The wool-trading village of Lavenham, Suffolk, grew so quickly during its medieval heyday that many of its houses were built hastily with green timber, which has warped as it’s dried, pulling the buildings into memorably crooked shapes. It’s thought to be the inspiration for a familiar nursery rhyme:

There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile.
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

The Crooked House, below, a pub and restaurant in South Staffordshire, owes its shape to mining subsidence in the 19th century — one side of the building is now 4 feet lower than the other, which means that now coins roll up the bar and pints slide across seemingly flat surfaces.

“It can be really disorientating at first,” manager Dan Lewis told the Mirror. “When I first came in I didn’t have a drink because I felt so dizzy.”

(Thanks, Stefan.)