Corsham

Corsham looks so convincingly like the eighteenth century that film crews keep borrowing the High Street, and Poldark kept coming back to pretend it was Cornwall until the show ran out of series. Under all that honey-coloured stone, in the old quarries, sits a government war bunker, so the prettiest street in Wiltshire was also where the state planned to carry on after the end of the world. London trains still run straight through the town without stopping, which is about as Corsham as it gets: gorgeous, well defended, and in no hurry to let you in.