Britain’s prettiest (and ugliest) towns, ranked and rated

If there’s something Britain does well, it’s towns. And we have a lot of them, almost 1,250 to be precise, across England, Scotland and Wales.

There are well-heeled towns like Henley-on-Thames, market towns like Buxton, commutable towns like Harpenden, liveable towns like Altrincham and towns to film the perfect Hovis advert in, like Shaftesbury.

But which are the prettiest towns in Great Britain? To find out, we called upon our experts across the country to give their verdict on the most beautiful settlements in the land. We asked each expert to rank their towns on the pleasantness of their shop fronts, historic architecture, low traffic/litter, stunning viewpoints and plentiful greenery, culminating in a score out of 50.

The candid bunch they are, our experts also shared the names of some towns which might benefit from, ahem, some aesthetic enhancements in the years to come; but, mercifully, as they explain, there’s always some magic to find, even in our most carbuncular of urban settlements.

Behold, the prettiest and ugliest towns in Great Britain, ranked and rated by Telegraph Travel’s Great Britain experts. Place your vote throughout the article to let us know if you agree or disagree with their selection, and comment below to join the conversation.

Once a coastal harbour, but long since reclaimed by the silting coastline, Rye is a medieval showstopper. The sheening cobbled lanes, hip-width passageways and crooked timber-beamed buildings of this town of 4,000 residents (approximately 1,000 of whom are antiques dealers) is a budding photographer’s dream, and there are more boutique boltholes than you could bed down in a lifetime. 

The town sits atop a rocky outcrop, and there are views from 12th-century church St Mary's across the town’s clustered rooftops to the coast at Winchelsea and Camber Sands. (Avoid summer weekends, when the shoulder-to-shoulder daytrippers are a blight.) 

Lay your hat, from Rye’s embarrassment of hospitality riches, in elegant B&B Whitehouse (doubles from £130) or at the Mermaid Inn (doubles from £163), for a Medieval warren of smugglers’ tunnels, priest holes and spooky resident ghosts.

Sally Howard

Choosing the prettiest towns in the east of England is a tough ask, but Holt in North Norfolk has to be one of them. Most of it burned down 400 years ago and as a result it’s one of the most complete Georgian towns you’ll find. It’s got all the things that make both visiting and living here a pleasure, with a dinky and elegant high street lined with independent shops selling both things you crave and things you need, one of which – Bakers & Larners – has to be one of the best village stores in England; it’s also got a great bookshop and even a good chippy, the locally renowned Eric’s. The town’s “Owl Trail” pings you between historic buildings and you can spend a happy half-day browsing its antique stores and clothes shops, discovering the flinty nooks, alleys and hidden yards just off the main street, and stopping off at the 11th-century church of St Andrew, tucked away at one end of the high street, next door to the playing fields of the town’s posh Gresham’s School.  It’s not all urban pleasures either, as there’s also a very pleasant country park just outside town.

Norfolk is pretty flat and Holt is no exception so it’s not stacked full of viewpoints, but the best place to watch the world go by is probably Byfords café – everyone passes by here at some point. 

The best place to stay in the centre of town is The Feathers (doubles from £85.50), which is the sort of updated coaching inn most small towns desire, with boutique rooms split between the main building and an annexe around the corner. It’s a good place to drop in for coffee or a pint, an informal midweek meal or an excellent roast on Sunday.

Martin Dunford

Regularly voted one of Britain’s best places to live, the Suffolk market town of Woodbridge is known for its easy-going pace of life and a small and highly wanderable old centre full of independent shops, café, restaurants and other businesses. Its pretty main square is anchored by the distinctly Flemish-looking Shire Hall, while the riverside area at the bottom of the hill focuses on the 18th-century clapboard Tide Mill and the town marina around the picturesque river Deben. There’s not all that much to do here other than loaf about, poking about in shops and drinking and eating in a choice of extremely historic pubs, but isn’t that why you’re here? Certainly the locals like it that way and it’s worth noting that  the town has one or two great places to eat, including the renowned Unruly Pig on the outskirts of town, plus a big historic attraction just beyond in Sutton Hoo – a renowned Viking burial site that was featured in the recent popular film, ‘The Dig’. 

