on the estates for skateboarding (there are lots of bits of concrete, certainly) but I can't think of a good thing about the place.
• No reason to visit Haverhill?? What? I assume you are speaking about the Haverhill in West Suffolk, about 20 miles from Cambridge along the A604? I hail from Haverhill I'll have you know :-), and it wasn't a bad place to live, lots of developement going on at the time. Lots of places to visit and it was in the middle of a part of England that has lots of historical bits to go and look at. Castles, stately homes etc. Granted you need a touristy type of book to find out where these places are but once you find them I'm sure you will not regret the effort.
  Now I must add that all this was prior to 1972 when my family decided the grass was greener in OZ, so things may have changed since we left.
  I can believe the bit about lots of concrete. Back in 1971 (I think) the Haverhill Town council had this urban developement scheme which they called 'Our Town 80'. It basically called for lots of new facilities, golf courses, sports facilities, yeah lotsa concrete. Prior to that Haverhill was very picturesque, especially when you took the time to actually walk around the place. The population then was about 13000, and the redevelopement scheme sought to increase it to around 30,000 by 1980.
  Not worth visiting, the cheek of it :-)
• Ok, let the truth be known: Haverhill isn't hot, exciting or cool. Haverhill is dull. I was raised in Haverhill and live there for some 22 years and still return occasionally, so I know what I'm talking about here.
  Haverhill is tucked in the corner of Suffolk. During a five minutes drive you can pass through Haverhill and have gone through three counties (Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, and Essex). It is twinned with Pont St Esprit in France and Eringshausen in Germany (for which honour we had a road renamed Eringshausen Way, exciting eh?).
  Haverhill has very little to do if you don't like drinking or sports. The best thing ever (in my opinion) to happen there was when a couple of years ago, they decided to renovate the old Town Hall building and turn it into a cinema/venue for gigs and shows. This has meant a relatively cheap night out watching a fairly new film, or even, if you're lucky, a known comedian.
  Apart from this there is very little. Every other year sees a new housing state being built somewhere, but with no new facilities. The town centre is the same size it was in 1971 when I was born. Haverhill used to be an old market town, with a small population of just a few thousand. However, rapid expansion in the 50's and 60's was due to the fact that it became a London Overspill town. An industrial estate sprang up with loads of council housing. Within a few years the population swelled. This sort of rapid growth is not very good for developing the character of a town.
  Haverhill is now a milder copy of a London suburb but with less interesting things to do. The people vote Tory, read the Sun and drink Lager. A broad generalisation but quite accurate. The MP is Tim Yeo who became infamous for fathering a child with another woman outside wedlock. For this he reluctantly resigned after initially protesting that everything was rosy. The media attention from this actually meant that Haverhill High Street featured on the six o'clock early evening news on the BBC!
  There are very few ethnic minorities in Haverhill, and for me it typifies the English Tory town of the nineties.
  There are some old houses in Haverhill, one of which was where one of Henry VIII wive's once stayed, albeit briefly.
  There is a mound, where a castle once stood, but it's hardly exciting stuff.
  Cambridge is only 15 miles to the west, and so for any sort of life at all, this is where people head on Saturdays.
  I really can't think of much good to say about Haverhill. I used to think it was a slightly dangerous place, with drunken lager louts roaming about on a Friday night. But then after living in Manchester for a year, I realise that as long as you avoid the town centre at night, it's quite harmless.
  A lot of the people in Haverhill have lived there all their lives. Their parents lived there and their children will probably live there too. These people seem happy enough, but it beats me how they can accept to live in such a no-where's-ville town.
  For a more detailed look at Haverhill's history, you could do much worse than to speak to my Great Uncle Charlie (who is, as they say, "a character"). Charlie is about 86 and has lived in Haverhill all his life, mostly in the same house which he bought for just six pounds! Charlie used to work on a farm, ploughing fields by hand, walking 20 mile s a day, five days a week. Up at six every morning. For this he was paid 50 pence a week, of which he had to give 40 pence to his parents. The point of this digression, is that although I perpetually moan about the state of Haverhill, and the lack of things to do, things have changed there. Charlie would say that kids "today" have too much to do, and I guess he's right.
• Reading the comments about Haverhill being a boring town with lots of concrete (due to early 70's urban renewal), I was surprised to find that it was a description of Haverhill, ENGLAND. I come from Haverhill, Massachusetts (settled by puritans from Haverhill, England in 1640), and everything that was written about the English town is equally true for my home town. It seems they share more than just a name.
• OK, I'm sick of reading all this negative crap about the town where I live, and have lived for the past 19 years. Firstly, I don't vote Tory, I don't read the Sun and I don't drink lager. So that's one myth shot down in flames. Secondly Haverhill is no better and no worse than any other small town in England (or Scotland or Wales or Ireland for that matter). Having been here since I was 9, I have been through the various stages of growing up in Haverhill, from loathing it to almost liking it. So I think I know what I'm talking about.
  No, there's not much to do in Haverhill if you're a teenager. But then there's not much to do anywhere if you're a teenager, because whatever is available to you you'd rather hang around on street corners or shut yourself away in your bedroom listening to loud music. You could spend millions on developing Haverhill into a mega-fun entertainment-crazy 24-hour-rave holding pleasuredome and still those anaemic looking, spotty adolescents would stand around the market square, or the park, or outside Woolworths bemoaning the fact that there's 'nuffink to do and 'Averhill's right booooorin'. (Something I, and my friends, all experienced in the early '80s). In fact, over the past few years efforts have been made to make the town a better place to live in, for example the Town Hall has been converted into an Arts Centre/Cinema, and is a bloody good place to go. Then there's the Haverhill festival which has developed into three weeks of combined film, arts and cinema entertainment, including a whole day of free street entertainment and concerts (thanks mainly to the efforts of Nick Keeble and the Town Council). New town parks have been developed. The High Street has been (almost) pedestrianised and I challenge anyone who has lived there for more than 10 years to tell me it looked better before! People are making an effort all the time to improve life for Haverhill-dwellers, and visitors to the town.
  But still Haverhill people sit on their apathetic backsides and moan that there's nothing to do.
  I know Haverill isn't perfect - but nowhere is. Haverhill is not a bad place. Haverhill is no better or worse than any other town. It has it's crime problems, it has it's bad housing estates and it's good housing estates. The biggest problem with Haverhill is the people and their attitudes, and unfortunately that seems to be a problem infesting Britain in general, and I don't know what the cure for that is. I'm just sick of my town getting a continual bad press which it really doesn't deserve. Give Haverhill a chance!!!
• Haverhill has a very good Sports Centre, even if it is run by a complete load of idiots (and I'm not just talking about the managers here). The Gym is very well equipped with a lot of CV machines and high-quality Nautilus equipment. It's very popular too but I go off-peak and there's usually about half-a-dozen people in there, all sizes, all ages.
  The Free weights room is a dive but I still use it a lot. It's out of the way and has no windows nor does the extraction fan work. There's a nice cable crossover machine and the Olympic weights aren't too bad. The welded dumbells are falling aprart and aren't balanced. There's only one 32Kg and one 40kg dumbell which causes me a problem. It is unlikely they'll spend much dosh in here. Well, maybe I'll see ya down there? Also, the swim team is one of the best in the country. They do very well in competition and have great coaching. PS don't vote Tory either & I read the Daily Telegraph.

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Last updated: 2008-05-30