Staplehurst

Staplehurst is a Weald village that got a station with trains to London and then spent the post-war decades building semis for the people who wanted to catch them. It has had two moments of national fame: Charles Dickens surviving a rail crash here in 1865, and a local farm turning up in the police investigation into the Securitas depot robbery. The residents seem relieved that neither one led to a tourist trade. Harry Hill grew up here, which tells you a lot about Harry Hill and almost nothing about the village, and it won Kent Village of the Year in 2003 and has been quietly dining out on it ever since.