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ALDEBURGH is best known for its annual arts festival, the brainchild of composer Benjamin Britten , who is buried in the village churchyard alongside the tenor Peter Pears, his lover and musical collaborator. They lived by the seafront in Crag House on Crabbe Street - the street named for the poet who provided Britten with his greatest inspiration. Outside of June, when the festival takes place, and November, when the three-day international poetry festival fills the town, Aldeburgh is the quietest of places, with just a small fishing fleet selling its daily catch from wooden shacks along the pebbled shore. The wide High Street and its narrow sidestreets run close to the beach, but this was not always the case - hence their garbled appearance. The ocean swallowed most of what was once an extensive medieval town long ago and today Aldeburgh's oldest remaining building, the sixteenth-century Moot Hall (Easter-May & Oct Sat & Sun 2.30-5pm; June & Sept daily 2.30-5pm; July & Aug daily 10.30am-12.30pm & 2.30-5pm; 50p), which began its days in the centre of town, finds itself on the seashore. It's a handsome building made out of a mixture of red-brick, flint and timber and the interior accommodates a modest museum of lo cal finds and history. One of Aldeburgh's newest buildings, the RNLI Lifeboat Station , is situated bang in the middle of the seafront opposite the Jubilee Hall. From the public viewing deck you can look at the town's lifeboat and the tractor used to drag it out to sea. Several footpaths radiate out from Aldeburgh, with the most appealing trail leading southwest to the winding estuary of the River Alde, an area rich in wildfowl.
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