The mayor who closed the only road in town – to repair his manor

Telegraph

12-04-2025

'It is quite remarkable how quickly the situation in Fordwich has changed since news of our road closure started making national headlines,' says Alexander Armstrong. The 66-year-old garden designer – and chair of Fordwich Friendly Garden Society – is talking about the news that the road through the centre of 'The Smallest Town in Britain' (four miles north east of Canterbury) is about to be closed so that the town mayor's 17th century, Grade II listed Manor House can be repaired.
'Before we hit the headlines, our road was going to be closed forsix months,' he says. 'Within 24 hours of the press arriving in the town, it turned out the work could be completed in half that time. They've magically reduced the road closure to three months.'
He shakes his head. 'Since negotiations have been going on between the mayor and the council for the past year, I'm not sure why this compromise couldn't have been made sooner.'
Admittedly, the headlines did make for fun reading. 'Only road through UK's smallest town shut to repair mayor's £1m home' was how The Telegraph reported the story. The Sun went a step further: 'ROAD RAGE We live in UK's smallest town where our only road is shut for 6 MONTHS because 'selfish' mayor needs £1m house repairs'. Predictions of traffic mayhem throughout the entirety of summer were posited, and quickly, the narrative of a wealthy mayor inconveniencing the locals for his own vain whims started to take shape. (No matter that the Manor House is listed and can only be repaired by craftspeople practising time-consuming and labour-intensive trades.)
With a population of just 381, Fordwich is a picture postcard of an English market town on the banks of the River Stour. The well-pruned wisteria twisting its way up the walls of the old post office is just coming into bud, and the weathervane atop the medieval oast house pivots lazily in the spring sunshine. But Mr Armstong and his wife, Joyce (a retired psychotherapist) are among very few pedestrians because Fordwich is 'dominated by traffic'.
'Six thousand cars a day come through here,' says Joyce Armstrong, 'because our narrow high street forms part of the outer ring road around Canterbury. It's a rat run.' The High Street and King Street can take cars travelling in either direction, but only just. The area around the Manor House has double yellow lines for exactly this reason, but further along the streets where there's more space, drivers trying to navigate a Canterbury commute also have to contend with parked cars.
The Manor House inhabited by Mayor Barney Riggs (a policy advisor for the government) and his wife is located on a 90-degree bend in the road in the centre of the town. He bought it for £865,000 in 2018 and it's now estimated to be worth £1 million, although a flat-capped local, wishing to be known only as 'Jim', chuckles that 'I wouldn't want to shell out that kind of money for a house with all this traffic rattling the walls and windows all day'.
I meet Jim outside the Manor House's pretty, primrose lime and wattle plaster, which overhangs a recently extended pavement installed after the building had been repeatedly hit by passing lorries. 'There are signs ahead of the little bridge you cross to come into Fordwich, warning HGV drivers the road isn't suitable for them, but they pay it no heed,' says Jim. Behind him, a van is forced to back up into the road opposite the corner to allow a long line of cars to pass. The drone of engines – punctuated by the crunch of reverse gears locking in – is relentless. 'We have endless prangs,' he says. 'But we've not had a fatality since 1933, when a police sergeant walked out in front of a coach. I guess it was so quiet then it didn't even occur to him to look.'
Down by the Stour a few minutes earlier, I'd enjoyed the merry song of chaffinches and blackbirds with retired accountant John Hayley and his wife Joanna, who point out that 'medieval towns were designed for horses, not cars, and our cars keep on getting bigger. Standard parking spaces in this country are 1.8 metres and most SUVs are now two metres.'
He says that 'there were discussions about putting in temporary traffic lights around the works on the Manor House. But Kent County Council decided drivers couldn't be trusted to follow them sensibly. Somebody driving a large vehicle would ignore the signs and get stuck, causing congestion to build up for ages.'
Jim, a retired advertising executive, says that older people like him, the Armstrongs and the Hayleys, make up the bulk of the town's population. 'There aren't many families,' he says. 'Often, it's people coming up to retirement whose parents have died and left them a bit of cash.'
