The little town with the UK's 'cheapest street' where homes sell for just £50k

Just a few years ago there was some serious trouble at the mill in the Lancashire town of Burnley as ugly riots fuelled by racial tensions left cars burning in the Victorian terraced streets once built to house weavers working at thriving local factories. Drug dealers, addicts and armed police plagued the stoic sandstone properties of the area known as Duke Barr, and it’s no wonder the prices of homes began to plummet.

Roads like Cameron Street and Spencer Street, named after the mills they were built to house workers for, are just 200 yards from the epicentre of the June 2001 riots. But walking here on a bright sunny day in May, it feels like the social unrest and crime that once gripped this part of town has been banished and replaced with a renaissance of house-proud residents who say they are “happy” to live here once more.

And it’s not just long-term homeowners who are feeling a renewed sense of community. Thanks to jaw-dropping property prices that see a two-bed terrace sell for just over £50,000, new residents and investors are also flocking to the streets dubbed some of the ‘cheapest in Britain’.

Perhaps no one knows the streets better than great-grandad John Ingham, 72, who has been woven into the fabric of the community for the past 40 years. Mr Ingham’s lovely well-kept home sits just 50 yards from Cameron Mill, which still employs local people and has been called the ‘Last Mill Standing’.

“These streets are named after the mills, there’s Cameron Street after Cameron Mill, Spencer Street after Spencer Mill and so on, they named Violet Street after a mill owner’s wife,” Mr Ingham explains. “I used to work over the road, that’s why I moved down here 40 years ago, and I’ve lived here since then. It was not an affluent area, but it was happy days bringing our kids up round here.”

Mr Ingham explained trouble began around the time of the riots, which were driven by social degradation that exploded into tensions between predominantly Asian and White communities. He adds: “The area went downhill, you had drug dealers and drug addicts, one day we had police here with guns trained on someone who was totally off his trolley.”

But Mr Ingham, a former company buyer, says those bad days are now a distant memory, and that things started to change when more working families moved in, with people of all ethnic backgrounds now living on the street.

He says: “I have brilliant neighbours now, apart from some people are Manchester United supporters, but the area has improved massively. You don’t have the houses boarded up anymore, people have invested in the properties, these are old houses around 120 years old but the way they are made they will still be here when a lot of the modern houses have fallen down.”

What’s clear is that, like Mr Ingham, the solid houses here seem to have outlived the chaos of the past and burning cars and rioting has been replaced with young families and the smell of fresh coats of paint being applied to old walls. Burnley Council tells the Express the town “is often cited as one of the most affordable places in the UK to buy a home”, adding “what sets it apart is the quality of life it offers alongside that affordability”.

The council has also bought more than 1,000 empty homes in the past 14 years to return them to housing stock.

And national house builders including Seddon and Barratt Homes alongside regional house builders are investing in the town providing a range of new housing, including affordable homes and those designed for residents aged 55 and over. According to property site RightMove, the last properties to be sold on Cameron Street went for between £56,000 and £65,000. Compare that to London where a terraced home sells for a staggering average of more than £770,000.

Situated just 26 miles from Manchester, Burnley is becoming an attractive base for commuters with good rail and bus links to the city. A train ticket costs between £11.60 to £15.70 for the 45-minute journey

Modern-day mill owner Joe McBride runs Lancashire Textiles at Cameron Mill which still stands supported by its three-foot-wide walls. Mr McBride says he still employs people from the local terraced streets which were built for the original mill workers more than a century ago. “At the moment we have about 22 working here,” he says.

“The week I was setting this business up was when the Burnley riots were happening in June 2001, and it was horrible, it was only 200 yards from here. But the area is a lot better now, they’ve built some new houses as well… but they are not a patch on the old ones.

“The mill built the houses for the staff and if you look at terraces, the end house closest to the mill is always the biggest because it was for the factory manager.

“There’s a wall here in the mill that is three-foot thick. This building was still cold from winter till last week because it stays cold, but we don’t have to put the heating on until Christmas because it stays warm [after the summer].”

Toiling away on one of the old solid houses overlooked by the mill is plasterer Jack Hindle, 22, who jokes he is “Burnley born and bred, thick in the arm and thick in the head”.

Mr Hindle, who is renovating a house on Spencer Street, says: “Burnley is [called] the cheapest place you can live in England, 50 grand you can get a house for around here. You couldn’t buy anything in London for that.

“These houses are indestructible, when they are looked after, I am repairing the ceiling in this house.

“You can tell how old the properties are because they have square nails instead of round ones, they stopped using those in the 1940s.

“We are in Duke Barr now, there’s Stoneyholme around the corner, these were known as the rougher areas, and this the cheapest part of town.”

Showing off his handiwork as he repairs a property for a landlord, Mr Hindle says despite the change of fortunes for the area he has decided to try and start a new life abroad. He adds: “I live with my mum still, getting teas made for me, but I’m moving abroad, going to Cyprus. I’m flying to Ayia Napa in July and then going over to the other end of the island and settling down.

“I think there are more opportunities abroad for young people, I think people my age are moving out but we’ve also got a lot of people moving here and investing in these houses.”

Burnley Council adds that the town’s housing market offers a range of housing options that represent “excellent value for money”. A spokesperson says: “Burnley is often cited as one of the most affordable places in the UK to buy a home, but what sets it apart is the quality of life it offers alongside that affordability.

“With a vibrant town centre, award-winning Green Flag parks, an expanding university campus, strong transport links to nearby cities and close proximity to the Pennine countryside, it’s an increasingly attractive option for first-time buyers and families.

“Burnley is a popular location for housing developers, and we have a number of new developments underway bringing to the market larger family homes, a range of older people's housing and affordable family homes.”