Saffron Walden TOWN with Nicholas Crane

I've seen towns explode into cities,

I've seen towns with their hearts ripped out.

Every town has its own tales of triumph

and catastrophe - all of them face challenges.

Smaller than a city, more intimate,

much greener - towns are where we first learned to be urban.

Harbour towns, market towns, island towns,

industrial towns - collectively they bind our land together.

As a geographer, I believe towns are communities of the future.

This time I'm in Saffron Walden,

a medieval market town tucked away in northwest Essex

between London and Cambridge.

Quintessentially English and proud of its heritage,

Saffron Walden has never been sacked, never been burned

and has some of the best-preserved examples of medieval architecture in the country.

But this heritage is now under threat.

In Saffron Walden,

I'll be investigating a town at tipping point.

I do have an objection to walking here and seeing a sign up

that says thousands of new homes in Saffron Walden when it's not true.

Council said a minimum of 860 but will not say what the maximum is.

I'll be finding out what makes this commuter town different.

Is that a misprint?

Er...no.

195 quid?

-No. 495.

-495!

And I'll see what gives Saffron Walden its unique name.

This is the magic ingredient that we're after.

Three strands of saffron in every flower.

Join me on a journey to discover the fascinating past,

the challenging present, and the dynamic future of towns.

I'm sitting in a Tiger Moth preparing for take-off.

These first flew in the 1930s

when Britons were forced to prepare for the sudden destruction

of towns and cities from the air.

Over 4,000 of these basic training aircraft were built

for the Royal Air Force.

Some 70 years ago, the skies above Saffron Walden

would have been teeming with aircraft - taking off from bases

nearby at Duxford and Debden.

They were flown by the gallant pilots who helped to win

the Battle of Britain.

Today, I'm giving this aeroplane a rather different mission.

I'm using this open-air cockpit

as a platform for some aerial reconnaissance.

From up here at 2,000 feet,

England's green and pleasant land unrolls like an exquisite carpet.

This was the land of the East Saxons, East Seaxe,

now known as Essex.

There's not a hint that the giant metropolis, London,

is only 50 miles away.

And there, set in the patterned countryside,

is the town of Saffron Walden, the jewel of Essex.

We're right over Saffron Walden now and it's fascinating to see how

well-defined the edge of town is,

that boundary between town and country, rural and urban.

There's no sprawl.

It's neat, it's compact, set in its sea of green.

Roads radiate out of Saffron Walden,

reaching across the farmland to outlying villages and hamlets.

It's the web spun by a traditional market town.

I can also see from here a couple of modern intrusions

on this historic network.

One's a railway.

And the other's a motorway.

But they both miss Saffron Walden. Just.

Now this historic town is on the frontline

of a new battle of Britain.

A conflict that pitches developers, landowners,

councils and residents against each other.

Plans for major expansion are creating a home-grown battlefield,

something that's happening all over the United Kingdom.

This is a crisis facing the whole country.

At the heart of it is the need to construct new homes.

By 2030, our population will have topped 71 million.

We'll have to house an additional population

equivalent to eight cities the size of Birmingham.

The question all over Britain is - where will these houses go?

All too often, new houses consume open spaces and countryside.

Here in Saffron Walden, this is already happening.

The building of 440 new homes has been approved

and at least another 880 are being proposed.

I want to find out if Saffron Walden can survive such rapid change.

Could the building of so many new homes destroy

the appeal of this historic town?

It's easy to see why people want to live here.

The town has history, character and charm.

At street level, there's evidence of the town's medieval market.

Narrow alleys once thronged with traders.

There are beautiful timber framed houses

dating back to the 14th century...

a Georgian town hall...

and a market place adorned with confident Victorian architecture.

Walking these pavements today is like drifting back

into a quaint urban dream - the medieval streets,

the timbered houses, the steepled church, the sense of time suspended,

of modernity on hold.

Visually, it's intoxicating, seductive.

History, when it's this decorous, is incredibly alluring.

For centuries, this corner of North West Essex

has been a desirable place to live.

It's not just that it's near London.

A gentle range of chalk hills

ripples through this part of the country

bringing well-drained soils perfect for growing crops.

The Saxons came here in the 700s and named it Waldena.

But it was the Normans who put this inconspicuous settlement on the map.

As usual, they started with a castle.

Work began in 1125.

The castle was built by the de Mandeville family.

They came over to England at the time of the Norman Conquest.

Geoffrey de Mandeville

so distinguished himself with William the Conqueror,

he was awarded 118 lordships, Walden being one of them.

I'm in the basement of the castle keep.

This stump is all that remains of a huge pillar that once rose up

to a vaulted ceiling.

Like all good defensive fortifications,

there was provision for food and water.

You can see storage arches built into the wall.

There was also a well.

Back in the 12th century, there were two floors above me.

Up there on the first floor, the great hall,

you can see the outline of the enormous fireplace.

Above that, a second floor with the private chambers.

Today, this isn't the most spectacular of castle ruins

in the UK, but these flint and mortar walls

are the foundation stones of the town.

