Aldeburgh

Aldeburgh was a Tudor port until the Alde silted and the sea took most of the old town, which is why the sixteenth-century Moot Hall, once in the middle of the settlement, now stands almost on the beach. Benjamin Britten, born up the coast at Lowestoft, settled here, founding the Aldeburgh Festival in 1948 and later converting the Snape Maltings, a Victorian barley works up the river, into a concert hall that opened in 1967; it remains one of the better-regarded halls in the country and the festival still runs each June. Fishermen sell the day's catch from black tarred huts on the shingle. Maggi Hambling's Scallop, a four-metre steel shell on the beach installed in 2003 and inscribed with a line from Britten's Peter Grimes, has been repeatedly vandalised and still divides opinion.

The main sights

• Snape Maltings - a Victorian malthouse turned concert hall, opened in 1967.
• The Moot Hall - a Tudor building now at the water's edge as the town eroded.
• The fish huts - catch sold direct off the shingle beach.
• The Scallop - Hambling's steel shell, admired and vandalised in turn.

When to go

June for the Aldeburgh Festival, when accommodation books far ahead; May to September otherwise. Snape runs concerts year-round and the reed beds around it are worth the walk in any season.

Practical notes

The beach is steep shingle with no sand and the swimming is cold with a strong undertow. The town is small and expensive with heavy second-home ownership. Festival periods fill every bed for miles.

Nearby

Snape is up the river; Orford and Thorpeness lie either side along the coast.

Key facts