What Fairfax and Favor's move to Bawtry tells us about future of 'small town with big personality'

This will be only the second Yorkshire store – the other is in Helmsley, North Yorkshire – for the retailer, founded by childhood friends Marcus Fairfax Fountaine and Felix Favor Parker, who opened their first branch in Holt, Norfolk, in 2013.

Fairfax & Favor carefully chooses locations, including Stamford in Lincolnshire, Stow-on-the-Wold in the Cotswolds, Marlow in Buckinghamshire, and Bakewell in Derbyshire, where there is ready-made well-heeled clientele.

“Opening a store in South Yorkshire adds another to our portfolio in the North,” says Marcus Fairfax Fountaine.

“Given our Helmsley store was such a success, it was a natural choice to feed our strong customer base there and we are very much looking forward to continuing to further our presence.”

Named by The Sunday Times as one of the best up and coming places to live in the North, Bawtry has long been an epicentre of commercial activity in this often-overlooked part of South Yorkshire.

However, this historic market town is surrounded by a cluster of attractive villages, including Tickhill, and just over the border in North Nottinghamshire, Everton and Gringley-on-the-Hill, all now wooing would-be buyers, says local estate agent James Stock, partner at Fine & Country.

“While Bawtry is still a popular place to live we have found that since the pandemic a lot of people are finding the surrounding villages more popular, with larger plots of open countryside on the doorstep.”

Many villages have their own interesting histories. In Austerfield, the thriving pub with rooms is called The Mayflower, in honour of the village’s most famous past resident, Pilgrim Father William Bradford, who was born in the Manor House – now a Grade II listed family house, for sale, with three bedrooms, plus a one-bedroomed annex, £525,000, Fine & Country – in 1590 and sailed for the New World in 1620.

House prices in Bawtry itself have risen two per cent over the last 12 months, according to Rightmove, to an average price of £293,225. That’s 11 per cent higher than the 2020 peak of £265,005.

The majority of sales in Bawtry during the last year were detached properties, selling for an average price of £373,647, Rightmove says.

Terraced properties sold for an average of £215,022, with semi-detached properties fetching £271,071.

Bawtry often surprises first-time visitors with its High Street lined with fine Georgian buildings. The town made money through shipping from the 12th to the 19th centuries; there was an inland port on the River Idle, which eventually feeds into the River Trent to the south.

When the stagecoach age arrived, many of the pubs became coaching inns; The Crown Hotel (and Posting House, as the sign says) on Market Place stands as a picturesque reminder of those times, and is still a popular hotel and restaurant.

Thanks to its bustling reputation, Bawtry rapidly became known as the “Gateway to the North”. As you cross the border on the old Great North Road, a three-storey townhouse, built in 1740, boasts the proud address ‘No.1 Yorkshire’ – it’s the first house in the county around here.

According to Rightmove, the brick-built Grade II beauty with views over Scrooby’s 13-century St Wilfred church, last changed hands in October 2015, when it sold for £600,000.

“Period properties [in and around Bawtry] are naturally sought after and tend to get snapped up quickly, but this is balanced with a range of more modern housing stock,” says estate agent Jayne Twiddle at Yorkshire-wide company The Agency UK.

There’s a rare opportunity to upgrade a period property on Wharf Street; a Grade II listed six-bedroom farmhouse with bow windows, and two large reception rooms, offers over £460,000, requiring a full scheme of refurbishment, William H. Brown.

Local interior designer Rachel Usher, 48, says: “The nicest thing about Bawtry is how varied it is,” she says.

“There are some beautiful period properties, then you’ve got really contemporary properties, very architecturally modern, and also Edwardian townhouses. It’s a nice mix of people, young families starting their journey, little cottages. There’s such a blend, and the majority are unique and architecturally interesting.”

Rachel set up her studio, Rachel Usher Interior Design (https://rachelusherinteriordesign.com) in Bawtry nine years ago.

She believes Bawtry deserves its reputation for high-quality restaurants and bars, but the absence of a train station means “it’s not a revellers’ town, it’s not rowdy.”

It does however benefit from close proximity to fast trains to London, Leeds, Newcastle and Edinburgh on the East Coast mainline, from Doncaster and Retford in Nottinghamshire (both less than 10 miles away) and the A1 (M), around four miles away, so it’s popular with commuters.

“Bawtry is a small town with a big identity,” Rachel says.