This is where Walden was born.

To expand any town you need trade, and that means a market.

In 1141, the de Mandevilles pulled off a commercial blinder,

securing a charter to close the market in Newport,

a neighbouring settlement, and open a new one right next to the castle.

In 12th-century Essex, this was quite a coup, and the fledgling town

changed its name to Chipping Walden, Chipping meaning market.

The new town had two distinctive earthwork defences.

The first defence - called the inner bailey - surrounded the castle.

As the town grew, a second defence was built - the outer bailey -

and this surrounded the medieval church and the market as well.

The earthworks are gone,

but the streets near the castle and church follow the line they took.

It was all very neat, self-contained.

Just 100 years after the foundation stones of the castle were laid,

Saffron Walden was a thriving market town

and ripe for further development.

This happened in a very unusual way.

Local historian Sara Kirkpatrick

knows all about Chipping Walden's medieval expansion plans.

Why have you brought me to the middle of this housing estate?

Well, we're going to be looking at this ditch, the great ditch.

It's somewhere people walk their dogs every day

and probably don't even notice or know that it is an incredibly

important part of the development of the town of Saffron Walden.

When were they built?

They were built about 1230, we think.

We've got only the remaining south-western part,

but we have a map to show you.

-Now that is beautiful.

-Isn't it lovely?

-Wow.

When does the map date from?

The map dates from 1758

and is the first map that we have of the town.

So this map was drawn roughly 500 years after the ditch was dug.

Yes. About 500 years after the ditch and we are standing just about here.

-Oh, right here?

-Yes.

"Battle Ditch." OK.

The ditches ran all the way around the town across here, down here,

up to here, which was the outer bailey of the castle,

all the way here, so enclosing the whole town. Absolutely vast.

Who built the ditch?

Well, we think it was Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford.

His mother had been the last of the de Mandevilles

and so he inherited her land on her death in about 1236.

Why did he build it?

There had been a lot of problems with people poaching sheep

and encroaching on land, so it may be a demarcation.

The ditches also have a defensive element.

There was a huge amount of civil unrest throughout the 13th century,

which is perhaps why it got the nickname - or are known as -

the battle ditches, even though a battle never actually happened here.

But how about if we get down into the ditches?

There's a good tree here we can hold onto.

After you. What surprises me is - these are 800 years old.

The depth is quite extraordinary even today.

They're vast. About 500 feet long here.

Very, very deep...well, we're what? 20 feet down? So really you have to

think of these all hand-cut, through the clay, though the chalk.

There were no JCBs in those days!

It was literally man - and probably woman power as well,

so people all had to be organised to do it and the will had to be

there to build this vast, vast ditch of which this is a tiny, tiny part.

Saffron Walden's Battle Ditches are very unusual.

In medieval Essex, a few places were building

boundaries around themselves - but nothing on this scale.

The Battle Ditches of Saffron Walden gave the town

an extraordinarily well-defined physical presence on the landscape.

It wasn't until the 19th century

that the town finally grew beyond the Battle Ditches,

so for 700 years the urban fabric of the town, its shops, its streets,

its houses, were confined in an area set out in the 13th century.

As Chipping Walden's wealth grew, the town grew, too.

Like a medieval gated community,

it remained within the confines of the Battle Ditches.

Some of the wealth came from the wool trade but, by the 16th century,

a major money-spinner was something far more exotic - saffron.

Saffron comes from the crocus flower - not any type of crocus,

but Crocus sativus, which thrived on the well-drained chalk hills.

Saffron was used in dyeing,

cooking and medicine - some even believed it cured the plague.

For over 200 years, the saffron trade flourished,

and the town pays homage to its importance in all sorts of ways...

but most of all,

by changing its name from Chipping to Saffron Walden.

Alas for Essex, the saffron market withered.

Crocus fields that had once been,

"Looking merrily with most lovely saffron,"

as one Elizabethan visitor put it, ceased to be cultivated.

By the early 18th century,

quacks and physicians had turned to other medicines, and what

remained of the market was flooded with cheap imports from Spain.

But now, there's good news for foodies in search of home-grown saffron.

The crocus is back in town. Saffron farming is returning to Essex.

The man leading this horticultural revival is David Smale.

He makes a living as a geophysicist,

but his real passion is growing saffron.

-Wow!

-And here they are.

-Look at that.

Amazing.

-Aren't they beautiful?

-They're a beautiful colour.

Absolutely stunning. So which part of the flower is the saffron?

The saffron are the three red stigmas in the flower.

Tendrils.

Yeah. In medieval-speak, they're called chives.

They're actually the stigmas of the flower and they hang out of the flower - unusual for a crocus.

So that's the saffron?

That is the saffron. Three strands of saffron in every flower.

-So for a saffron farmer, this is what matters.

-Absolutely.

-Do they have a smell?

-They have a lovely smell.

Wow. It's quite strong, isn't it?

-That would have been a smell familiar to people living around here.

-Round here.

