Halling, Kent

Halling is less a village than a long straggle along the Medway, split into Lower, Upper and North so nobody ever has to say which end they actually live at. Pilgrims on the Pilgrims' Way spent centuries walking straight past it on the way to Canterbury, which is still how most people experience the place. A bishop once kept a palace here, so the Church spotted the appeal of a quiet stretch of riverbank long before the estate agents did. The palace is a ruin now, and the quiet outlasted it.