England: the Englishest

Last Friday I packed up my home-of-a-week at Charney Manor, and set off for the outside world. This is what it looked like out of my window: 

I find England very Englishy. Like, if someone wanted to make something that was not England look so English, and they were rich, maybe they could do it. But it would be a huge effort. And England just sits there effortlessly spinning off levels of Englishness at every scale that the rest of us can hardly aspire to. 

One of my favorite things about England is the food. And one of my favorite parts of the food is Marks & Spencer ready food section. I have never met another person with either of these views—and I’m not sure if I’ve met anyone who didn’t find them both actively objectionable—except my Mother, who may have recommended both originally. Yet Marks & Spencer continue to make food, and so I continue to secretly derive a non-negligible part of my excitement about flying to the other side of the world from the opportunity to eat by selecting from a cornucopia of tiny plastic single serve packets of uncomplicated, ready to eat food. Here I am about to enjoy coconut, sausages, cheese and lemonade:

Charney Manor was in a place called Charney Bassett. Another place I went through on the way to the airport was called Dorking Deepdene. I am curious whether a large fraction of English place names sound somehow silly to only me, to everyone, to all English speakers, or to everyone except English people. Were they invented back when England didn’t speak English? Are they a costly signal of Englishness that the locals are willing to put up with because it helps achieve those transcendent levels of Englishiness?