Handyman Bungay

Bungay sits in a great loop of the River Waveney almost exactly on the Norfolk–Suffolk border. The river encircles the town on three sides, which is partly why the Bigod family chose to plant a Norman castle here in the twelfth century. The keep walls were enormous — among the thickest in England — and although Henry II ordered them slighted, the great gatehouse and ruins still stand in the middle of the town. The Bigods were a turbulent family, repeatedly siding against the king, and Bungay has carried something of that independent streak ever since.

The town's most famous tale is of Black Shuck, a ghostly black dog said to have burst into St Mary's Church during a thunderstorm in 1577, killing two parishioners and scorching the door. The weather vane on the Buttercross still shows a dog with lightning bolts. Most of central Bungay was rebuilt in red brick after a great fire in 1688, which gives the market square its harmonious Georgian feel. The town has an excellent independent printer that has been running for over two centuries, a thriving market and an unusually high concentration of antique shops, bookshops and small workshops. The properties around the castle and along Bridge Street are full of timber-framed quirks — sloping floors, wonky lintels and lath-and-plaster — and they keep me steadily busy.