Handyman Haverhill

Haverhill sits in the chalky south-west corner of Suffolk, almost on the border with Cambridgeshire and Essex. Its name appears in Domesday — Haverhella — and the medieval town was a well-established market with cloth-making and leatherworking. A devastating fire in 1667 swept through the centre, destroying much of the older fabric, and the central streets were rebuilt over the following century in a tidy Georgian pattern. In the nineteenth century Haverhill became known for drabbet, a coarse linen used for smocks, and the Gurteen factory was for many years the largest employer.

The town's modern shape was set in the late 1950s and 1960s, when Haverhill was designated an expanded town to take overspill population from London. Whole new estates went up at speed, and the population more than tripled in a generation. The pace of growth left the town with a patchwork character — a small historic core and large surrounding ring of post-war housing. More recent regeneration has restored the marketplace, brought back independent traders and added the Haverhill Arts Centre in the old town hall. The town remains the commercial heart of the western corner of Suffolk, with strong links to Cambridge. The mix of older terraces and huge estates of 1960s, 70s and 80s family homes means the work I'm asked for here ranges from fitted-kitchen refurbishments to fence panels, garages and gentle re-decoration.