The pharmacy on Market Place in Burnham Market, a pretty, chocolate box village near the north Norfolk coast, closed its doors five years ago.
The business had been part of the local community for almost 200 years, gaining notoriety for selling arsenic to murderesses Frances Billing and Catherine Frary, who killed three people and were hanged at Norwich Castle in 1835.
When the pharmacy’s previous owners, Sue and Brian Symonds, passed away in December 2018, their children tried in vain to sell the building, with locals hoping another pharmacist might move in.
But property prices in the tiny village, which has just 724 residents, had shot up, spiralling by 230 per cent in two decades, so – unsurprisingly – no buyer was found. Enraged locals, fed up with the influx of wealthy second-home owners which has led to their village being dubbed ‘Chelsea-on-Sea’, decided to make their views known, erecting a fake English Heritage blue plaque on the former pharmacy’s brick façade.
General view of Burnham Market, Norfolk, which has just 724 residents
Enraged locals are fed up with the influx of wealthy second-home owners which has led to their village being dubbed ‘Chelsea-on-Sea’
‘The Pharmacy, 1830-2019,’ it read. ‘Burnham Market: a dying village, poisoned by wealth. Finally dispensed with. RIP.’
Five years later, the ire bubbling behind the Farrow & Ball-hued doors of this picturesque parish has not died down.
Far from it: indeed it’s perilously close to boiling point right now.
Not only have house prices spiralled further – in 2022 the average cost of a property was £1,808,700 according to Zoopla (compared to a Norfolk average of £299,087), making this one of the most expensive places in the country to buy a home – but a series of recent developments have cleaved deep divisions in the 17th century village.
Last month parish council chairman Dennis Clark was reported making incendiary comments in a newspaper article, in response to a referendum in September in which 80 per cent of residents voted to stop outsiders from buying properties here.
Of the 201 people who cast their votes, 161 were in favour of the motion – which will now become part of the official ‘village plan’ – to prevent existing homes being turned into holiday retreats and requiring all new developments to be ‘principal residences’.
Mr Clark, 77, a retired oil industry worker, was quoted suggesting that some locals harbour a ‘genuine hatred’ for second-home owners, adding: ‘They have turned our beautiful village into something resembling Center Parcs.’
Locals erected a fake English Heritage blue plaque on the former pharmacy’s brick façade (pictured)
In January, he wrote to 200 holiday let owners in the area, asking each to make a voluntary £100 payment towards the upkeep of Burnham Market. ‘None of the people who work in the village can afford to live here,’ he claimed.
But not everyone shares his views – it seems shopkeepers, pub landlords and business owners in Burnham Market vehemently disagree.
Tim Roberts, who runs several local establishments, including a popular restaurant, went so far as to ban Mr Clark – who he said was ‘inciting hatred’ – from setting foot in any of his businesses, claiming a ‘majority’ of the 30 other shop owners felt the same.
Mr Roberts, a relative newcomer who moved to the area eight years ago, said part-timers and holidaymakers were ‘the lifeblood of the village’ – and even called for Mr Clark to quit the parish council.
His remarks further stirred up both sides, with Mr Clark – who lives with his wife Debbie on the same leafy lane as Mr Roberts – branding it a ‘witch-hunt’ and claiming that his comments had been misrepresented.
And then, just as tensions were beginning to simmer down, this week’s Budget added yet more fuel to the fire.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt revealed he would abolish tax breaks and stamp duty relief for second-home owners – a move that will claw back £300million for the Treasury but which critics have branded ‘too little, too late’.
So where does this leave the beleaguered residents of Burnham Market?
Katherine Lynn, 59, who lives on the edge of the village in a former council development, says ‘the damage was done years ago’.
‘I cannot afford to buy a house here; I can barely afford to rent an affordable home,’ she explains. ‘Most of the village is second-home owners now.’
An estate agent in nearby Brancaster estimates 90 per cent of occupants only live here part-time.
Carpenter Shane Tuck, 54, says while second-home owners are a boon for business they are bad for the community.
‘They give me work,’ he says, ‘but I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve seen it change so much. I bought my council house several years ago for £65,000 and now they start at £270,000.
In 2022 the average cost of a property was £1,808,700 according to Zoopla (compared to a Norfolk average of £299,087), making this one of the most expensive places in the country to buy a home
‘All the friends I grew up with had to move away as they couldn’t afford to stay. There are no families, no young people – there’s nothing to keep them here.’
Shane, who was on the parish council for 12 years, remembers playing in the village football team on weekend mornings. It, like the cricket club, has long since disbanded due to lack of players.
‘Once upon a time there were three football teams,’ he recalls. ‘There were two bowls teams, too. I still play and we have 15 members but none of them are locals. It’s no surprise.’
Archie Hubbard, 22, a coach at The Burnhams, the village tennis club, noticed a spike in outsiders arriving after the pandemic.
‘People from London realised the desirability of a second home and investing in property up here,’ he says.
The local primary school has just 100 pupils; that’s an average of 14 children per year. On a blustery afternoon this week Market Place – on which you’ll find a traditional butcher, a delicatessen and a four-star boutique hotel – was devoid of passers-by of any age.
