Kingsclere

Kingsclere sits bang in the middle of Basingstoke and Newbury and has spent over a thousand years refusing to become either. Local legend says King John, fogbound in a village inn, got bitten by a bedbug and ordered the church to mount the culprit on its tower for evermore, so the parish's best-known monument is effectively a one-star review of the accommodation. Nobody has taken it down, which tells you most of what you need to know about how Kingsclere feels about change.