A location website that lets users say what they really think about the towns they live in – often resulting in scathing reviews – has highlighted the towns and cities that think they’re a cut above the rest.
Last week, a poster on ILiveHere, penned a no-holds barred review of Farnham in Surrey, claiming it was awash with parents driving BMW X5s and stopping for coffee on the school run, suggesting ‘showing the world just how middle class you are is an absolute must.’
Farnham isn’t the only town to get short shrift from residents and visitors. Here, FEMAIL looks at the other UK towns being flagged as ‘snooty’ by anonymous posters on the satire-heavy site…
ILFRACOMBE, NORTH DEVON
Devon’s not heaven: One disgruntled local suggested that the offspring of middle class children were making Ilfracombe in North Devon undesirable
A review of the North Devon seaside town – popular amongst day-trippers and holidaymakers in the summer months – packs a bitter punch from the first paragraph, suggesting that the town’s biggest problem is ‘a whole generation of 16-24 year olds raised by middle class parents’.
The offspring apparently enjoy ‘sneering at men working the harbour, like to complain everyone is racist when they haven’t even left the confines of mummy and daddy’s white suburb.’
The savage wordsmith continues, saying middle class twentysomethings ‘fill Ilfracombe’s restaurants and cafés, announcing every self-diagnosed intolerance. Gluten intolerance or lactose, if it’s trendy to have… They have it.’
The poster adds that Ilfracombe’s younger generations like to share their luck ‘on all forms of social media about their wonderful life with photos of them basically naked, or selfies by the ocean or parents backyard.’
MORPETH, NORTHUMBERLAND
Stuck up: Morpeth in Northumberland looks beautiful but one reviewer suggested that the north east town wasn’t all it seemed to be
No, we weren’t entirely sure where it was either…but those in the know about Morpeth – which is, in fact, an historic market town in Northumberland – certainly don’t hold back on ILiveHere.
One review of life in Morpeth suggests it’s full of ‘stuck up posh t***s’ by day, and drunks ‘looking for a fight’ after dark.
The same review claims that the local council ‘cover up’ what the town’s really like, saying it works hard to ‘preserve an image’ that is ‘nice flowers in leaflets’, making people think it’s a town for retired people.
The reality, the ILiveHere post claims, is the very opposite, describing it as a ‘town of rejected young people who are going in no direction but down’.
HARPENDEN, HERTS
Smug? Residents of leafy Hertfordshire town Harpenden have an inflated opinion of themselves according to one unimpressed review
An estate agent’s review of Harpenden describes it as ‘an upmarket enclave beloved by London commuters looking for a pretty place to settle down’ – however, unsurprisingly, a very different picture is conjured up on ILiveHere, with ‘smug’ the word one writer chose.
They opined: ‘In one of the “boutique shops” on the High Street (between a Costa and a charity shop), they sell mugs that say “I’m terribly posh, I’m from Harpenden”.
The reviewer continues to rage: ‘Clearly intended to be slightly tongue in cheek but in practice bought by people whose tongues are less in their cheeks and more worming into their own self-entitled a******es.’ Ouch.
HARROGATE, YORKSHIRE
Tea served with a slice of snootiness? Harrogate in North Yorkshire pulls in parents obsessed with getting their children into the right school – and residents look down their noses at nearby towns and cities including Bradford and Leeds, according to one ILiveHere writer
Despite the North Yorkshire town regularly topping lists of great places to reside, one post doesn’t quite see the historic town in the same way, suggesting that the tourist honeytrap, known for Betty’s Tearooms and it’s honeyed architecture, is actually a teeny bit judgey.
According to the satirical post on the town, residents ‘love to judge everyone else and feel superior to those living in Leeds, Knaresborough or (God forbid) Bradford.’
The reviewer also suggests that estate agents are the biggest winners because people in Harrogate love to pay a premium to get their kids into the local schools.
It claims: ‘Upwardly mobile middle classes spend years fretting about getting little Jemima or Tarquin into the right state schools, until eventually they realise that they don’t actually live on the school playground, they can’t be a**** to go to church every week and then resign themselves to being poor for the rest of their lives and send the kids to private school anyway.’
LEIGH-ON-SEA, ESSEX
Ouch: One reviewer claims Leigh-on-Sea in Essex ‘thinks it’s a glass of champagne, when really it’s a bucket of p***’
According to one particularly acerbic reviewer, ‘Leigh-on-Sea is a small-ish part of the larger Southend-on-Sea district’.
And residents apparently ‘like to think of themselves as ‘better’ than the rest of the district, with ‘a weird kind of “oh, you’re not from Leigh then” snobbery’ existing.
While one review concedes that residents are well-heeled because of the number of City salaries pouring into the area, it then quickly condemns, saying ‘money does not buy class.’
The vitriolic post suggests that ‘the main pastime at night is looking for people ‘who aren’t from Leigh’, in order to look down their powdered noses at them.’
It suggests ‘fights are commonplace, and the over-bearing atmosphere is one of joyless faux-snobbery.’
‘After 1am, local cab drivers prefer to avoid Leigh, due to the possibility of violence or being verbally abused for not being from Leigh.
‘It is truly a horror, and, as someone from one of the ‘lesser’ areas you would not get me to live there for anything.’
‘So Leigh then: it thinks it’s a glass of champagne, when really it’s a bucket of p***.’
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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk