A sleepy British town has gradually become a ‘miniature USA’ due to an influx of Americans with their comparatively bigger budgets for housing and leisure.
Leafy Mildenhall in Suffolk is nestled beside the stunning Thetford Forest in the quintessential English countryside around 70 miles north-east of London.
Viewed from above, the picturesque town comprises a winding network of cul-de-sacs punctuated by red-brick bungalows and neatly-trimmed foliage.
But on the street level, American accents can be heard drifting between the hedgerows, as baseball hat-wearing locals wander amongst their British neighbors.
‘We hear and see Americans every day,’ said longtime resident and Mildenhall Mayor Russell Leaman. ‘There’s a very high concentration of Americans here.’
People from the States arrive in the area each year to serve at its two US army bases – RAF Mildenhall and RAF Lakenheath – which are home to a combined 8,500 active-duty military personnel and their families.
Just over 10,000 people live in Mildenhall, meaning the American expat community is a large part of the town’s melting pot of cultures from either side of the Atlantic.
Local restaurant owner Shaz Begg, 44, said the ‘Little America’ vibe is so strong in his hometown that he grew up playing US sports and even developed an American accent, despite hailing from a family of expats himself.
Begg’s father moved from Bangladesh to Mildenhall in the 1970s, before opening an Indian restaurant where his son learned to cook as a teenager.
Mildenhall-born Begg became so immersed in the Americanisms which permeate the English country town that he opened a US-style diner called Top G Wings once he branched out with his own business in November 2023.
Speaking with the Daily Mail – with his accent back to British – Begg, 44, said the wing shop serves around 250 customers on an average day, and he estimates that half of his patrons are American.
‘We are similar to Wing Stop,’ he said. ‘But we hand make every single order, we get the chicken fresh, nothing is frozen, and we bring unique flavors as well.
‘I’m a chef myself, and I wanted to make sure that we got the core flavors right, like the Buffalo sauce. That had to be spot on.
‘I experimented with the recipe for six months. I knew I made it when a guy from Buffalo New York came in and said, this reminds me of home.’
Robert Lewis, who founded what is now Mildenhall’s largest lettings agency 25 years ago, said Americans move over with bigger wallets – and bigger demands.
‘Where the English rental market finishes is where the American rental market begins,’ Lewis told the Daily Mail from the Balmforth Estate Agents office.
On average, his British clients spend around £800 ($1,085) to £900 ($1,220) per month on a four-bedroom rental property, whereas Americans spend an average £1,500 ($2,035) to £1,600 ($2,170) on a larger, more modern four-bed home.
Although around half the American residents in Mildenhall live in dormitories on the air base, the demographic still has ‘a very strong influence on the housing market, and on the local economy,’ according to Lewis.
‘They spend their money primarily on rental housing and eating out,’ he told the Daily Mail.
‘A town of this size should have two to three restaurants. We have 20. You can get every food imaginable in Mildenhall. It’s Little America.’
Local photographer Krista Leigh is among the thousands of Americans who moved to Mildenhall thanks to the airbase.
She relocated to the town in 2010 with her former partner, who worked at the RAF headquarters.
Leigh, 35, said that although they divorced, she ended up staying of her own accord because she found the quality of life to be a major improvement from her previous hometowns in Connecticut, Maine and North Carolina.
‘The amount of money I make here and live comfortably here, I don’t think I would be able to live comfortably on in the US,’ she said.
Leigh now lives in nearby Methwold with her new husband, their three-year-old daughter and pet dog.
‘This area has grown and expanded so much in the 15 years that I have been here,’ she said.
‘We didn’t even have a 24-hour McDonald’s when I moved here and now we have numerous.
‘There are places that are staying up late which is good for people who work. The US lifestyle is all about convenience.’
Leigh, who is a legal permanent resident in the UK, added that the ‘ability to travel to Europe so cheaply’ was a major reason for her choosing to stay in the area after her divorce.
‘You can hop on a plane for 20 quid round-trip. That’s super incredible from an American perspective,’ she said, adding that surrounding towns like Bury St Edmunds also offer ‘beautiful’ escapes on their doorstep too.
California-born Shona Holloway-Howard, 47, moved to Mildenhall in 1983 when her father, who served in Vietnam, was sent to the airbase.
‘We have got Cambridge and Norwich and we are two hours from London,’ said Holloway-Howard, who works at Balmforth Estates as a rental inspector.
‘It’s quite central to a lot of things. And there’s a sense of history here. I like seeing the old buildings. We like the British pubs and the beer.’
Holloway-Howard said that while she has lived in the area since she was five years old and embraces the British culture, she still celebrates American holidays like Thanksgiving and her husband ‘has learned to BBQ the American way like my dad’.
She said she has noticed Mildenhall becoming increasingly Yankeefied.
‘It definitely has become more American,’ Holloway Howard told the Daily Mail. It’s catering more towards Americans which I really enjoy. The food is phenomenal.’
Mayor Leaman, who has lived in the town for more than 30 years, said that along with being 45 minutes from an international airport and less than two hours from London, Mildenhall is also ‘only an hour from the coast’.
‘It’s a very rural town but we have got really good infrastructure links,’ he told the Daily Mail.
‘And Mildenhall itself is very scenic – we have beautiful countryside on our doorstep.’
Though there has been an exodus of US citizens towards the UK since Donald Trump was elected, Mildenhall is an outlier in terms of the type of American expats it attracts.
The Daily Mail revealed in March that the number of Americans seeking UK citizenship had reached record levels since Trump was elected for a second term.
More than 6,100 US citizens applied last year, an all-time high after figures began two decades ago and 26 per cent more than in 2023.
US clicks on British job listings were also up 2.4 percentage points year on year to 8.5 percent, the sharpest increase from any country, according to job search site Indeed.
Immigration lawyers have said Trump’s presidential bid and victory in early November helped spur the increase in American movers, with others adding the US political landscape was ‘a very serious driver’.
But Lewis said he suspects many of the Americans in his sleepy Suffolk community are MAGA fans, and the United States Air Force in Europe says RAF Lakenheath and Mildenhall are worth a combined $910 million to the local economy.
Donald Trump also stopped at RAF Mildenhall to refuel his Air Force One jet a few weeks ago.
‘On the whole, Trump is well-liked by military members,’ Lewis told the Daily Mail.
‘However, what is crystal clear is that they won’t talk about it. Even if you don’t like him, you don’t want to be saying that to anyone, on or off the base.
‘He is their commander. They are conscious not to offend either their military leaders – or the local people.
‘On the flip side, the British community here can’t believe the absurdity of some of the things Trump is doing, and some affect our economy.’
Both Lewis and Mayor Leaman said though that there’s no perceptible tension between the US and UK residents in Mildenhall.
‘The British and Americans – it’s very much a united town,’ Leaman said.
‘They do receive a warm welcome and I like to think they integrate into the community really well.’