Combe Martin is a village of settled owner-occupiers well past the middle of their working lives. Three in four households own the roof over their heads. One household in three contains one person. The typical resident has turned fifty. The 25 to 44 bracket, the one that fills school gates and commuter trains, is the thinnest part of the population. Nobody arrives here to launch a career, and the numbers have stopped pretending otherwise.
The census of 2021 is the source for the population figures here, and it puts owner-occupation at about 74%, with roughly 21% renting privately and around 5% in social housing. That ownership level is high, and in a village with 705 holiday-let premises on the ownership records it means the housing that is not being lived in by its owner is more likely to be let by the week than by the year.
On age, the median resident is 54. The 25 to 44 age group makes up about 16% of the population, which is the single most telling figure on this page. A place where only one resident in six is in that band is a place where the working-age churn has largely stopped and the population turns over through moves in and moves out rather than through people growing up and staying.
Household income runs at roughly £44,500 gross, before tax, and that figure is a modelled estimate describing the financial year to March 2023 rather than what anyone is earning this month. The modelled net figure, after tax, comes to about £37,400. Neither is a wage. It is total household income, which in a village with this many retired residents includes pensions and investment income alongside earnings.
Household composition follows the age profile exactly. Around 30% of households are a single person living alone, and about 17% of all households are a single pensioner, that group being a subset of the first rather than an addition to it. Couples with dependent children account for roughly 14%, and lone-parent households about 8%. Put plainly, the number of households here with children in them is smaller than the number containing one older person on their own.
On qualifications, about 29% of residents hold a degree-level qualification and roughly 19% hold none at all. Full-time students make up around 1%, which is what you would expect somewhere with no university within reach and a secondary school in the next town. That is a mixed profile rather than a polarised one, and it describes a working population that built its living locally rather than through a graduate pipeline.
Almost everyone here lives in an ordinary household. Of a population of 3,085, just 15 people live in communal establishments, so every share above describes essentially the whole village rather than a filtered slice of it.
On the demographic and deprivation picture, Combe Martin sits below average. Incomes are modest, the qualification mix is unremarkable, and the age profile leans hard towards people who have finished working rather than people building towards it. That is not a criticism of anyone living here. It is simply what a beautiful, remote, expensive-to-reach coastal village does to its own population over thirty years.