Rainham, London

Rainham is a London suburb that never quite stopped being an Essex village, with a Georgian hall and a medieval church at the top of town and a sewage works and a rice factory down by the river. The riverside used to be a resort for day-trippers, until the factories arrived and the day-trippers took the hint. A Docklands Light Railway extension and a crossing to Belvedere have both been promised for so long that they now count as local heritage. What Rainham actually has is a train to Fenchurch Street and a marsh the Port of London Authority filled with dredged soil, which is more honest than most regeneration brochures manage.