Sole Street

SOLE STREET is deceptively small and, because it is very rural, it can be rather expensive. It has a shop known as The Little Shop, and a pub called The Railway. The Tudor Yeoman’s House is owned by the National Trust, though you have to make a written request to see it. Houses rarely come on the market. A brick-built semi-detached house with a large garden, within walking distance of the station, would be around £300,000; a four-bedroom modern detached house over £500,000.

Cobham is a pretty north Kent village in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty on the crest of a hill. The big house, Cobham Hall, is a girls’ boarding school, but the grounds – landscaped by Repton – and the deer park are open to the public in summer. The house is a popular film location and featured in the BBC’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House. The Street has a good range of 18th-century houses, some Victorian and some weatherboarded, as well as a village hall and three pubs, including the Leather Bottle, which Dickens used as a setting in Pickwick Papers. There is also a Victorian flint primary school and a general store. A one-bedroom flat in a Victorian terrace will cost upwards of £95,000. A modern, detached five-bedroom house will be at least £450,000.