Havant

HAVANT, too, is fairly sedate. It lies inland from Langstone Harbour, which is a popular sailing and watersports centre with good moorings and sailing clubs. The town is also well placed to take advantage of the cultural riches offered by Chichester, ten miles to the east. Another major attraction is the old shore path (part of which is the Solent Way) to Warblington and Emsworth, running past Hayling Island and a much-prized area of marsh and mudflats designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The older part of Havant is now masked by modernity, notably by the Meridian shopping centre, with library and multi-storey car park en suite. A short walk away is The Parchment, so called because the modern flats and mews houses here are built on the site of an old parchment-making works. A two-bedroom flat will cost £150,000; a four-bedroom house with two bathrooms £250,000. More up-market areas are Meadowlands and Wade Court, both within half a mile of the town centre. Individually designed detached houses with four and five bedrooms, built in the Twenties and Thirties with plush gardens, sell for between £450,000 and £750,000.

A mile to the east are Warblington and Denvilles, comforting Thirties’ suburbs with new accretions where three-bedroom detached houses with large gardens sell for around £230,000 and humble three-bedroom semis can come as cheap as £175,000. A four-bedroom detached house on a Seventies’ estate would fetch between £230,000 and £250,000. Warblington prices may be slightly higher. For sea views look at Emsworth, once famed for its oysters, which has foreshore properties with price tags at over £1m. Or cross the causeway to Hayling Island where you find unadulterated English seaside with a mix of post-war bungalows and large houses at £120,000 to £1m with boat yards and sailing clubs at the end of sandy lanes.