Villages & towns in EnglandEngland

Weavers' cottages Morris called England's loveliest.

Gloucestershire

National Trust-owned village of timbered and stone cottages with a medieval abbey and barn, kept free of modern clutter and much used on screen.

Wiltshire

Honey-stone Cotswold village around a medieval market cross and packhorse bridge, often called England's prettiest and a favourite film location.

Wiltshire

Georgian china-clay port near St Austell, its unchanged harbour often lined with tall ships and used as a period film set.

Cornwall

Roman walled city on the Dee whose two-tier medieval Rows, black-and-white shopfronts and cathedral make it one of England's best-preserved historic centres.

Cheshire

Privately owned fishing village where a cobbled street too steep for cars tumbles between whitewashed cottages to a stone harbour.

Devon

Wordsworth's beloved village beside its lake, home to Dove Cottage, St Oswald's churchyard and the gingerbread shop by the church gate.

Cumbria

A steep, pretty seaside town on the Devon border, its curving Cobb harbour and blue-clay cliffs the cradle of British fossil-hunting.

Dorset

Harbour village at the foot of a wooded gorge where the East and West Lyn rivers meet the sea below towering Exmoor cliffs.

Devon

Bustling Camel-estuary harbour town, famous for its fishing quay, Obby Oss festival and a clutch of Rick Stein restaurants.

Cornwall

A smugglers' village of cobbled alleys tumbling down a ravine to a rocky, fossil-strewn shore.

North Yorkshire

Hilltop citadel above the Rother marshes, its cobbled Mermaid Street climbing past timbered houses, antique shops and a Norman church.

East Sussex

Titus Salt's model mill village of 1851 on the Aire, a UNESCO World Heritage Site with Salts Mill's Hockney galleries.

West Yorkshire

A hilltop Saxon town famous for Gold Hill, a steep cobbled lane of thatched cottages falling away over the Blackmore Vale.

Dorset

Light-filled seaside town of galleries and white-sand beaches, home to Tate St Ives above its old fishing harbour.

Cornwall

A cliff-hung harbour town of red roofs and kipper smoke, the 199 steps climbing to abbey and clifftop church.

North Yorkshire

England's great walled cathedral city, the Minster rising over the timbered lean of the Shambles and a two-mile rampart above the Ouse.

North Yorkshire

The gritstone 'plague village' that quarantined itself in 1665-66, its cottages still marked with the names of the dead.

Derbyshire

Windrush-side village where low stone bridges step across the river through a long green, earning it the tag 'Venice of the Cotswolds'.

Gloucestershire

The cradle of the factory system, where Richard Arkwright built the world's first water-powered cotton mill in 1771.

Derbyshire

Steep cobbled Main Street climbing to the parsonage where the Brontes wrote, the moors of Wuthering Heights beginning at the top.

West Yorkshire

England's best-preserved medieval wool town, a tilting crush of timber-framed houses round a Tudor guildhall and one of the country's grandest parish churches.

Suffolk

Faded-then-reviving bay resort with a five-mile prom, the Eric Morecambe statue and the art-deco Midland Hotel.

Lancashire

Granite fishing village on Mount's Bay whose tiny harbour, wrapped by a curving stone breakwater, glows with lights each Christmas.

Cornwall

Old smuggling village packed into a steep ravine, its whitewashed cottages and car-free lanes clustered around a small tidal harbour.

Cornwall

A former fishing port squeezed into a cleft between high cliffs, its cottages painted and Cook once apprenticed here.

North Yorkshire

Remote tarn-side hamlet reached by a single lane and a packhorse bridge, National Trust-owned in a hanging valley above Borrowdale.

Cumbria

Working harbour town with crab boats at the quay, a Georgian green and a beach of huts and pinewoods a mile north

Norfolk

Green-hearted Dartmoor village under bare tors, its granite church tower earning it the name Cathedral of the Moor.

Devon

A honey-stone and thatch village near Chesil Beach, strung along one street below its hilltop chapel, swannery and subtropical gardens.

Dorset

A shingle-beach town of pastel houses and fishermen's huts selling fresh fish, home to the Britten festival and Maggi Hambling's Scallop.

Suffolk

Handsome market town of limestone townhouses gathered below a great castle, with a famous garden and a bookshop in the old station.

Northumberland

Slate-built town at the head of Windermere, its narrow streets full of outdoor shops, cafes and the tiny Bridge House straddling Stock Beck.

Cumbria

A market town under a great castle and cathedral, tucked into a bend of the Arun with tea rooms and antique shops.

West Sussex

Historic market town in the National Forest, its Tudor castle ruins immortalised in Scott's Ivanhoe.

Leicestershire

Medway village of a medieval ragstone bridge, a working friary and old timbered houses.

Kent

Green-fringed coastal village under a towering castle, with one of England's grandest beaches sweeping north toward the Farne Islands.

Northumberland

Town built around the abbey marking the 1066 battlefield, its High Street running from the great gatehouse to the almonry garden.

East Sussex

A handsome medieval market town crowned by its great Minster and a second glorious church, St Mary's.

East Riding of Yorkshire

The most complete small Georgian town in England, rebuilt in fine brick after a 1731 fire on the banks of the River Stour.

Dorset

Sheltered north-coast harbour reached by a twisting inlet between high cliffs, with the National Trust visitor centre and Minster woods above.

Cornwall

A tidal harbour village of quays and creekside cottages, its Saxon church tied to Canute and the Bayeux Tapestry.

West Sussex

Two-tier town split by the Severn, its High Town and Low Town linked by a cliff railway and a leaning castle keep.

Shropshire

Thanet resort of seven sandy bays where Dickens holidayed, its old town above Viking Bay.

Kent

Georgian shipbuilding hamlet on the Beaulieu River.

Hampshire

Elegant spa town of Georgian crescents and a domed Opera House, England's highest market town, built on its warm mineral spring.

Derbyshire

Jane Austen's House in a picture-perfect estate village.

Hampshire

Mendip village at the mouth of its famous gorge, cheese-making since the twelfth century and gateway to the show caves.

Somerset