{"id":463956,"date":"2026-03-08T08:46:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T08:46:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/463956\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T08:46:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T08:46:16","slug":"i-visited-uks-cheapest-town-with-50k-houses-it-was-nothing-like-i-expected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/463956\/","title":{"rendered":"I visited UK’s cheapest town with \u00a350k houses – it was nothing like I expected"},"content":{"rendered":"

The market town is one that has had a run of bad luck, but has plenty to be excited about, including cheap houses, an excellent art gallery and a local fish and chip delicacy<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a market town in England lined with grand terraced houses <\/a>that regularly sell for \u00a3100,000. In fact, many go for just \u00a350,000.<\/p>\n

Head to Rightmove or a local estate agent and you’ll find two and even three-bedroom homes selling for half or even a third of the nation’s average. But it’s a place that’s got a lot more than just cheap houses.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s home to one of the UK\u2019s most recognisably-named football clubs,<\/a> one of the country\u2019s greatest living authors,<\/a> and one of the world\u2019s finest collections of Tiffany glass.<\/p>\n

The dazzling glassware, worth tens of millions, was sent from the US in 1933 by local lad-done-good Joseph Briggs. They then sat gathering dust for four decades before their brilliance was finally recognised.<\/p>\n

Accrington \u2014 where the collection now shines in the Haworth Art Gallery atop the town’s hill \u2014 is much the same: a hidden gem, long overlooked beyond Lancashire, but, I’d argue, ready to dazzle.<\/p>\n

It’s about time, because Accrington has had its share of misfortune.<\/p>\n

\"Milo<\/p>\n

I received a warm welcome and an Accrington Stanley shirt at the football club(Image: Milo Boyd)<\/p>\n

READ MORE: 20 iconic UK film sets you can enter for free for one week only<\/a><\/p>\n

The town is probably best recognised (at least by those Fifa fans who have needed a willing team to drub) for its amusingly named football club, Accrington Stanley. Back in 1888, the club was one of an elite 12 that helped found the Football League, only to tumble out mid-season 88 years later, bankrupt and in chaos. As miserable fans drifted off to Blackburn and Burnley, the 15,000-seat stadium was binned and replaced with one a third of the size.<\/p>\n

Far more tragic is the story of the Accrington Pals. In 1914, 5,000 striking mill workers were locked out by machinists Howard & Bullough amid a big industry downturn. Desperate for wages, many enlisted, making Accrington the smallest town in England to raise a battalion. On the first day of the Somme, 580 of the 720 Accrington Pals were mown down within half an hour.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a cruel irony, too, in the town\u2019s legacy as a brickmaking powerhouse \u2014 its super-strong \u2018Noris\u2019 bricks underpinning the Empire State Building and Blackpool Tower \u2014 and the relative cheapness of its homes. With an average house price of \u00a3148,714, and terraces \u00a3110,381, Accrington is officially the cheapest place in England or Wales to buy property.<\/p>\n

\"Murray<\/p>\n

Murray Dawson, with an Accrington brick(Image: Milo Boyd)<\/p>\n

But as advertising whizz and Amazing Accrington<\/a> chair Murray Dawson tells me on a tour of the town: \u201cAccrington needs to focus on the future, not the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

Certainly, the people I met are determined to do just that. Happily, there\u2019s a lot to focus on.<\/p>\n

Take Accrington Stanley. A decade ago, the Owd Reds were \u00a31.2 million in debt, playing in a cowshed stadium with a pitch so waterlogged that six consecutive matches were postponed. Then along came Jack Holt, a Burnley lad who grew up on \u201cthe Shameless estate\u201d. Since taking over in 2015, he has invested around \u00a39 million of his plastics fortune into the club.<\/p>\n

\"Wayne<\/p>\n

Wayne Eastham dropped what he was doing to show me around(Image: Milo Boyd)<\/p>\n

When I turned up, chief executive Warren Eastham paused his work on the club\u2019s merchandise website to show me the gleaming corporate lounge running alongside the new artificial, puddle-free pitch \u2014 a set-up befitting a mid-table League Two side now punching above its weight, after years in the doldrums of football’s seventh tier.<\/p>\n