Walking down the street here, generally, the whole town would have been awash with purple

and the scent must have been absolutely incredible.

-Literally intoxicating.

-Yeah, literally.

Saffron is a narcotic if taken in large quantities.

As Shakespeare said, "As happy as a man in a bag of saffron".

How difficult is saffron to grow?

There's tricks of the trade.

How did you learn how to do it?

For a few years, trial and error.

First year, I got point-eight of a gram.

-It was a very tiny little bag of saffron.

-That's not a big harvest.

No. Then, after two or three years, I was in Saffron Walden library

and down, buried deep in the archives in some musty old drawer

was a box file called Crocus sativus -

which is the technical name for the crocus - scrawled on it,

and that was it. It was just full of bits of paper

and stuff like that. And in there, I found a medieval manuscript.

-You're making this up.

-Well, not medieval - about 1700.

-Sounds fantastic.

-It was, yeah.

The funny thing is, what I was doing was pretty much exactly

-the same as that.

-You got it right.

-Thank goodness.

Is it a trade secret or can you tell me how much you are producing every year?

Getting towards 200-plus grams at the moment.

-200 grams a year?

-Which doesn't sound a lot, but it is, believe me!

Roughly how many have you got in there?

That'll be point-two of a gram which is about 30 to 40 flowers' worth.

-And how much would I have pay for that in a shop?

-That'd be about £15, retail price.

But it's...sounds a lot but it goes a hell of a long way.

Today, Essex-grown saffron is a niche market, but in the boom years,

this spice brought huge wealth to Saffron Walden

and money brought growth and new houses.

The town is a showcase of medieval architecture

and there's one building that really stands out.

This is 1 Myddylton Place.

Grade 1 listed, it's one of the oldest houses in town.

It was built by William Myddylton,

a wealthy merchant who wanted his home to reflect his success.

For his dream house,

Myddylton used the very best building material - oak.

The bigger the beam, the bigger the room you could construct

and this building was meant to impress.

But size wasn't the only thing that mattered here.

This joint up here between the joists and the spine beam -

and there are lots of these joints in the room -

are known as half-lap haunched tenon joints.

They'd only just made their appearance in England. They were kind of state of the art.

They give the building great structural integrity -

they support the floor above

and they pull the two walls together, binding them tight,

which is why this building has stayed upright for so long.

After this building was constructed,

the same joints appeared in King's College, Cambridge nearby,

but you saw them first here in Saffron Walden.

Myddylton House is not the only place in town with star quality.

Many of the timber-framed buildings are finished in plaster

and adorned with patterns and 3D murals.

This decorative style is peculiar to Essex

and rustic parts of East Anglia.

It's very distinctive and it's not only found on medieval buildings

but on modern buildings, too.

Welcome to the world of pargeting.

Parts of the Sun Inn date back to the 14th century.

It's thought that Oliver Cromwell stayed here during the English Civil War.

The Inn has some incredible examples of pargeting.

But it is most famous for these two figures dominating a gable end.

Legend has it the figure on the left is Tom Hickathrift, a local carter

who saved the people of Wisbech by killing the giant on the right

with the axle of his cart.

Quite a story for the outside of an inn.

Pargeting could be a way of showing off, of spending conspicuously.

In cities, buildings might be embellished with ornamentation

in brick or fancy carving in stone.

But in an Essex market town,

with brick and stone hard to come by, you flaunted your wealth,

you created a presence on your street by using plaster,

decorating the public face of your house or your shop or your inn with

patterns or with pictures or with characters from local fables.

Pargeting turned Saffron Walden into an open-air gallery of folk art.

One of the most accomplished pargeters in the land is Bill Sargent.

He's kindly offered to show me the tricks of the pargeting trade.

First off, we make the mixture known as parge.

It contains sand, lime and a third - more unusual - ingredient.

Is that natural hair?

That's natural hair. This is...we buy in bundles like this.

-It's goat hair.

-What's the hair doing to the mixture?

It just gives it a fibre. Locks it in.

Most of our work is on timber-framed buildings and timber framing moves,

so you imagine - all that hair is enmeshed in the mix

and it moves with the building without cracking and coming away.

You have a go at that.

So is the length really, really important?

-About like that, about a centimetre?

-Yeah, that's about...that is easy as long as you want it.

-Tough old stuff, isn't it?

-It is.

A bit of hair teasing.

Little bit at a time. So it filters through, yeah.

I mean, they didn't have cement, electric mixers back in the 1700s.

Nah. They would have built a trough, put the sand and the lime together,

munched it down - probably with their feet with big boots on -

and worked it round and round, then just put the hair in

and then just keep working it over and over. Lovely.

OK, Nick. So we'll bring this stuff down. We'll get the base coat on.

I'm already learning that pargeting is about patience,

trusting practices that have worked for generations.

How much do you want on there?

Three or four of them.

So how long have you got until this goes off?

I would say in this weather, that little bit of pointing, probably a couple of hours.

And this layer you're putting up here -

is this the background for the design?

This is the background, yeah.

