Buntingford

Buntingford was built for people on their way to somewhere else, a coaching stop on the Roman road between London and Cambridge, and it has spent the centuries since perfecting the art of being driven past. The railway went, the station became houses, the supermarket depot became houses, and the Angel Inn, where coach passengers once drank themselves numb for the next leg, now does root canals. The one-cell prison by the ford is still standing, a fair measure of how much trouble the town ever planned for. Everyone who stays does so on purpose, because the bypass made leaving very easy.