I have, honest
Is there anything you could recommend for a beginner to FGPAs? In maybe the sub £100 range?
Have a look at my list of
cheap FPGA development boards for a great big list and some general recommendations. I usually advise getting a board that has some interesting stuff on it like DDR memory, 100/1000 Mbit Ethernet and HDMI - the things you generally can't use with a cheap microcontroller and will keep you busy for a while.
For an absolute beginner I might recommend the Digilent Nexys 2, only because there's a decent beginner book that has examples for it - FPGA Prototyping by Verilog/VHDL Examples (though the book is not cheap!). Or maybe a Digilent Basys 2 or Papilio One and follow the
Hamsterworks FPGA Course.
Once you've mastered the basics and the software, you'll be able to use any dev board given the schematics and some data sheets.