A
seaside town in
Suffolk, birthplace of the eighteenth-century poet
George Crabbe. Dr
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first female doctor in Britain, lived here from the age of five. In 1908, at the age of 72, she was elected mayor of Aldeburgh, the first female
mayor in Britain.
These days it is most famous as the home of the composer Benjamin Britten and his partner, singer Peter Pears: in 1948 they founded the annual Aldeburgh Festival of music. The main concert hall is in a former maltings in the nearby village of Snape, and is therefore called Snape Maltings. This was found by Britten in the 1930s while he was still involved with the composer Lennox Berkeley, and they lived there together for several years before he took up with Pears.
It now has a population of about 2500. It is pronounced AWL-b'-r' or AWLD-b'-r'. There is a statue of Anderson but not of Britten, an occasional topic of contention.