Ware, Hertfordshire

Ware has been trying to get one over on Hertford since the Normans, when the lady of the manor rerouted the London road through her own new high street and Hertford's bailiff tried to knock her bridge down. Three centuries later the townsmen walked over and helped wreck Hertford Castle, which is the sort of grudge most neighbours settle with a planning objection. After that it spent a few hundred years keeping London's brewers in malt, and when the last maltings closed it put up a bronze maltster outside the church, a very Ware way of admitting it misses the beer money. Hertford got the county hall; Ware got a bed famous enough for Shakespeare to mention and a grudge it still hasn't put down.