Richard Smith

Like a game of village cricket on a lazy summer’s evening, Yattendon celebrates a singularly English state of mind. Pleasantly somnolent, comfortingly familiar, neat but not pristine and oh, so conservative, Yattendon finds the twentieth century eminently resistible. The houses are of weathered brick or white-washed and Tudor-timbered, and the tiny square wears its discreet emblems of local pride with a whisper of self-satisfaction. A modest woodcarving notes that Yattendon was voted Berkshire’s best-kept village in 1978 and the old oak – long since deceased – was replaced by a sapling to mark the Queen’s Silver Jubilee.