Esher

Esher spent a few centuries as a stagecoach stop on the way to somewhere more important, until the 1970s, when the main road gave up and went round it. Clive of India built Claremont here with money it's best not to ask too much about, and the town has carried on the tradition of large houses behind even larger gates ever since. George Harrison had a home studio here with the other Beatles round on a regular basis, and that is still the most rock and roll thing to happen on streets now mostly visited by delivery vans. This is Surrey's idea of modesty: everyone has a driveway, and nobody wants you to see it.