Genteel, low-key and assuredly English, Aldeburgh has long been a magnet for holidaymakers, drawn to its long stretch of shingly North Sea coastline and its wild, watery marshlands ranged beneath a vast Suffolk sky. More recently the town, indeed the area as a whole, encompassing the likes of Snape, Woodbridge, Orford, Walberswick and Southwold, has become something of a creative hub, too, attracting artists, writers, musicians, foodies, filmmakers and designers to take up residence round and about.
Into the mix in 2020 came George Pell, a self-proclaimed outsider with no links to Suffolk at all. With a career including stints at the Arts Club and Home House in London, he was working at the time as managing director of L’Escargot, Soho’s oldest and most renowned French restaurant. It was lockdown, of course, no easy time for anyone in the hospitality trade, particularly in the heart of London, so when George was given the opportunity to open a pop-up version of L’Escargot in an old, unloved townhouse on Aldeburgh High Street, he jumped ship to East Anglia. L’Escargot-sur-Mer it became, an instant hit with locals and visitors alike.
One thing led to another and, with a couple of local investors, George bought the townhouse, seeing potential to add rooms to his restaurant, and restore the building to its original coaching inn roots. The L’Escargot brand was let go, the Suffolk brand introduced (the restaurant is now called the Suffolk-sur-Mer) and George embraced Aldeburgh with an unabashed energy, opening his new hotel not, as one might expect, on the cusp of summer, but in the depths of winter, as 2022 sashayed quietly into 2023.
Like most Aldeburgh houses, no. 152 the High Street is a jumbled concoction of rooms, hidden behind an elegant 17th century façade at the front, with the disorderly rear of the building overlooking tiny King Street to the sea a fraction beyond. Local architect Charles Curry-Hyde was called upon to conjure six bedrooms from the melee, and local designer Kate Fulford was charged with the interior design.
‘To create a sense of place was terribly important,’ says George, ‘I wanted the rooms to reflect and enhance the local area.’ Consequently, the colour palette relies on soft greys, greens, browns and blues to represent the marshes and the sea, fabrics – hefty linens in the main - are simply patterned, floors are wood or seagrass, painted tongue-and-groove boarding creeps up the walls, lampshades look like upturned lobster pots, and birds and boats provide decorative motifs throughout.
The six bedrooms, all named after local beauty spots, have adjoining shower rooms apart from Orford Ness, which has a bath and is one of two rooms with a view of the sea. Little Japan is the biggest; the wonderfully named Abraham’s Bosom, the smallest. Vintage furniture, garnered from local shops and markets (Suffolk is famous for antiquing), sits alongside white-linened beds with upholstered headboards, wallpaper here and there cuts a dash. There are no TV’s, George preferring his guests to use an old gramophone in the bar area, which doubles as a lounge. Tea and cocktails blend into one.
And now to the restaurant – closed on Monday and Tuesdays but seemingly full to the brim for the rest of week at both lunch and dinner. Come the height of summer, booking will undoubtedly be essential. Fish, of course, is the star player: oysters from Orford, dressed Suffolk crab, mussels smoked at a nearby smokery, halibut, skate, lobster, scallops, brill – all sourced, if not always from local waters, at least from the wider UK. I have one of the simplest but best dinners I’ve enjoyed for a while, hard earned after a walk amongst the marshes of the Alde River.
An upstairs outdoor terrace is the newest addition. There’ll be drinks and a barbecue here for al fresco gatherings now that summer has come to town. It’s a bit chilly when I visit so I brace myself against the brisk wind blowing off the North Sea and walk along the beach to Maggie Hambling’s Scallop Shell sculpture. Ahead is the holiday village of Thorpeness and beyond the distinctive white dome of Sizewell’s controversial nuclear power station.
Then back passed the fish huts on the beach to buy fresh oysters to take home, a browse in Aldeburgh’s famous high street bookshop, and a quick pitstop for coffee and sourdough in the Two Magpies bakery, a stalwart of the East Anglian foodie scene. It’s hard to tear myself away.
The Suffolk, 152 High Street, Aldeburgh (the-suffolk.co.uk). Rooms range from £180 to £240 per night, B&B.