The best viewpoint in Woodbridge is the one in the Tide Mill, overlooking the river.

The most obvious place to stay in central Woodbridge is The Crown, home to some smart, contemporary rooms with a New England flavour and a decent restaurant (doubles from £131).

Martin Dunford

Oddly overlooked at times, pretty Herefordshire is awash with charming black-and-white timber-framed villages and at its heart is Ledbury. Sitting near the forested western slopes of the Malvern Hills, Ledbury is a laid-back Medieval market town lined with lovely old timber stores and hidden alleys bulging at the seams with eclectic boutiques and friendly artisan stores. There’s a glorious silence when alighting at Ledbury station, with just the sight of the hills rising as the train trundles off into the Herefordshire countryside. 

At first glance, most visitors will have their attention captured by the finely-balanced Ledbury Market House. Perched on 16 oak pillars, this quirky sight has stood since 1668 and a charming charter market is still held below its frame to this day on Tuesdays and Saturdays. 

Plonked perfectly on the High Street, parts of the Feathers Hotel date back to 1564 and it’s a cosy spot to pass an evening (doubles from £86).

James March

Technically, Ripon is a city, but to the 16,000 locals it’s a town that just happens to have a cathedral. Visit on market day (Thursday) and the central market place is filled with the buzz and chatter that only local town markets – cheese stall, artisan breads, farm-produced sausages – can engender. Running off the market place are wiggly streets of independent shops – from an art gallery and bookshop to butchers and an eco-shop – plus places to eat and drink, including an Anglo-Indian tea shop and French-inspired bakery and restaurant.

Buildings are a pleasant jumble of Georgian and Victorian with the odd half-timbered Tudor façade while sitting modestly just off-centre is the medieval cathedral with its wide-open welcoming doors, Anglo-Saxon crypt and Tudor misericords. Other historic buildings house the town’s three well-run museums. With three rivers, a canal, plus the spa gardens (bowling green, bandstand, crazy golf), there are numerous walks and quiet spaces. Alternatively, a decent programme of live music can be found in both its pubs and churches as well as at an annual beer festival in the cathedral’s gardens.  

From the lower end of cobbled Kirkgate, with its colourful shop fronts, towards the golden-hued west front of the Cathedral.

Valentino’s, an Italian restaurant with five townhouse-smart rooms (doubles from £120 b&b).

Helen Pickles

If you were ever to ditch the day job and bolt for the hills, Crickhowell is where you might hope to land. In a country jangling with pretty towns, this corker in Bannau Brycheiniog National Park (the Brecon Beacons) has the edge. It’s a little bubble of nostalgia, with quaint Georgian looks, a butcher, baker and smokery, indie bookshop (called book-ish), cracking historic pub (The Bear), and tearooms perfect for cake after a muddy stomp in the rain-bashed heights. 

And what heights they are. Local word has it the patchwork hills rising above Crickhowell inspired Tolkien’s The Shire and that Crickhowell inspired the Hobbit settlement of Crickhollow. The great fins of the Black Mountains and Brecon Beacons sweep into the distance and a 17th-century stone bridge (12 arches on one side, 13 on the other) leaps over the River Usk.

A 4.5-mile, three-hour walk heads up 451m-high, flat-topped Crug Hywel, Crickhowell’s very own Table Mountain, to an Iron Age hill fort with uplifting views. 

Ramp up the romance at The Bear Hotel (doubles from £150, B&B), a whitewashed, hanging basket-festooned vision of a 600-year-old inn on the old horse-drawn coach route between London and Wales.

