Sudbury is a quiet market town on the River Stour in Suffolk, best known as the birthplace of Thomas Gainsborough. His statue stands on Market Hill, and Gainsborough's House — the family home, now a museum — holds the largest collection of his work anywhere, including early landscapes of the surrounding countryside that he painted as a teenager.
The town sits in the Stour Valley, the landscape that inspired both Gainsborough and John Constable (whose Flatford Mill is further downstream). The water meadows and gentle hills remain remarkably unchanged. The town itself has a pleasant medieval core with three churches, timber-framed buildings, and a weekly market that has been running since 1009.
Sudbury is a good base for walking the Stour Valley Path or exploring the wool towns of south Suffolk — Lavenham, Long Melford, and Clare are all close by.