Chiddingfold is home to settled owners in mid-life who didn't buy here with their first pay packet. Three in four households own their home. Half the adults have a degree. Families with children make up a solid share of households, and older people living alone a smaller one. It's a village of people who have already done their moving and plan to stay.
At the 2021 Census, the source for every population figure here, Chiddingfold had 2,593 residents in 1,001 households. About 77% of households owned their home. About 10% rented privately and about 12% rented from a council or housing association. So social renting is slightly more common than private renting, which doesn't fit the image of a stockbroker village and is worth knowing. There's a small, settled rented population here, not just the owners of big houses.
The typical resident is about 44. Only about 21% of residents are aged 25 to 44, the years when most people buy their first home, move for work and have young children. The people here are mostly older than that. The village is past the stage of first jobs, first flats and first mortgages.
Modelled household income before tax was about £65,000 for the wider statistical area in the financial year to March 2023. It's an average for the area, not a typical street, and it describes that year, not today. It's a comfortable income. In a village where the typical house costs far more than that income could borrow, it also shows that most buyers here are using money from a previous home, not just their salary.
About 29% of households are couples with dependent children, the largest single slice of family life in the village. Lone parents make up about 8%. Those two figures together are the school run. The rest are couples whose children have left, people living alone and the mixed households every village has.
About 21% of households are one person living alone, and about 12% are a single pensioner living alone. The pensioners are part of that one-person figure, not extra to it. Put simply, the older people living alone here are mostly in houses built for families. That shows up later as downsizing, a garden that's too big to keep up, and the occasional well-kept four-bedroom house coming up for sale.
About half of adults hold a degree or equivalent, and about 10% have no formal qualifications. Only about 2% are full-time students. It isn't a student village, and the graduates are the kind who finished university a long time ago.
On the whole, Chiddingfold is a settled, comfortable village: most people own their home, most are in good health and many are well educated. There's a smaller group of renters and older people living alone who get left out when estate agents describe it.