So this is like preparing a canvas, an artist preparing a canvas.

Exactly the same thing. Exactly the same thing.

Have you decided yet what you are going to do up here

-or are you going to make it up as you go along?

-Make it up as I go along. Always do.

Is that part of the fun for you, that you're...

you're neither a tradesman nor an artist, you're both?

We certainly don't think of ourselves as artists. We just think of ourselves as plasterers.

-Plasterers.

-Yeah. Arty plasterers if you like.

OK. Right, I'll just take my jacket off, Nick.

It's beginning to warm up now and then we'll do some pargeting.

Stripping for action.

Ready for action.

-Right.

-OK. Water brushes.

I'll give you one of these, Nick. This is what I use all the time.

A teaspoon and that trowel. Nearly on everything I do,

it's a teaspoon and that trowel!

THEY LAUGH

You don't really have to spend a lot of money on tools if you're a pargeter!

This tool is the flute. I'll just show you how this works.

You just push in and follow your line along.

How important is it, Bill, to keep that rustic feel to pargeting?

I think it's very important. It doesn't want to look too formal.

It wants to look handmade. Hand modelled.

You know, so ups and downs - you know, that's fine.

So that's the fluting done, Nick.

And we start to...

-Now it's the difficult bit.

-Now we draw a design here.

I'll just draw something out, see if you can see what I'm doing.

-Oh, right. A running hare.

-Yeah, so...

-Wonderful.

-Start off with a running hare.

-Love that.

And then his back legs will then turn into...a vine.

What have you got at the end there?

Well, I haven't got anything yet but I thinking I'll probably put

something like a little bird singing in there as we go along.

So you've got a running hare and a singing bird. That's lovely.

Wonderful, wonderful.

Then here we've got a thrush.

There you go, then, Nick.

It's just a matter of get some stuff in your hand,

and roll some on.

-Shall I go up here?

-Yeah.

Is pargeting popular these days, still?

Very popular. I would say my workload has doubled.

And what are your signatures, what are your little tricks that you leave? Your trademark?

Er, people know my work

by looking at it because of this flowiness that I do.

But I don't leave a little mouse or anything like that as a trademark.

In fact, I'm happier if I go away

and people think that what I've done is original.

If they look at it a year later and think,

"That looks three or four hundred year old, must be," then I'm happy.

Finished.

You can put a card in a post office window now!

-I don't think so!

-It's perfect.

One of the reasons pargeting took off around here can be found below ground.

With little quality stone around, craftsmen had to innovate.

Timber-framed buildings were both protected

and decorated with plaster.

But when they wanted to build something special,

they sought out stone.

Like Beachy Head and the White Cliffs of Dover,

the hills surrounding Saffron Walden are composed of chalk.

Chalk is a crumbly limestone

and was formed 80 million years ago at the time of the dinosaurs.

Buried within the chalk is one possible building material - flint.

Thousands of years ago,

flint was the stone of choice for weapons and tools,

but here in Saffron Walden,

it's been used right in the heart of the town at St Mary's Parish Church.

This is what flint looks like when it comes out of the ground.

Rounded, weirdly irregular nuggets.

It's incredibly hard and very brittle.

A more inconvenient building stone is almost impossible to imagine.

Here it is, built into a wall - you can see nodules of flint sticking out,

held together by vast amounts of mortar.

But down here. it's a different story.

Here, the flint has been fractured or napped by a skilled stonemason.

The blocks fit together so neatly that the mortar between them

is almost invisible.

The flints that went into this church

came from the hills around Saffron Walden.

It was the only available building stone.

Yet the craftsman who worked these flints managed to raise

the finest and the largest parish church in Essex.

St Mary's is a master class in resourcefulness.

Nearly every external wall contains flint,

but the foundations of the present church, laid in 1430, are quarried

from Lincolnshire limestone from the Rutland area, 70 miles away.

It's the same type of stone used in the construction of colleges

at Cambridge University

and hints at the backing of some wealthy benefactors.

Inside the church, the soaring perpendicular style echoes

the look of another East Anglian building - Ely Cathedral.

And there's more evidence of local geology.

These impressive pillars are cut from a stone known as clunch.

It's a hard variety of chalk, which is just as well, given the load bearing down on them,

and yet it's soft enough that miscreants through the ages

have been able to gouge their initials into its surface.

Professional stone carvers found clunch irresistible, too,

tempting them to try wonderfully elaborate designs.

The nave is decorated with exquisite carvings - and the crocus patterns

in the leaded glass hint at the importance of saffron in the town.

It's hard to believe that the church became so dilapidated in 1790

that it was temporarily closed.

And the town, too, has been subject to the winds of change.

Saffron came and went from Saffron Walden. So did wool.

But if you peer through the windows of any town,

you're likely to see individuals, visionaries and very often families

who provide a longer-term resilience to the buffeting of history.

In the 12th century, it was the de Mandeville family

who left their mark on this town.

In the 13th century, it was the de Bohuns.

In the 15th century, it was the turn of a new dynasty,

a dynasty started by a man called Audley.