Kerry Christiani

I’ve been visiting Fowey for years, often to eat at a funky seafood restaurant called Sam’s Diner. With elegant Victorian architecture arranged along the wooded coastal estuary, Fowey’s soul remains as a working harbour for fishing trawlers and cargo vessels. It’s great to explore by foot. The higgledy-piggledy lanes leave you imagining encounters with ghosts from its past, like Sir Francis Drake. The high street, although too crowded during summer, bustles with galleries and harbour-facing cafes. There are fine coastal hikes, like Gribben Head for shimmering sea views and wild swimmers should take the plunge at Readymoney Cove, where a tea-van waits to counteract post-Atlantic shivers. My favourite moment, however, is crossing the estuary by ferry to lovely Polruan, to the charismatic Lugger Inn for a swift pre-dinner half before returning for Fowey’s vaunted fish restaurant scene. 

Head to Henry VIII’s St Catherine’s Castle to watch the ebb and flow of marine traffic.

Fowey Harbour Hotel’s lofty perch yields sweeping views (doubles from £170).

Mark Stratton

Once described by John Betjeman as “the loveliest town in England”, Ludlow’s crooked Medieval streets, handsome 11th-century castle and cinematic Shropshire surroundings only add weight to the poet laureate’s opinion.

Circle around behind Ludlow Castle and across the serpentine River Teme before rambling ten minutes up through the quiet green foliage of Whitcliffe Common, and you’ll be rewarded with a quite resplendent sight. From this lofty spot, languid oak trees frame an achingly English vignette of rolling hills, chocolate box rooftops, a lonely church spire and stocky grey castle turrets. 

The timber Tudor houses arcing gently down Broad Street form a picture that’s barely changed in 500 years, while few pubs anywhere can match the picturesque scene from the top-deck beer garden of the riverside Charlton Arms. So order a beer and soak it all in.

Spend a night amid pastoral Georgian surroundings at the secluded Fishmore Hall Hotel, just outside the town centre (doubles from £132).

James March

This delightful small Dartmoor stannary town, forged during the tin-mining era, fuses a village ambience with a flourishing independent retail and food scene. Located by the fledgling River Teign, the town’s heart is an attractive square of whitewashed granite buildings hosting shops, cafes, and four pubs, overlooked by a square-towered church built in 1261. Folklore Café brews great coffee, while Blacks is a moreish delicatessen. Its accessibility to the surrounding moorland and oak woodlands offer great hikes, especially an enchanting stroll down the river Teign where I’ve seen kingfishers flash by. Returning hikers may then be welcomed back by a crackling log fire and pint of local Jail Ale at the thatched Three Crowns Inn. Word of warning though. The only catch, really, is that Monday morning’s traffic logjam can be epic whenever the bin lorry is in town. 

Yomp up Meldon Hill for stupendous views over Chagford and beyond towards North Devon.

Book a room at the world-class Gidleigh Park Hotel with Michelin-star restaurant (doubles from £297).

Mark Stratton

Sheltered below the justly famous Ilkley Moor, the town spreads handsomely down a gentle slope to the equally fine River Wharfe. The slope plus the lack of high-rise buildings – church spires, aside – means excellent views are guaranteed at almost every turn. A classic Victorian town (though Roman in origin) that grew on the back of the discovery of spa waters, Ilkley’s principal streets are wide and leafy; the Grove, with its broad pavement, bandstand, cherry trees and handsome shopfronts (notably Bettys café tearooms) while Brook Street, a pleasant jumble of cafes and shops, sweeps down to the river. 

A good range of independent shops includes books, butchers, bikes and beers while Mortens hardware (established 1937) is the go-to for everything for the house and garden. There’s a swish cinema, a riverside park and playing fields, a craft brewery, an artisan food market, walks in Middleton Woods on the north side (brilliantly blue in bluebell season) and bracing walks on the moors on the south side. And the jewel? The Art Deco lido complete with original café and sun terrace. 

From the lido gazing up towards Ilkley Moor and picking out the iconic Cow and Calf rocks, and White Wells, 18th-century cottages housing the early spa’s plunge-pools.

