Timsbury, Somerset

Timsbury sits on a plateau eight miles from Bath, close enough to feel smug about it and far enough that nobody from Bath will visit. Seven coal pits once ringed the village and every one of them is gone, which is the local model for how things happen here: enormously, then never again. The old mansion was pulled down and replaced with a housing estate, the woods that gave the place its name were mostly felled for firewood and furniture, and what remains is a very pretty village built on top of the holes where the money used to be. Anthony Head grew up near here and left, which is the single most Timsbury fact available.