Of all the buildings around Saffron Walden, Audley End House is the most grand.

Named after Henry VIII's chancellor, Thomas Audley,

work started here in 1605.

The mansion has gone through generations of titled families

until passing to the Braybrookes in the 18th century.

Today, the house is in the hands of English Heritage,

but descendants of the Braybrookes continue to run the estate.

6,000 acres of their land surround the town,

a buffer against development.

The current Lord Braybrooke's eldest daughter, Amanda Murray,

not only oversees the estate

but is keeper of her father's pride and joy - a miniature railway.

What made your father build a miniature railway on the estate?

My father realised that because the house has been open to the public

that he could indulge his passion for steam

and manage to make a commercial enterprise.

So was it a bit like a train set? I had a train set when I was a boy.

You collect carriages and you collect locomotives...

A grown-up boy's train set is exactly what it was.

Aristocratic indulgences like this are part of British culture.

But here, the Braybrookes have an altogether more important role,

one that underpins the town of Saffron Walden and protects the countryside around it.

Looking back over the last two or three generations of Braybrookes -

your father and grandfather -

what was the relationship between them and the town?

Um, they have a huge affinity with the town.

They've given land for schools and they donated the Common to the town

and to this day, wherever they can help, they do help.

I've always considered Saffron Walden and Audley End

to be almost part of the same thing, really,

because they are so close to each other

and there's so much integration between the two.

Your grandfather put so many years of his life into the estate,

so has your father and you, too.

What's going to happen in the future?

Sadly I'm one of eight girls and I'm the eldest, and if I was a boy,

I would inherit the whole place, lock, stock and barrel but I'm not.

With Amanda not inheriting the estate, the future is uncertain.

Like her ancestors,

she takes her responsibility to the town seriously -

it's a relationship that goes back centuries.

Audley End and Saffron Walden - a house and a town entwined by history

and by one of the oldest traditions in the land,

a mutual respect for the local landscape, both town and country.

The Braybrooke estate surrounds much of Saffron Walden.

It forms a kind of ancestral green belt around the town.

What happens here,

who eventually inherits this estate, really matters to Saffron Walden.

The landowning aristocracy at Audley End have managed

the countryside around Saffron Walden for generations.

But there's another family that's had a profound effect on the town,

a family with a very different heritage. They were Quakers.

These are the simple graves of the Gibson family.

They were major benefactors to the town,

founding schools, a hospital and a museum.

The Gibsons were 18th-century nouveau riche,

making their fortune in brewing before moving into banking.

They founded the Saffron Walden and North Essex Bank,

later known as Gibson, Tuke & Gibson, a family-run bank

established in this grand building here on the market place.

Gibson, Tuke & Gibson

isn't a name you would recognise on the modern high street,

but over 100 years ago, it was one of 20 private banks

united under the banner - Barclays and Company Limited.

The Gibsons wanted to shake things up.

They knew Saffron Walden would be a backwater

if it didn't embrace the railway.

They waged a campaign that paid off and, in 1845,

a main-line station opened - albeit two miles from town.

At last, Saffron Walden was within easy reach of London.

I'm starting to get the sense that, before the railway,

Saffron Walden existed in a bubble,

a place of ancient market-town rhythms

with livestock wandering the streets each week,

stalls and shops piled high with local produce -

surprising, perhaps, just 50 miles from London.

But when the rail corridor to the capital opened, that bubble burst.

Not only did people from Saffron Walden start looking to London

as a place for work, but people in London

started looking to Saffron Walden as a place to live.

This trend has fuelled Saffron Walden's

transformation from market town to commuter town.

Cars have replaced cattle,

winding their way through the narrow medieval streets.

For London-bound locals, this is their destination -

a station car park with over 600 spaces.

And on the station platform there's a sign,

"Audley End for Saffron Walden" -

as if to remind everyone that the town is just two miles down the road.

The station manager is Alan Neville.

Train just coming in now, Alan. Where is this one from?

This is coming in from London Liverpool Street. It's very full.

What kind of numbers are we talking about coming up the line here to Audley End?

Well, we're talking about commuter footfall each day of approximately 1,100.

-That sounds like quite a lot.

-Yes. It's a very, very busy station.

How long does the commuter journey from here to London take?

The train now takes a very fast 51 minutes.

This is a schedule which was improved last December when we introduced the new timetable.

Surely by putting on more and more efficient train services and more OF them,

you're just encouraging more and more commuters to come up the line to Saffron Walden.

You're part of the reason the town is so popular, part of the reason they're building more houses there.

Well, it is, and we don't want Saffron Walden to ever get spoilt by these new houses

but on the other hand there's a great desire to live in a beautiful location like Saffron Walden.

Would you describe Saffron Walden as a market town or a commuter town?

I think it's a bit of both. It's a very important market town,

but with a very, very important commuter element.

At the end of a working day, these commuters can be home in an hour,

with time to call by the newsagents.

-Hello, there.

-Hi there, Nick.

