Netley

Netley keeps its best buildings as ruins and seems perfectly happy with the arrangement. The Victorians built a military hospital here so vast it needed its own railway line, then knocked it down in the sixties and left the chapel standing like a receipt. Across Southampton Water the view is Fawley refinery, which the listing photos crop out and the residents stopped seeing years ago. Hamble next door has the yachts and the prices that come with them; Netley has the abbey, the shore and nobody asking what your boat is called.