He was first drawn to visit Fordwich in 1972. 'Egon Ronay had recommended The George & Dragon pub so I brought out some of the girls from the office in Canterbury for a day out,' he says. 'We had a cup of coffee, and it was 35 pence each! This was just after decimalisation, so I remember thinking: seven shillings for a cup of coffee! Bloody dear!' Now, he tells me the same pub 'will serve you a good £20-a-head job'.
Gourmet visitors prefer the Michelin-starred Fordwich Arms, opposite the 16th-century town hall (where visitors can see Fordwich's ducking stool for 'termagant wives'). 'The Fordwich has an £85 per head tasting menu,' says Jim. 'I amuse myself by reading reviews on Tripadvisor from people coming 200 miles for the 'superb bread and dripping',' he says.
However, he has sympathy for both the town's hostelries because, while the road is closed, 'visitors will have to travel up to an extra four to seven miles to reach us,' using the already congested A28. Although staff in the George & Dragon have been asked not to speak to the press, they make faces to show me what they think of the closures while 67-year-old John Williams, sinking a lunchtime pint while his black labrador, Duncan snoozes at his feet, tells me 'the mayor won't get elected again!'
Riggs politely declined to be interviewed when I rang his ring doorbell beside the blue plaque on the wall of his house commemorating former resident British artist (and World War I secret service agent) Alfred Palmer. But opinion was divided among his neighbours living in the two-bedroom terraces opposite (the last of which sold for £230,000 in 2018).
Katie Boulding – a teaching assistant – rents one of the properties with her school-age daughter, Amelie. As a woman 'with a busy job and childcare responsibilities and without the kind of money the mayor has', she's worried about the time and money it will cost her to drive an extra eight miles a day to get around the road closure. 'It's not such an issue for the older, retired people in the town who have a slower pace of life.
'I don't think the mayor has handled this with any empathy,' says Boulding. 'We didn't get a knock on the door and a friendly conversation with the man who lives - what? – 10 metres across the street. We just got a letter through the door thanking us for our cooperation. Somebody has to ask you to cooperate before thanking you for it, don't they? I just feel that if there had been a little more engagement, it would have been easier to stomach. At the moment, it feels like he's flexing his status and money.'
Boulding also feels that 'comments criticising the way this has been done on the local residents group seem to get deleted. I'm not talking about abusive, unkind comments. I'm talking about reasonable and articulate objections. I genuinely don't want to come across as somebody being unkind. But I saw somebody posting on the town group that 'this should bring the community together' and I thought: that is the sentiment that should have come from the mayor.' She says if he wants to make amends, Mr Riggs should consider 'using the road closure as an opportunity to throw a little street party. If he put his hand in his pocket for some sausage rolls and a few bottles of prosecco, the mood might change.'
But Boulding's cheerful Geordie neighbour, Robert Lindsay, defends the 'very friendly, funny' mayor to the hilt. 'The Manor House is a beautiful, prestigious, historic building and we can't just let it crumble.'
He points out that the house features in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's classic 1944 film, A Canterbury Tale, 'because they wanted to show England at its most picturesque.' He believes the mayor is performing 'an act of public service, at his own expense, to preserve our heritage. It's not cheap, paying the kind of specialist craftsmen you're required to use on a listed building. I also believe the poor fella is now shelling out extra to halve the time the work will take. I'm really shocked at the way people are talking about him behind his back. He's got no choice but to fix the house and it would cause far more delays – and pose a real danger – if it fell into the street. He can't do right for doing wrong!'
Lindsay tells me that townsfolk living further up the street 'are looking forward to being able to get their front windows painted, because their houses are so close to the road that it's usually impossible to get anything done with all the traffic whizzing past.'
While inconvenienced by the temporary detours to their gym and GP surgery, the Armstrongs also tell me they're keen to use the closure to get the town cleaned up.
'Even during brief road closures, you'll see people rushing out to pick up litter that it would be too dangerous to collect at any other time,' says Alexander. 'It'll feel like our own little lockdown!'