-Very nice to meet you.

-Yeah, nice to meet you.

Jay Aggarwal has been running the shop for 13 years.

He doesn't just sell newspapers and coffee,

he also caters for some rather special tastes.

Things change around a little bit for the evening.

Customers come in after a hard day's work, grab a bottle of wine from us.

What sort of wines are you stocking?

Well, we've got quite a large selection of all our reds,

we've also got some bottles of some fine wine here as well,

um, which are...obviously, we've got some nice St Emilion Grand Cru.

-How much is that?

-That one there is £90 a bottle.

-£90?

-Oh, yes. Yes.

Right. Is that a misprint?

Er, no. That is the right price there, Nick.

-195 quid?

-No, 495.

495?!

Nobody's going to drop by and spend 500 quid on a bottle of wine.

You'd be surprised.

How often would you sell a bottle from one of these boxes?

We'd probably sell at least two or three bottles a week.

Right. Pretty unusual, this place.

I live next to a London tube station

and you couldn't sell a 500 quid bottle of wine there.

Well, um, yeah, I mean, over the years when we first started selling wines, um,

we obviously went to normal cash-and-carry and stocked up

on the usual plonk which you can normally get for...three bottles for a tenner.

And obviously we started to realise then,

after having the wines inside the shop,

that the customers of Saffron Walden wanted a bit more, er,

different class of wine.

How's it changed in 13 years?

It was...always been a commuter station. But the numbers were very small.

So a lot of people who do live here mainly commute,

not just Monday to Friday, but they commute weekends as well

and it's just got more and more busier.

It's not every station that has a premier cru newsagent,

and I'm starting to wonder what that means for Saffron Walden.

If part of the community spends its working day far away

from Saffron Walden, do all those people who stream

through the station every week care less about the town?

The fact is, Saffron Walden is a commuters' dream.

Isolated enough from the cities and towns of the South East

to feel like a rustic market town surrounded by rolling countryside,

close enough to London to benefit from big city jobs and salaries.

But the town's appeal to Londoners puts pressure on local housing.

One man with an insight into the property market

is estate agent David Emerson.

In a nutshell, why is Saffron Walden so popular?

Good commute to London, excellent schooling, history,

nice people, good area to live in.

Can you give me the price bracket of buying into the town?

If someone is looking at a price band, shall we say between 500 to 700,000,

there's quite a good selection of properties in this town to choose from,

especially for the family buyer.

What proportion of people moving here come from London?

We've looked at that over the last year, 18 months.

I would say generally 50% of the people registering with us are

coming up from London in all price ranges, cross sections of people.

Do you think Saffron Walden should grow bigger?

Now that's a good question.

Personally, no. I don't want to see enormous housing estates,

especially in a town like Saffron Walden.

I think in certain areas where we have new towns,

then we've got to do it to a point.

But I think it would spoil the feeling of this town

because it is such a unique town in its own way.

Very popular, lots of history.

I think if we had vast amounts of housing,

it wouldn't be the best thing for the town at all.

It would be a shame.

It would spoil the town's feeling that we've got at the moment.

Pineapple, a pound - come on!

Two baskets for £3, £4.

It's market day.

For some, it's a chance to go shopping.

For others, it's an opportunity to spread the word about plans for new homes.

440 houses have been approved, with at least another 880 on the cards.

These plans have been drawn up by Uttlesford District Council

in response to government-imposed targets.

Nationally, there's concern that Britain is under-built,

that there's a severe housing shortfall.

Saffron Walden is one of many towns in the South East earmarked for expansion.

But it's controversial.

Local campaigners believe this will threaten their way of life and,

if all 1,300 homes are built,

there will be no way back for Saffron Walden.

Action group We Are Residents have made a giant map of the town.

Dozens of mini houses show the scale of the plans.

Dan Starr leads the campaign.

The proposals would see about a minimum of 860 houses

on the east of the town and our town has all of the roads,

motorways, jobs, schools on the west of the town,

so you basically would be needing to move 2,000 cars a day through roads

which are really cow tracks that have been paved-over over the last thousand years.

But some are not convinced by the protest.

I don't have a problem with you objecting and I totally get what you are saying about the transport

and all the other things, they're all issues that we have a worry about,

but I do have an objection to walk in here and seeing a sign up

that says thousands of new homes in Saffron Walden, when it's not true.

No-one is suggesting thousands of homes.

Council says a minimum of 860, but will not say what the maximum is.

-We're not...we're not at that point yet.

-So I understand, but you know how developers work.

Developers will put a minimum number of houses in there and then they'll come back and they'll up it later.

Saffron Walden has a long record of expansion.

The Battle Ditches are proof of that.

But this latest surge of building would be

the largest in the town's 900-year history.

An estate on the east of town

would mean more cars driving through ancient streets

to reach the railway station and motorway.

Saffron Walden sits in a natural bowl.

In several places, pollution levels already exceed EU limits.

But traffic is only one element of what is a complex debate,

and it's provoking strong opinions.

I do have a business here. I'm also a member of Uttlesford District Council.