The Crescent Inn, a historic building with boutique-smart rooms, French restaurant and real-ale pub (doubles from £90).

Helen Pickles

Sometimes the grace and beauty of this elegant Fife town is almost lost under a swathe of golfers and exuberant students. Walk the West Sands on a clear morning, bathe in the history of the rugged brace of St Andrews Cathedral and St Andrews Castle or recline in the Road Hole Restaurant, though, and you’ll fall deeply in love. 

Handily, the core is neatly boxed into a trio of parallel streets: each in its own right would make a cherished main street in most UK towns. Independent shops, cute wee tearooms and pubs where William and Kate may or may not have actually drank abound. St Andrews is fit for a Royal, golfing Royalty and anyone with an appreciation of a town whose charm survives in spite of its universal appeal. The Fife Coastal Path runs through if you’re with Mark Twain on golf, but still fancy stretching your legs under big skies against a spirit-soaring backdrop of big seas.

Jog along the West Sands with “Chariots of Fife” swooning through your soul as the graceful spire-studded town rears up ahead. 

The Old Course Hotel St Andrews Golf Resort and Spa (doubles from £300) is simply the only place to stay, overlooking the eponymous golf course and the most famous hole in golf. Superb eating and drinking venues, alongside the acclaimed Kohler Waters Spa.

Robin McKelvie

In a particularly fetching spot on the Pembrokeshire Coast, St Davids is technically Britain’s tiniest city (population: 1,600) and an instant heart-stealer. So for the purpose of this study, I am pinching it as a town. Pilgrims have flocked for centuries to the shrine of the country’s patron saint in its whopping cathedral, a medieval marvel hewn from local purple stone. The town itself is a beauty: all pastel paint jobs, cute pubs and tearooms, with the easy vibe that makes you long to move to the seaside pronto. And the restaurants are right up there with Wales’ best: Blas at Twr Y Felin, the forage-focused Really Wild Emporium.

But it’s the location that’s the clincher. Here you’re right on the Pembrokeshire Coast Path, with trails clambering over stile and gorse-clad cliff to surf-smashed coves, prehistoric standing stones and the mile-long golden smile of Whitesands Beach. The four-mile ramble to St Davids Head is a knockout, with broad views out across an island-speckled sea, where dolphins, Atlantic grey seals and harbour porpoises splash.

The golden light of morning touches the coast like a caress at clifftop St Non’s, where legend has it St David was born in 500AD. 

Bearing the minimalist hallmark and art collection of Welsh starchitect Keith Griffiths, Twr Y Felin (doubles from £180, B&B) is a stylish revamp of a 19th-century windmill.

Kerry Christiani

More commonly known as South Queensferry to delineate its location tucked on the Edinburgh flank of the Forth Bridges. Nowhere in the world boasts three such architecturally significant bridges from three successive centuries, which rise dramatically from the Firth of Forth’s narrows. The bridges – the Forth Bridge is a Unesco World Heritage Site – imbue everything you do in Queensferry with a sense of drama, from strolling the cobbles of the elegant and deeply historic High Street, through to admiring the pastel-hued houses and enjoying the plethora of bridges-view cafes, bars and restaurants. It’s a heady mix swirling in the UK’s oldest still in-use Carmelite church, beaches and wee independent shops. Sunny summer weekends can bring parking woes, but the three country estates that hem in the town provide bucolic escape. Hopetoun Estate excels with Outlander star Hopetoun House charming as Scotland’s Versailles. All three estates offer superb walking, cycling and, of course, more sweeping Forth Bridges views.

Enjoy a trip on Maid of the Forth, a family-run cruise boat that eases under the trio of Forth Bridges.

Enjoy a bridge-view room on the High Street at Orocco Pier (doubles from £99), an old inn reinvented as a boutique hotel. More views from the floor-to-ceiling windows in their Samphire Restaurant and Antico bistro.

