Lostwithiel

Lostwithiel's name means the tail end of a wood, which is the kind of self-description most towns pay an agency to talk them out of. It ran Cornwall's tin trade from a palace, hosted a Civil War battle won by the side that went on to lose the war, and now settles for being a stop on the main line where the old railway workshops have been turned into flats. The river comes up into the lower streets when it feels like it, which is why the listing photographs are always taken in high summer. The buyers who held out for Fowey paid harbour money for a town whose only trains carry china clay.