Fiona Lambert, 61, a nurse who lives in nearby Beetley, points out a women’s clothing boutique, where RIXO dresses sell for upwards of £500 and you can spend £1,250 on an Anya Hindmarch handbag.
‘I can’t afford to shop there but holiday-makers love it,’ she says.
‘A lot of my friends are second-home owners but there’s got to be affordable housing for people who want to stay in the local community and have a family here.
‘It could get out of control and you’ve got to put a limit on it.’
The pavements, and the banks of the idyllic Goose Beck stream that runs through the village green, are decidedly busier in the summer – as well as during Easter and Christmas holidays.
During peak season, tourists flock here in droves, renting one of the region’s 7,169 holiday homes or making the three-hour trip from London for long weekends in their coastal mansions.
They don’t mind shelling out £3 for a custard tart from the bakery or spending £38 on a steak and £7 on a pint at the local pub.
Indeed, tourism – including second-home owning – contributes around £28million a year to the north Norfolk economy.
The area is a huge A-list draw, too: Stephen Fry, Amanda Holden and Anneka Rice are among the celebrities reported to have holiday homes along the north Norfolk coast.
For the businesses around here, it’s clear that outsiders have their benefits, even if it is only for some of the year.
The recent furore has been quite unsettling for retailers.
‘It is getting out of hand,’ one explains. ‘We work here and having visitors keeps us in jobs.
‘It’s a small village and if there weren’t visitors, there wouldn’t be much left.’ Another adds: ‘The local economy relies on second- home ownership. Without it, there is no income.’
Meanwhile another, who – like the others – did not want to be named, admits: ‘There’s a general consensus that there may be one or two too many second-home owners. People think the ratio is wrong.’
There is, certainly, a lack of affordable housing in Burnham Market. Of the 22 properties in the village listed for sale on Rightmove, six are on the market for more than £1million (and eight are new-build luxury holiday lodges).
In an area where the average salary is £32,000-a-year, it’s clear these houses aren’t going to be snapped up by locals.
Herring’s Lane, a narrow road leading off the village centre, is a focal point for residents’ anger.
Here, house prices go as high as £3.8million, with almost all the most lavish properties – including a sprawling six-bedroom villa with a cinema room, home gym and hot tub – sold within the last five years.
Darren Betts, 48, who has been working in the Burnham Market butcher’s shop since he was 15, says residents in this road are simply ‘not local people’.
He shrugs: ‘They pulled down the houses there and put up mansions.’ Churchwarden Jonathan Hazell, 82, who first visited the village as a child in 1948 and now lives with his wife in nearby Burnham Overy Staithe, says he ‘totally understands’ frustrations of locals, especially those who work in the area but cannot afford to live here.
‘It’s a great problem when the middle bit of the housing market has properties from £600,000 to £1.5million,’ he says.
‘There are a lot of carers employed here for what is quite an elderly population and many of them are travelling great distances to get towork. The same goes for restaurant staff.’ The issue with second-home ownership is two-fold: not only are these properties then off the market for locals, but they’re either empty for most of the year, or let out sporadically via rental websites such as Airbnb – of which churchwarden Mr Hazell has personal experience.
‘We live in a National Trust leasehold, a converted water mill with ten units, and of those only two have people living in them – the rest are let,’ he explains.
‘I know this generally causes a lot of disquiet in the village. Many of the properties are on Airbnb and you hear about noisy parties and so on.’
The main complaint about non-locals is that they contribute little to the community, often keeping themselves isolated.
Rather than visit the local greengrocer, they order Ocado deliveries to their door.
Key boxes are installed so that cleaners, plumbers and electricians can let themselves in when they are out.
One window cleaner, who’s been cleaning the windows of a second home for 15 years, has never once met the owner: she always communicates by text.
Burnham Market is not alone in clamping down on outsiders – though this doesn’t seem to have caused quite the uproar elsewhere as it has here.
In 2016, residents in St Ives, Cornwall, voted through a development plan stipulating that newly-built homes can only be sold as a ‘principal residence’; a move that was swiftly mimicked in nearby Fowey and Mevagissey.
Southwold in Suffolk and Wells-next-the-Sea in Norfolk followed suit.
Their actions were fortified by the passing of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act last October, which allows local authorities to impose a discretionary council tax – of up to an additional 100 per cent – on second homes.
The momentum is certainly swinging in one direction; so much so that one second-home owner, who asked not to be named, said she was considering ditching her London property and moving to her four-bedroom Norfolk bolthole for good.
‘I am not happy about the potential doubling of my council tax when I use the house as frequently as I do,’ says the woman, in her 60s and recently widowed, who splits her time between her two homes. ‘This could force my hand.
‘Like a lot of people I know, my property in Burnham is not let out at all.
‘It is a genuine home from home and I feel very much part of the community.’
So is the village, as that mysterious blue plaque suggested, ‘dying’? Locals hope there’s life in it yet.
But as one farmer, whose family has lived in Burnham Market for over nine decades, puts it: ‘I think we just have to accept what we are – a beautiful holiday village.’
ADDITIONAL REPORTING: Stephanie Condron and Ross Slater