So my portfolio is social housing and council housing and everything

and I have 1,200 families on the waiting list across the district

and if we don't have any development, there will be no affordable housing.

I think there's definitely a need for affordable housing,

that needs to be looked at,

but the proposal that's being presented to us for our town

is not one that is sustainable or is good for the town.

I think it's a big issue because I think if it gets approval

and gets built, I think the problems will just develop and over the years

people will realise what we had here and what we have here now

was something quite special and something that's worth preserving.

Once it's gone it's gone, you can't...roll back development.

Objections to the plan don't just come from concerned residents.

I am a town councillor, also a district councillor

and I am the mayor of Saffron Walden for this year.

So my interest is basically, does this town want that

number of houses to be put in this town? And my answer to that is no.

I think there is a huge disconnect between the residents and the council.

In the public consultation that the council recently ran on this plan,

one of the questions they asked was do you support our new strategy,

which is to spread houses into existing towns and settlements

including Saffron Walden? And 99% of respondents

which was over 3,000 to that particular question said, "No, we don't like it."

However, the council seem intent on steaming ahead and not modifying the plan.

I've arranged to meet Jim Ketteridge, leader of the local district council,

to find out why they're proposing

such a radical increase in the number of homes here.

How important is it for the council to win the hearts

of the existing residents of Saffron Walden before this plan goes ahead?

Well, very much. You always hope to.

One always hopes to do that, particularly as a local councillor.

You want to do things that the populace want.

And in the last planning document, how many houses were...

-if you like, pencilled-in for Saffron Walden?

-880.

And over what period would those 880 houses be built?

They're not going to be built in two years, or even five years.

They're going to be built over a period of time

and, as I say, the town has seen that level of growth in the past.

Do you have any sympathy at all with residents

who are very anxious about the scale of this expansion?

Of course. I understand that they would like to keep Saffron Walden as it is, if you like,

without any growth.

The reality is that whatever the LEVEL of growth, growth will occur.

But we are not alone in that.

Towns and even cities around this part of the country are all

faced with that same issue - where do they put their new housing,

how much housing are they going to provide?

Everybody is faced with that dilemma of producing a plan,

which will at the end of the day satisfy the Government.

This is the front line of growth.

This rolling field in Essex could be anywhere in the country.

A playing field, a farmer's field, a garden or a wood.

These are the green spaces under threat from the need to house our growing population.

Our countryside shrinks a bit every year, but look abroad

and you realise it could be worse.

That comes down to one thing -

our landscapes have been protected by a fundamental planning principle

that is branded on our national psyche, that the long term use

of the land should take precedence over an owner's right to profit.

That's what ensures we have a green and pleasant land.

The question is, for how much longer can that planning principle survive?

Anxiety is in the air.

There's a real fear that Saffron Walden is approaching

a tipping point, that the addition of so many new houses is going

to push the town over the edge,

create stresses and imbalances that diminish the town's identity,

its sense of being a single community.

Over 800 of the houses are destined to cover this gentle Essex hill.

We have to have somewhere to live affordably,

but nobody wants to see a town divided

or the countryside destroyed.

Once that happens, there's no going back.

Whether or not this plan succeeds,

the building of new homes is going to happen.

Demand is acute in the South East where 40,000 new households

will form every year for the next 20 years.

There are no easy answers.

This needs a long-term strategy that's responsible and sustainable.

In Saffron Walden,

the building of new homes is getting support from an unexpected quarter.

This is the One Minet Skate Park, one of the best places in Europe

to work on your boarding, BMX or rollerblading skills.

The money to build the park - around £300,000 - was raised

and one of the best design teams in the world

came over from America to make it a reality.

The park is right next to the site where the new houses are planned.

The developer is offering to fund an extension to the park and a community hub.

Daisy Tyszkiewicz and Toby Martin are regulars here.

How often do you come down here?

-Every day.

-Every day?

Yeah, yeah. Go to work, come here, or before work, come here.

Relax a bit, have a skate. Meet my friends.

What do you think about this idea of making Saffron Walden bigger,

extending the town over the green-field site next door and extending the park and everything?

I don't like the thought of too many houses being here

but the fact that we'll be extending the skate park means a great deal.

I think it's going to be good for Saffron Walden to have the change,

cos I think a lot of people who live in the town are stuck in this market town ideal.

And obviously it's a brilliant town to live in

and I couldn't hope for anywhere better to grow up in,

but I think the houses will bring something new to Saffron Walden

and hopefully sort of regenerate it a little bit.

Yeah. More people, new people.

We want it to be as diverse as possible and want everyone to enjoy the town.

And how do you think the town would change

if it gained another 800 or so houses on the edge?

-Hopefully it would change for the better.

-I think it will.

Saffron Walden's in its own little bubble, in a way.

It would be nice to break that bubble

and have more people in the town. Sort of mix things up a little bit.

There's one thing in danger of being forgotten

in the debate about whether or not to build.

