Eynsham

Eynsham calls itself a village the way a Range Rover calls itself a farm vehicle: technically, on paper, and mostly for the benefit of the owner. It once had one of the biggest abbeys in the area and lost nearly all of it after 1538, a level of carelessness that would now earn a strongly worded letter from the conservation officer. Buyers come for Oxford without the Oxford, and Eynsham obliges: close enough to mention at dinner parties, far enough away to feel smug about it.