Bridport is a town of homeowners in later middle age, and none of the household data tries to disguise it. Two in three own their homes. The typical resident is in their mid-fifties. Close to four in ten households are one person living alone. Anyone arriving expecting a young coastal town will be adjusting their expectations somewhere between the car park and the high street.
On the 2021 census, which is the source for the population figures throughout this answer, about 66% of households own their home, about 17% rent privately and about 17% rent from a social landlord. A third of households here rent from somebody, and that renting splits almost evenly between the two kinds of landlord, so the rental market is not purely a private one.
The median age is 56. The share aged 25 to 44, the years when people are usually buying a first home and filling it with children, is about 17%. Those two numbers between them account for most of what a visitor notices, starting with how calm the place is at eleven on a Wednesday morning.
Modelled household income for the area came to about £45,700 gross, before tax, in the financial year to March 2023, or about £35,300 once tax is taken off. That describes that year rather than this one, and it is an average modelled for the area, not a payslip from any particular street.
Household make-up follows straight on from the age profile. About 38% of households are a single person, and about 22% of all households are a pensioner living alone, that second group sitting inside the first rather than beside it. About 12% are a couple with dependent children, and about 9% are a lone parent with them. Households of one are the defining shape of this town, and that shapes everything from what size of property actually sells to how much noise a Saturday night is allowed to make before somebody rings the council.
On qualifications, about 31% of residents hold a degree-level qualification and about 18% hold none at all, with full-time students at about 1%. That is a broad spread of educational backgrounds rather than a graduate enclave or a town that never went, and the student share confirms what everyone already knows, which is that the colleges are all somewhere else.
Self-reported health from the same census has about 78% of residents describing their health as good or very good, and about 6% describing it as bad or very bad. The broader health measures are published for the Dorset local authority rather than for the town: preventable mortality across Dorset is rated better than the England average, and adult smoking, at about 10%, is rated similar to England. Those are county numbers and deserve to be read as county numbers rather than as a verdict on this street.
Almost everyone here lives in a private household. The 86 residents recorded in communal establishments are too few to move any of the shares above.
The population here sits squarely in the middle of the range, and it is settled rather than shifting: older than most places, comfortable rather than moneyed, and stable enough that nobody moving in is going to change the town's mind about itself.