The Red House, Aldeburgh

Britten Pears Arts is a pioneering music, arts, and history charity headquartered on the Suffolk coast at The Red House and Snape Maltings, two prominent historic visitor locations. Britten and Pears shared a progressive vision of music and the arts as beneficial tools for people to improve and enjoy their lives. Britten’s career, as well as that of the Aldeburgh Festival, had made him so well-known by 1957 that he felt he required more privacy than Crag House could provide. He and Pears had been acquainted with Mary Potter, an artist and Aldeburgh Music Club member, for a few years and often played tennis in her vast garden at The Red House. Britten abandoned the crowded seashore for the tranquillity of Golf Lane, a private road on the outskirts of Aldeburgh when the opportunity to exchange homes with Mary Potter occurred.