Vibrant towns have jobs and, at the moment,

Saffron Walden doesn't have the work for hundreds of new households,

so they'll end up commuting to somewhere that does have the work,

like London or Cambridge.

But what if Saffron Walden rose to the challenge?

Began building jobs as well as houses?

Tucked inside this timber yard, where you'd least expect to find it,

is an exciting new venture.

This is the Indian Summer Brewing Company,

brainchild of ex-City trader Julian Hales.

He wanted to create a British beer

to accompany the most popular food in the land - curry.

-There we go.

-Not used to drinking mid-morning but thank you very much.

-Hoppy, yeah.

-Yeah, you get a good nose on that.

It's fruity, isn't it? You can taste the...grapefruit, lemon, citrus?

Not sure. Citrus, grapefruit...is what the hop combination will bring out.

And it's sharp.

You imagine a little bit of heat in your mouth and that just quenching the fire.

I'd enjoy this with a good veg curry, no question.

-Excellent.

-It's difficult to stop, isn't it?

-It is very drinkable, yes.

OK, Nick. As with all jobs, brewing isn't all fun.

There's a fair amount of drudgery.

-Right.

-And you can be my slave today.

Oh. What have I let myself in for?

Just dig it out.

There we go.

Put your back into it! We'll be here all day!

I'm just a weak city type, Jules. I'm not used to this manual labour!

How does this compare to your earlier life?

It's certainly a lot more physical, I can assure you. Different stresses.

Because from this moment on, once you start making the beer,

I now start fretting as to how it's going to turn out.

And what are you bringing to the town by doing this?

People actually know Saffron Walden quite well, so that

"brewed in Saffron Walden" on the label really does mean something.

Proper English traditional town

and we're trying to put something a little more modern into it.

How has Saffron Walden changed over the last years?

There's a lot more people here, obviously, a lot more traffic.

In the old days, you could come down the high street

and park anywhere you like and the only four-wheel-drives you saw

were driven by farmers with mud all over them.

Obviously there's a trend now towards lots of nice shiny ones going up and down there,

but these people bring in wealth into the area.

If those people spend their money in the community, then we all benefit.

Some of them are probably drinking Bombay Blonde, too.

I hope so, yes. After a hard day in the City, it's a good tonic.

NICK LAUGHS

No more days commuting to the City for Jules -

his skills stay in Saffron Walden.

That's not just good for him but for other businesses, too.

-How are you doing?

-Lovely to see you.

-Hi, there, Paul.

-Hello, pleased to meet you.

Paul is our pig farmer who takes away all the grist.

That's right, yes. We use it with our rare breed pigs who are very fond of it.

So you give Paul the spent grain?

And I get my tea!

-That's it!

-Pork chops. Pleasure!

-Lovely pork chops.

-Absolutely, yeah. Straight from the farm.

That's a really kind of medieval operation you've got going here, a bit of barter, yeah.

But it works well for everybody and gets rid of the otherwise waste product, of course, for Jules.

-And the pigs really like this?

-They do, yeah.

-Good to meet you.

-Pleasure. And you, yeah. Nice to see you.

Cheers for now, Jules. All right, see you. Cheerio for now.

Here's a local success story - a product that's made in Saffron Walden -

something that reclaims the town's market roots.

It's a special day for Saffron Walden.

The chance to commemorate and the opportunity to celebrate.

These are the soldiers from 33 Engineer Regiment

based at nearby Carver Barracks.

They're returning from a six-month tour of Afghanistan.

They've one of the toughest jobs in the Army - bomb disposal.

And as a mark of respect for this work, they have the Honorary Freedom of the District.

Task force - 'shun!

Mr Mayor, councillors, ladies and gentlemen, it is my privilege

and pleasure to welcome you all to Saffron Walden today.

We greet those who have just returned from an onerous duty

in Afghanistan. At the same time, we honour

and remember those who have given their lives in this campaign.

Commuter, local, young and old -

everyone has turned out to say thank you on behalf of the town.

Right turn!

Saffron Walden is at a turning point.

It's being forced to ask huge questions of itself.

Expansion comes at a cost of green fields and countryside

and brings risks and uncertainties.

Supporters of expansion argue that this commuter town

needs to build affordably for a new generation.

It's a problem of scale, of course.

If it was 50 houses, there'd be no row.

But in a small town, adding over 800 is a step change.

It's the difference between evolution and revolution.

With London, that voracious metropolis,

just down the line, and with pressure as never before to build

in the South East, Saffron Walden is wise to brace itself for change.

It's been here before - the coming of the Normans,

the rise and the fall of the markets in saffron,

in wool and malting, the arrival of the railway and then its removal,

the swamping of these medieval streets with motor cars.

Convulsions are nothing new.

If a surge in house building proves unavoidable, it'll be this

town's self-belief in its heritage

and in its community spirit that guides it into the next age.

Next time I'm in Huddersfield.

I'll be finding out how an out-of-the-way village became a textile giant.

I'll see what brings one of the town's most famous sons back home

and why Huddersfield is still at the cutting edge of technology.

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