Robin McKelvie

Known for its outré annual firework display and its radical and literary history, Lewes also comes up with the aesthetic goods in its handsome half-timbered medieval streets (today colonised by independent retailers selling everything from ethical homeware to antique clocks and artisan cheeses) and historic piles including Lewes Castle and the ruins of Lewes Priory, the latter set within Priory Park, a tucked-away nook loved by canoodling couples. Another beautiful park right in the centre of town is Southover Grange Gardens, an oasis of calm set around a 16th-century manor house.

You could spend a day wandering the hilly twittens and alleyways of Lewes, and they really are hilly, so it would be wise to coincide such a day with a pub crawl. There are 17 in the town centre these days, many of which are supplied by the local Harvey’s Brewery, including The Swan Inn (whose pub garden is set bang on the Greenwich Meridian, you heard it here first) to the Gardener’s Arms on Cliffe High Street, which has been known to sweep up CAMRA awards. 

Set amid the rolling greens of the South Downs, there are fine panoramic views across the town to the Downs from the top of the Castle’s Norman fortress, built in the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings. 

The town’s landmark White Hart inn has seen better days, though has recently been bought to be refurbished as a boutique by Heartwood Collection (set to open in 2024). Instead lay your head at handsome, homely B&B Duboi moments from the High Street (rooms from £45 per night). Otherwise, commute in from The Ram Inn, in West Firle.

Sally Howard 

On the top of a low hill, with views over fields and woodland, and the sprawl of Newcastle in the distance, Stanley has an enviable location. But, like many County Durham former mining towns, landscape views can’t make up for the loss of its major economy. During the 19th century, the town grew on the back of the highly productive local coal seams. (A half colliery-wheel memorial on Chester Road is a sober reminder of one of Britain’s worst mining disasters at West Stanley pit in 1909, which killed 168 miners.) When the pits closed last century, little replaced them. A rash of new housing on the outskirts has boosted the local population, but the town now feels beleaguered by encircling roads and roundabouts. 

The main shopping strip, Front Street, is pedestrianised with trees and benches, and is a jumble of hairdressers, bargain shops, takeaways and betting shops. The staff are cheery, although several shops are boarded up and most are unattractively hidden by metal roller-blinds when closed. At one end is a modern sports centre opposite an indoor bowls arena. Most colour is in the startlingly modern ‘drive-thru’ Starbucks which does a lively trade both inside and out. 

Within five to 10 minutes’ drive there are countryside walks – one takes in impressive Causey Arch, the world’s oldest-surviving single arch railway bridge – plus Beamish open-air museum, with its excellent reconstructions of north-east town and village life from the 1820s to the 1950s. 

Helen Pickles

Despite its formulaic chain retail outlets and charity stores, the older core of this South Devon market town is not overtly ugly, it’s just that Newton Abbot has been overtaken by rapid unaesthetic development and the traffic is terrible. The racecourse and surrounding meadows have become disconnected from a tired-looking centre by pernicious traffic jams and a huge expansion in housing estates in recent years. There is some pleasing old architecture like a doughty tower dating back to 1220, yet I would recommend pedalling out of Newton Abbot as fast as you can on the Templar Way trail to find traffic-free tranquillity at Teigngrace Meadow Nature Reserve.

Mark Stratton

Suffolk’s second largest town, Lowestoft, is known for two things – fish and the seaside, both of which in the UK at least are in decline and, unfortunately, it shows. The town centre is a tired mix of down-at-heel shopfronts and chain stores, while the harbour is about as far away from a picturesque fishing port as you could imagine. The beach at least is a pick-me-up, sandy and golden and lined with traditional beach huts – Benjamin Britten was born in the stolid Victorian terraces behind but got out of town as soon as possible, making his home in genteel Aldeburgh. 

That said, Lowestoft does have one or two things to lure you: it’s one of the southernmost points of the Broads National Park, and the clear waters of Oulton Broad and the open skies of the adjoining Carlton Marshes Nature Reserve are alone worth coming here for. There are also a few remnants of the town’s maritime past worth seeking out – a small, quirky maritime museum on the northern edge of town, and the Mincarlo trawler, kitted out as it was when the town’s fishing fleet was at its height. Walk beyond the vessel to the end of the harbour wall and you’re standing on the easternmost point in England. In Lowestoft that’s about as good as it gets.

