Crediton

Crediton spent a thousand years being important and has spent the last few hundred quietly getting over it. It gave the world a saint, lost its cathedral to Exeter for being the bigger, walled, more sophisticated option, and has been playing understudy to a city seven miles down the road ever since. A Royalist captain passing through in 1644 called it a big lousy town made of clay, which is the sort of review that would sink a place with thinner skin, and Crediton simply kept going, burned down twice more for good measure, and rebuilt the high street anyway. It is a town that knows exactly what it is, which is more than can be said for most of the people moving into it.