Thatcham

Thatcham has a decent claim to being the oldest continuously inhabited place in Britain, and it has spent every century since the Stone Age resisting the urge to become exciting. It was bigger than Newbury in the Middle Ages, which locals bring up the way other people mention they once had a trial at Reading. Most of the town went up after the war, in brick, along the A4, for people who wanted a garden and a garage more than they wanted a town centre. The hunter-gatherers came for the river and the flat ground, and today's residents came for the same things plus a driveway.