Highworth

Highworth sits on the highest hill in Wiltshire and looks down on Swindon, which is the only angle from which most of Highworth is prepared to look at Swindon. The paperwork says it belongs to the borough; the Georgian high street says otherwise, and has kept a straight face about it for three centuries. The last time Highworth's traders decamped to Swindon it took a Parliamentarian garrison and a plague to shift them, so the daily commute down the hill is, by local standards, a polite arrangement. The railway gave up on the place before most of the residents were born, and nobody up here has quite forgiven it.