Here Come the Brits : The French countryside hosts a new English invasion.(British buy homes in north of France)

The last time the English passed through Agincourt was in 1415. That's when Henry V and an outnumbered English Army scored one of its bloodiest triumphs in centuries of conflict with France. Ten thousand Frenchmen were slaughtered in a few hours, a victory immortalized by Shakespeare.

Now the English are back. The tile-hung farm just opposite the village museum is English-owned. So is the schoolhouse by the battlefield. At times the only clients in the fancy restaurant beside the medieval church are English. And Agincourt--Azincourt to locals--is not alone. Across this quiet swath of northern France the English are snapping up properties by the score. "These days I hardly have five minutes to turn around," says Maggie Kelly, an English estate agent who reckons her monthly sales in the area have doubled since the late '90s.

Today's invaders seek only peace. Tempted by better transport links and low prices, a swelling army of migrants and second-homers is heading across the Channel in search of a tranquility lost in hyperstressed, overcrowded Britain. The largest of Britain's mortgage lenders, Abbey National, reports a 50 percent hike last year in the number of loan applications from would-be purchasers in France. That's on top of a 75 percent rise in 2001.

Embassy officials in Paris reckon that some 500,000 homes in France are now in English hands. Most newcomers look for holiday homes in the warmer south, but more and more are coming to the damp plains of the north. For many, their new tumbledown farmhouses or cottages won't be just for vacations: they're planning to settle. "The English just don't seem to be as happy as people here," says Siobhan Stevens, a 52-year-old teacher who moved to Azincourt four years ago, marveling at the quality of life locals seem to enjoy--in stark contrast to her less-than-merrie England.

A glance in any estate agent's windows helps explain the attractions. More than twice as large as the United Kingdom but with a roughly similar population, France has escaped the pressure on space that has driven British house prices relentlessly upward. Last year alone property values in parts of England's prosperous southeast surged by almost a third. The quaint cottage on offer for 90,000 euros near Azincourt might cost three times as much back home, 100 miles away. "The English are very good businessmen. With the pound still very high, they can purchase anything at a much lower cost," says Chretien Lepage of ...