Stoke Mandeville

Most of the country knows Stoke Mandeville as a hospital, and the village has learned to live as the bit people drive through to get to it. The hospital started the Paralympics, while the village once put its parish church a kilometre from everyone on a damp field and then let the Royal Engineers knock it down in 1966. Aylesbury has since swallowed it on the map, though on paper it insists on being its own parish. HS2 dug up the old churchyard, found Roman statues and went straight past without stopping, which is roughly how big ideas have always treated Stoke Mandeville.