After admiring the near-complete Stanley mural made by the paint-splattered Paul Curtis, Murray and I headed to the Haworth Art Gallery to meet curator Gillian Berry, who looks after the town\u2019s Tiffany treasures.<\/p>\n

The buzzing gallery looks out across the valley to Pendle Hill, recently climbed by a group of wig-wearing Jeanette Winterson superfans retracing the steps of the Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit author.<\/p>\n

\"Paul<\/p>\n

Paul Curtis was mid-mural when we met(Image: Milo Boyd)<\/p>\n

In 1960, Winterson was brought to the town by her adoptive, evangelical Christian parents, who only allowed her to read six books and burned her secret literature stash when they discovered it. The town\u2019s cathedral-like public library, funded by Andrew Carneiege and bathed in sunlight filtered through great stained glass windows, provided a refuge and supply of illicit literature for Winterston.<\/p>\n

The Whitbread Prize winner is not the town\u2019s only notable daughter. There is also Lydia Becker, the pioneering suffragist who led the movement in the North West. Having spent years overshadowed by the likes of her protege Emmeline Pankhurst, she is now being celebrated at the new Accrington Dome, part of an ambitious town-centre regeneration stretching across several floors and shopfronts.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

(Image: Milo Boyd)<\/p>\n

Soon, traders such as Steve Hatt will move his 150-year-old family fishmongers into the renovated Victorian Market Hall, and temporary market stalls that block off the grand town centre will be cleared away, as part of a \u00a320 town centre revamp.<\/a><\/p>\n

In an Amazon-dominated world, this seems as good a way as any to breathe life into a dying high street, hollowed out by online shopping and two huge supermarkets on the edge of town.<\/p>\n

Another project that has successfully done just that is the Oswaldtwistle Mills. Having clung on as a working mill until the early 1990s, the two-century-old weaving centre was then transformed into a vast and hugely successful shopping complex, packed with everything from plants and dresses to children\u2019s toys and butter pies. It is independently owned by Peter Hargreaves, whose relative, James (somewhat ironically) invented the Spinning Jenny, which mechanised milling and became a symbol of industrialisation for the homespinners it rendered obsolete.<\/p>\n

Competing with Ozzie Mills in the size and shiny newsness stakes is the Raza Jamia Masjid Mosque. It is a vast building that regularly attracts 4,500 worshippers from across Lancashire.<\/p>\n

\"Zara<\/p>\n

Zara Saghir, a local artist teaching at the Accrington Dome(Image: Milo Boyd)<\/p>\n

It is the \u00a39.5million passion project of Jawid Hussain, another local lad, who made his \u00a3110million fortune as the founder of toilet paper giant Accrol Papers. Today, he lives across from the mosque in a sprawling house with a Lamborghini-studded driveway.<\/p>\n

I had discovered by that point in the day that the warmth of the welcome I received there, and the enthusiasm of the mosque’s caretaker-turned-impromptu-tour guide Manzoor Hussain, is typical of Accrington. It’s the kind of place where chippy owner Dianne wanders around the square after dealing with the lunch rush, armed with salt and vinegar, to make sure her regulars don’t need an extra shake.<\/p>\n

\"Manzoor<\/p>\n

Manzoor Hussain offered us a tour of the vast mosque(Image: Milo Boyd)<\/p>\n

The kind of place where so many random people kept chatting to Murray and me, our half-day tour ran over by hours. It’s also the kind of place that made national headlines back in 2024 when anti-racism protesters marched into the town centre in response to the Southport Riots.<\/p>\n

As the woman behind the Heritage Dome, Hannah Saxton, tells it: “People were coming out of the pubs to shake their hands and hug them.”<\/p>\n

Accrington\u2019s challenges are undoubtedly real. It’s a town where its main industry has been hollowed out and has suffered years of underinvestment. But what is also real is its resolve. In its bricks, its glass, its football club and its faith, the town feels less like a relic of industrial Britain and more like a place quietly rewriting its future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The market town is one that has had a run of bad luck, but has plenty to be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[166457,59,57,58,5366,50,3594,56,21904,54,55],"class_list":["post-463956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-accrington-stanley-fc","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-house-prices","tag-news","tag-staycation","tag-uk","tag-uk-holidays","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}