Three Mile Cross

Three Mile Cross is named after how far it is from Reading, which has been its main selling point for two centuries and still is. Mary Russell Mitford wrote Our Village here, a fond portrait of sleepy rural life that the housebuilders read as a sales brochure rather than a eulogy. The crossroads is still there, though these days it mostly marks where one new estate ends and the next begins. People buy here for a village name on the address and Reading three miles up the road, and only one of those was ever going to survive the planning committee.