Wareham, Dorset

Wareham is a town that got its excitement out of the way early and has been coasting on it ever since. Alfred the Great built the walls, the Danes turned up twice, Judge Jeffreys hanged five men on the West Walls, and then a fire in 1762 flattened two thirds of the place, at which point the town rebuilt itself in tasteful red brick and decided that was quite enough drama for one millennium. The rivers boxed it in, Poole grew up next door and took the trade, and Wareham simply stopped, which is the single best thing that ever happened to it. Everything the wider area has going for it now, the heath, the harbour, the coast, the quiet, exists because nobody could be bothered to build over it.