Chiswell Green

Chiswell Green is St Albans with the cathedral taken out and a driveway put in, and that is the trade most buyers came for, though few will admit it at dinner parties in town. It calls itself a village, but the village is mostly a postal address wrapped around post-war semis, a striking number of bungalows and a near-religious devotion to off-street parking. You can hear the motorways from the back garden. The people who moved here for the commute call that convenience, and their guests call it traffic.