Feature: Village on edge of paradise judged best place to live in Britain

It is home to celebrated scientist Professor Stephen Hawking and said to have among its residents more Nobel prize winners than anywhere else in Britain. And today the quintessentially English village of Newnham was named as the best place to live in Britain.

It has the typical English requirements of a traditional village, a butcher, a baker, a village store and a post office. It is also just a walk, or cycle ride, from the center of one of the world's greatest university cities, Cambridge.

Newnham, the judges also said, is bordered by the Paradise nature reserve, which adjoins a green area known as Sheep's Green and the countryside fields of Coe Fen where cows still graze.

A team from the London-based Sunday Times has travelled around Britain over the past weeks searching for the best places to live.

Last week they named Moseley in Birmingham as the best place to live for city dwellers, and a week earlier Chagford in the county of Devon was judged to be the best rural location.

Today, though, Newnham was crowned as the best of the best.

In their citation the judges described Newnham as a one-time small settlement on the edge of a city that today retains its village atmosphere surrounded by unspoiled fenland.

"Residents vary from young families attracted by Cambridge's excellent state and private schools, to the young at heart - its high number of retired academics," noted the judges.

Newnham is also one of the 31 colleges of those form the University of Cambridge. It opened in 1871 as the second women-only colleges to be established in Britain. Newnham is still a women's college, and the only undergraduate college with an all-women Fellowship.

"It's also possibly the cleverest place in Britain, not only is Hawking a resident but legend has it there are more Nobel prize winners living here than anywhere else in the UK," said the judges.

On the rare occasions houses do come up for sale average prices are 870,000 U.S. dollars with many properties attracting a price tag of 2.2 million U.S. dollars or more.

"Like a Nobel prize, living here in Newnham is something that we can aspire," added the judges. Endit