Hamstreet

Hamstreet was a hamlet called Ham until the railway arrived in 1851 and it had to start behaving like a village. Its one brush with national fame came in 1991, when its maps went on postage stamps because it was the first place the Ordnance Survey had mapped that way, which is about the most English way there is to be famous: for having been measured. In 1994 the main road was rerouted round the outside so traffic could skip it altogether, and the village has treated that as a favour ever since.