Kingston upon Thames

Kingston crowned Saxon kings and then used the coronation stone as a mounting block, which tells you exactly how the town ranks heritage against getting on with the shopping. It is a riverside market town that the rest of south-west London treats as its own high street, ringed by a one-way system that drivers lap like a moat with no drawbridge. The town that built the Hurricane and the Harrier now mostly builds loyalty points. Live here and you get the Thames on your doorstep and half of Surrey on it too, every Saturday, uninvited.