Cold Ash is home to settled, well-paid families who bought their house and have no plans to sell it. Nearly eight in ten own. Household incomes are high. Most adults are well qualified. The one oddity in the numbers is a boarding school full of teenagers who will not be here at Easter.
Some context first. These figures cover the Chieveley and Cold Ash ward, which is more than twice the population of Cold Ash village, and every population figure here comes from the 2021 census. At that count, about 77% of households owned their home. About 14% rented privately and about 7% rented from a council or housing association. Renting is a minority habit here, and the rental stock mostly consists of houses whose owners are temporarily somewhere else.
The typical resident is 42. That figure is pulled down by Downe House, the boarding school inside the ward, so the adult population is older than the median makes it look. People aged 25 to 44 make up about 19% of residents, which is thin for the ages when most people are buying their first home. The young adult tends to have grown up here and moved out, and comes back with washing.
Average gross household income, before tax, was about £75,000 in the financial year to March 2023. That is a modelled figure for that year rather than today, and it is the kind of number that explains the size of the cars on the drives. It also explains why the estate agents here never use the word "starter".
Couples with dependent children make up about 29% of households, and lone parents about 7%. About 18% of households are one person living alone, and within that about 9% are a single pensioner on their own. The school run and the quiet retirement share the same lanes, and both are served by the same one-bus timetable.
About 43% of residents aged 16 and over hold a degree-level qualification, and about 11% have no formal qualifications. About 2% are recorded as full-time students, but the census counts only students who also have or are looking for a job in that figure, so it misses most of the boarding-school pupils completely. The degree share is the one to notice: this is a place where the dinner-party conversation can turn to planning policy without anyone leaving.
Health is good. About 89% of residents described their health as good or very good at the census. For West Berkshire as a whole, the rate of preventable deaths is better than the England average, and the smoking rate is similar to England's. Those are council-wide figures, not Cold Ash's own.
About 925 of the ward's 8,532 residents live in communal establishments rather than private households, and most of them are the boarders at Downe House. That is large enough to bend the age figures and the student count, so read those with the school in mind; the tenure and household shares are measured on private households and stand as they are.
Cold Ash is populated by people who arrived with money, qualifications and a plan to stay, and the numbers put it comfortably in the upper tier of places to live alongside. The main thing the population lacks is people in their late twenties, and the house prices explain why.