Wallingford, Oxfordshire

Wallingford spent a thousand years being strategically important and has never entirely got over it. William the Conqueror was waved across the Thames here without a fight, and Henry VIII later had the castle dismantled to do up Windsor, so the town has been making do with the leftovers ever since. It doesn't have a proper railway station either, just a heritage line that runs steam trains out to Cholsey on weekends for people who don't need to be anywhere. Most of the people who move here wanted Henley, then noticed that the same river runs through Wallingford too.