Before deserting for the bright lights of the big city I lived in a village close to Bury for 17 years. The village that I lived in, Depden is about 7 miles away from the town and Bury is the closest town to it.
Bury is quite a small town with a population of around 30,000 people. It is an old town with many buildings dating back many centuries. The Magna Carta was even signed in Bury abbey! (wow). The town centre is quite small and does not have a very good selection of shops. It has some of the main branch stores such as Woolworths and Marks and Spencers, but if you are after something more specialised then you need to take a trip to either Cambridge or Ipswich, both of which are around 30 miles away in opposite directions. For example, I am a DJ and the only record shop (Andy's Records) has a shocking collection of vinyl, so regular trips to Cambridge are needed to get my 'fix' of vinyl. Indidently Andy's records was started in Bury by Andy Gray who had a stall on Bury market and has now built it up to a nationwide chain, amazing, and my mate plays cricket with him. Well, you learn a new thing everyday.
There are three main industries in Bury, the tourist trade, the sugarbeet factory and the Greene King brewery. Bury is tailor made for tourists, it is very picturesque and contains quite a lot of history, such as the abbey, the Norman tower and about a million museums. It is also very close to loads of little villages that tourists seem to find rather fascinating. The sugarbeet factory dominates the Bury sky line and can even be seen from my house on a clear day, this is because for some reason best known to themselves they decided to build it on the tallest hill in Bury, what a move. This means you can smell it for miles and miles, great. The brewery also stinks and makes rank IPA, but nevermind.
Bury doesn't have much of a nightlife, there are quite a few pubs but most of them are 'traditional' pubs to appeal to the tourists and the ones that aren't seem to go into disco mode at 8.30 by turning down the lights, turning up the music (generally 'party anthems') and turning on some flashing lights that are left over from Christmas. Just what you want on a Thursday night. The town now has 4 nightclubs, 3 of which are owned by luminar leisure. The main one, Brazilias, has a capacity of 600 and plays party anthems with your resident DJ Chappers. It's terrible. Whatever is more a late liscensed bar with a small dancefloor, it's open til 12 during the week and 2 at the weekend for all Bury's wild party animals. The Avenue is siuated above Whatever and caters for an older crowd. Pestellos has only just opened and is trying to be underground with hard house and drum and bass nights, though I'm not sure how well this will go down in Bury. Bury also has a small cinema but if you are over about 4 ft then you'll never fit in the seats and the screen is only about the size of a large TV. There were plans for a new multiplex cinema, but the opposition of many of Bury's small minded residents has put a stop to that. If eating out is your thing Bury also has quite a few nice restaurants and cafes, but most are quite expensive.
Overall Bury is a 'nice' place to live, it has a very low crime rate, low unemployment, has hardly any drugs for a town of it's size and is generally quite a safe place to live. If I had to bring up a family then Bury would be a good place to do it, it's quite sheltered from the outside world. Of course when you are young then Bury is one of the most boring places in the world, there is a very poor nightlife and before you get to an age to start going out then there is even less to do. This is partly to do with the councils policy of not wanting to change anything as someone might object, when a new nightclub tried to open then it was refused permission because of noise concerns, but then again they do not see the need for change and I suppose I can now see the reasons.
So, in conclusion, Bury, a nice place to live, but not if you're young.
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