South Woodham Ferrers

South Woodham Ferrers is what happens when a county council gets a stretch of farmland and a ruler in 1974, and it has spent every year since looking exactly like the plan. Somebody in that office was allowed to name the streets, which is why grown adults with mortgages give their address as Hobbiton Hill to the boiler engineer. The trains run on a single track to Wickford, so the commute was never the selling point. People come for a tidy house by the River Crouch and leave the adventure to the road signs.