Let’s move to Ely, Cambridgeshire: still haunted by its past

‘I can imagine a rather fabulous Nordic-noir inspired TV detective series being set there’

What’s going for it? It’s an odd place, Ely. For a start they have an annual eel-throwing competition on Eel Day. (That’s toy eels, animal lovers.) But that makes it all the weirder. I can imagine a rather fabulous Nordic-noir-inspired TV detective series being set there, under the flat, relentless Fen skies – possibly set in the 15th-century (Ely’s heyday); possibly starring Paddy Considine as a monk detective, with issues of course. (You can have that idea for free, scriptwriters.) It’s the city’s uncanny combination of isolation and exposure, brought on by its geography and history: all by itself high up on an island of clay, surrounded by marshes and miasmas. What an astonishing spot it must have been in medieval times, with its fantastic cathedral newly completed, the Ship of the Fens, and hooded clergy dominating this isolated, lonely place of gothic arches and misericords, eel traders and clay potters. Executive estates may now cling to the island, tour buses come to gawp at the cathedral, and Cambridge is only 15 minutes away on the train, but its intense past seems seeped into the stones, haunting the place centuries on.

The case against Its unique sense of place won’t be for everyone. It remains, despite good train links, decent local culture and community, relatively alone, quiet and small.

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Homes with stained glass windows – in pictures

From a converted chapel in Bristol to a Victorian church in North Yorkshire, here are some homes with colour

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Buying a listed building? Expert advice to ease the process Nottingham Estate Agents

Owning a piece of Britain’s history can add to the stress of buying. The Listed Property Owners Club (LPOC) offers advice for potential buyers of listed homes While buying a house can be daunting and stressful at the best of times, what if your dream home purchase came with the responsibility of owning a piece […]

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This week’s quirky properties are astoundingly eerie

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Section 21 and why landlords will still hold all the keys in housing | Letters

SP Chakravarty says the market is inherently rigged against renters, David Griffiths wants court procedures reformed and Rev Paul Nicolson says fighting evictions will be a challenge

You are too kind in your view of the consultation paper (Editorial: Better protections for ‘generation rent’ are welcome – but only a start, 17 April). It is not a start. It is worse. It is an obfuscation of the source of the problem: the tax-benefit system is not neutral between home ownership and rental. Renters are abandoned in a rigged market at the mercy of unscrupulous landlords willing to take advantage of a severe shortage of accommodation. The rewards from rule-breaking are higher for landlords, as you point out, than any penalty that might be incurred through bad behaviour.

The underlying problem is housing finance. The paper is silent on that. Interest rates and lending rules, as a matter of policy, reward leveraged purchases by those lucky enough to be able to borrow. This is especially so because the government does not challenge inflationary expectations in housing investment. This would require articulating a credible programme for increasing supply, including social housing. That would then remove any financial incentive for landlords to evict tenants at whim.

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So 1% of the people own half of England. But are you really surprised? | Peter Hetherington

I interviewed private landowners across the UK – if we want to stop them trading what is morally ours, we need radical change

Four years ago I asked a simple question about our most basic resource that feeds, waters and houses the nation, while providing energy, timber, recreation for millions and much else besides. Why don’t we, governments and individuals, value our land – for it surely is ours, morally if not legally – beyond the obscene monetary gain for the rich and powerful to exploit it as a valuable commodity to be bought, sold and used as a handy place to dump spare cash and avoid inheritance or capital gains tax?

Governments have become so obsessed with the whims of the “free market” that in England (but not, significantly, in Scotland) we seem locked in a cycle of despair, a “why bother?” mentality that precludes any intervention in the interests of all the people, assuming we even consider the pressures on this valuable resource and the estimated 2m hectares of public land sold off since the 1970s – valuable holdings in our postwar new towns, NHS sites, rich farmland owned by cash-strapped county councils and the rest.

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Renting properties out on a short let basis Nottingham Estate Agents

Have you considered a short let?  Here, we look at the benefits of engaging a trusted estate agent such as the dedicated short let team who works with the London branches of Jackson-Stops. Whether you’re a landlord or tenant, there are huge benefits to both letting and renting a property on a short-term basis. A […]

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