Chorleywood

Chorleywood gave Britain the process behind the supermarket sliced white loaf, and the people who live here now would sooner sell up than be seen carrying one. Betjeman called it essential Metro-land, which in 1973 was a compliment about a railway and is now mostly an invoice. The village looks so much like television's idea of England that Midsomer Murders kept coming back, though the only thing reliably killed off round here is a first-time buyer's chance of getting in. William Penn married here and then left to found Pennsylvania, which is still the most drastic thing anyone in Chorleywood has done to avoid the Metropolitan line.