Lee-on-the-Solent

The pier was demolished in 1958 and nobody noticed because by then Lee-on-the-Solent had already settled into its real ambition: being a seafront town that did not need to be interesting. Sandbanks without the money, Hayling Island with slightly more lawn maintenance, Gosport's quieter half pretending it lives in a different borough. There is a runway nobody flies from, an Art Deco tower they knocked down, and a stretch of bungalows where the residents have collectively decided that retirement done well is its own form of achievement. They are, as it happens, correct.