Galloper Wind Farm Project - National Infrastructure Planning

JOHN TYLER/COUNTRYSIDE AGENCY
60
Buildings and Settlements
There is a strong contrast between the 19th and 20th
century suburban development at either end of the area and
the isolated villages in between.
The influence of the Low Countries is seen in Southwold,
Aldeburgh and the surrounding area, with brick-built Dutch
gables and the pantiles that were made all over Suffolk from
1700 to 1900. On the Shotley Peninsula, the interfluve of
the Orwell and Deben, it is predominantly pegtiles that are
used. The villages in brick and pantile are small, sparse and
tucked into the landscape except along the coast where a
string of former ports are now either silted up by tidal drift
or eaten away by erosion. Poor road access has limited
coastal development, and only the industrial buildings stand
out, closely related to the waterways, as in the complex of
buildings that constitute the Maltings at Snape Bridge. Part
of this complex was converted in the 1960s to a splendid
concert hall, home of the Aldeburgh Festival. Snape Maltings
now attracts many visitors, intrigued by its juxtaposition with
the windy reedbeds in the Alde estuary and the mix of arable
and forestry behind. On Orford Ness the pagodas that are
The sheltered
peace of the
estuaries of the
Suffolk Coast,
where wellwooded
valley
slopes meet a
mosaic of water,
reed and mudflat,
is seen here at
Long Reach on the
river Alde.
relics of its strategic wartime importance contribute unusual
structures to the level landscape.
In The Borough George Crabbe described the inhabitants of
Aldeburgh thus:
‘a wild amphibious race, with sullen woe displayed on
every face, who far from civil acts and social fly, and
scowl at strangers with suspicious eye’.
The best view of the town is from the beach, of the lines of
Dutch gables along the narrow streets that front the sea. It
is a tough little town, built mainly of brick rather than the
pebbles that form its undulating beach. Thorpeness, on the
other hand, is whimsical – the 1920s creation of a local
landowner, complete with mock-Tudor houses, a Bavarian
street, ‘The House in the Clouds’, a golf course, a boating
lake and a water tower disguised as an Elizabethan gatehouse.
Beyond Thorpeness loom Sizewell A and B, Suffolk’s nuclear
power stations. ‘B’ looks more mosque-like now it has been
capped with a dome, but both dominate the coastline for
miles in each direction, as do the powerlines that emanate
from them. Southwold is an attractive coastal town, rebuilt
in red brick after a fire in 1659, attractively set around