Faversham

Faversham spent centuries making gunpowder and then switched to brewing, which is a gentler way of wrecking a weekend. It buried a king in its abbey and, once Henry VIII had knocked the abbey down, may have lost him in the creek. It now guards its medieval streets with the zeal of a convert, having come close to flattening Abbey Street itself within living memory. For years it held the record for the hottest day in Britain, then Cambridge beat it by a fraction of a degree, and the town has kept up a steady simmer about it ever since.