Penryn, Cornwall

Penryn spent four centuries watching Falmouth take its custom house, its market rights and eventually its reputation, and has responded by quietly keeping all the good granite and the better pasties. Three of its mayors were convicted of piracy in the space of a hundred years, which tells you the town has always known how to make a living off the water one way or another. It is now a place where the buildings are old, the population is mostly not, and where the hill between the two universities and the pub does more for local fitness than any council initiative ever will. People come for Falmouth and end up living here, then spend a decade insisting it was the plan all along.