Martin Dunford

When Cumbernauld was officially designated a New Town on December 9, 1955,  as part of attempts to clear Glasgow’s tenements, hopes were high. Indeed in 1967 Princess Margaret gushed on her visit Cumbernauld "was ‘fabulous". Few, bar the most committed fans of spirit-sapping brutalist architecture, would describe the concrete-savaged centre today as fabulous. Cumbernauld retains the unwanted distinction of being the only Scottish town labelled Scotland's “most dismal” twice by the Carbuncle Awards. In 2001 they dubbed the centre “soulless and inaccessible, something like Eastern Europe before the wall came down”, its landmark shopping centre “a rabbit warren on stilts”. Once derided Battersea Power Station has been reborn as a leisure oasis, so maybe there is hope for Cumbernauld? To be fair, beyond the concrete, there are decent green spaces and in 2017 Cumbernauld was recognised with a Garden for Life Biodiversity award. There is certainly no shortage of local passion and drive. And Gregory’s Girl was set here.

Robin McKelvie

Napoleon spent his final years stranded adrift on the remote Atlantic island of St Helena, though he may have been even more miserable had he been subjected to Telford and its risible personality-free architecture. Thankfully for Le Petit Caporal, Telford didn’t exist until the 1960s, when it was created as part of a wave of New Towns designated by Harold MacMillan’s Conservative government. 

But while it might seem harsh to pick on somewhere so young, any town centred around a shopping mall crashes immediately onto my blacklist. Though as Telford’s polycentric, there’s no real town centre to speak of – just a hodge-podge of dismal high streets, dour retail parks and a cookie-cutter urban sprawl.

Luckily though, Telford sits just north of Ironbridge Gorge. A bucolic Unesco World Heritage Site, it’s home to Abraham Darby III’s pioneering Iron Bridge as well as an array of fine museums and the delightful hand-raised pork pies from Eley’s pie shop.

James March

There’s stiff competition in South Wales with the likes of Port Talbot, Newport and Rhondda Cynon Taf, but in polls of the country’s most deprived and ugly towns, poor old Merthyr Tydfil nearly always pops up. In a basin at the northern head of the Taff Valley, Merthyr (muh-tha) is somewhere that many passers-by give a wide berth-a, with its urban sprawl of industrial and retail parks, heavily trafficked roads and roundabouts, and high levels of crime and joblessness.  

Pretty it isn’t, but neither is it relentlessly bleak; the hills and ridges that rise above it lend a dash of green and Cyfarthfa Castle – a castellated mansion and art gallery – is its cultural saving grace. And there’s tons of cool stuff on the doorstep: the UK’s biggest mountain bike park, Zip World Tower (the world’s fastest seated zip-line across an open-cast coal mine) and, of course, Bannau Brycheiniog National Park.

Kerry Christiani

“Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough…” wrote John Betjeman in his 1937 protest poem, Slough, on the development of the Berkshire new town. Betjeman’s words were apocryphal, with the town being pummeled by a series of World War II air raids through 1940, though the razing did nothing for this service town’s pulchritudinousness. 

Today the town’s High Street has been rated one of the unhealthiest in the UK for its preponderance of takeways and lack of leisure facilities, and pound shops colonise the stores that cling on in boxy 20th-century shop fronts, although a £110 million makeover is planned in coming years (and there is an excellent baked potato stand on the High Street, run for 32 years by local John Hughes, that we won’t hear a word said against). By contrast, a ten-minute drive from Slough you’ll find the polite suburbs around Eton college and a ring of luxury Bucks and Berks haunts  including The Langley, a luxury hotel that was the former manor home of the third Duke of Marlborough set amid 150 acres of formal gardens and parklands.

Sally Howard