Chertsey

Most of the country knows Chertsey as the name on the M25 sign where the M3 peels off, a poor return for a town whose abbey was founded in 666, a number it has never once put on a mug. Henry VIII dissolved the abbey and carted the stone off for a palace up the road, and the locals used what was left to raise the streets, the better investment on a Thames floodplain. In 1789 the cricket team set off to teach the French nobility the game, met the ambassador at Dover running the other way from the Revolution, and came home. Chertsey has met every grand idea since with the same sensible instinct, and it now hosts Samsung's European headquarters with a high street that still looks like it's waiting for the Wednesday market.