There’s a trading estate, which might possibly need an envoy. There’s a Pizza Express, whose user ratings online are the equal to the Woking branch. And there’s also a branch of Boots which has a solid range of deodorants. Should Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor ever acknowledge any perspiration issues, desire a pepperoni or feel like taking on a part-time job, he’s moving to a most suitable neighbourhood.
At only around seven miles from Sandringham, King’s Lynn will be Andrew’s nearest town when he takes up residence in his new home. And it’s moderately amusing to imagine him wandering around the local Sainsbury’s (I assume he will always be too grand to browse the aisles at the adjacent branch of Heron Foods) doing his weekly shop for multi-pack crisps and toilet roll.
He may wish to keep his head down, though, judging by the responses of the locals I spoke to around the Tuesday Market Place on my visit. ‘For his own good, he should keep himself to his cottage,’ one woman told me as she juggled three H&M carrier bags. ‘I wouldn’t shake his hand, put it that way,’ stated an elderly gentleman standing outside the Maids Head pub.
My entirely random and unscientific half hour of vox-popping suggests that the welcome mat will not be getting rolled out for Andrew when he, presumably, does finally move out of Royal Lodge and ups sticks to north Norfolk in the coming weeks. But should he dare to get out and about, he’d be wise to avoid the bland, modern half of the town centre and cross the Tuesday Market Place into an entirely different King’s Lynn: one that enchanted Nikolaus Pevsner and is still firmly wedded to its past as once the most important port in Britain.
The Guildhall dates back to 1422 and its exterior is a chequerboard pattern made from limestone and knapped flint. It’s adjoined to what appears to be a Georgian townhouse, though the chains above the doors give the game away that this was actually the former jail. From here it’s a minute or so’s walk to the Custom House down on the quayside. King’s Lynn was once a member of the Hanseatic League and this is the town’s limestone showpiece, built by Henry Bell and with sea god masks (Bacchus for wine and Ceres for corn) placed over the door.
‘For his own good, he should keep himself to his cottage,’ one woman told me as she juggled three H&M carrier bags
Dating back to the 16th century, the nearby Crown and Mitre pub is situated at the end of a cobbled lane with views on to the Great Ouse river and is festooned with nautical ephemera that has clearly been accumulated piecemeal over the centuries rather than bought job-lot at an auction. Chef Jack Slingsby’s menu should be taken to catering colleges around the country, and most pubs with kitchens too come to think of it. Finally, here is a chef who understands that pubs are not the place to start delivering ‘signature flair’ ego-dishes or arranging forced marriages between incompatible ingredients. What all pubs need are menus like this one, which includes the likes of bone marrow and chuck burger with beef tomato and ox cheek with red cabbage, port and mash. The food here is the best pub cuisine I’ve eaten this decade anywhere in the UK, and I really can’t pay it a higher compliment than that.
So why aren’t more people visiting King’s Lynn? Although the town is hardly as marooned as the likes of Barrow or Gwynedd, it’s a place that really isn’t on the way to anywhere. Therefore I suppose it’s a pretty apt new home for a man whose life has very much reached a full stop at the age of 65.
My advice to Andrew is that he should wander the quayside and think of King John. Making a fortune in taxation from the port, this most transactional of monarchs put King’s Lynn under royal patronage and rested up there after fighting the rebel barons in Lincoln in 1216. His stop in Lynn resulted in him contracting dysentery after a banquet dinner, however, and he died a few weeks later.
John was good to Lynn for no other reason than it suited his needs. The result was a quick death. Think on, Andrew; your munificence and fealty to your new home may need to surpass your frankly rather blotted copybook to date.
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