Yes, provided the money got here before you did. Nearly eight in ten households own their home. Crime runs well below the rest of the borough. More than half the people in work do it without leaving the house. Cookham is a lovely place to live and an expensive place to arrive in, and it has no plans to apologise for the second part.
The housing is mostly houses, and mostly big ones. The council-tax valuation list covers every dwelling, and on it about 31% of Cookham's homes are detached, 25% semi-detached, 19% terraced, 12% flats and 7% bungalows. Roughly 30% were built before 1930. The energy certificates, which only cover homes assessed since 2008, are dominated by post-war property. Of those certificated homes, about 39% are rated C or better, 45% sit in band D and 16% are E or worse. About 81% heat with mains gas. Old walls next to a river were never going to win an argument with an energy assessor.
The Land Registry recorded 50 sales in the year to April 2026, at a median of about £648,000. That figure blends very different purchases. Detached houses went for a median of about £1,050,000 across 17 sales, semis about £720,000, terraces about £538,000, and flats about £350,000, though that last one rests on five sales. Band G is the most common council-tax band, and only about 6% of homes are in bands A or B. When the council's own valuation list treats Band G as normal, the asking prices are not the outlier.
Windsor and Maidenhead's typical private rent was about £1,810 a month as of April 2026. That is a borough-wide mean from the Office for National Statistics index, and it shouldn't be read as a Cookham asking rent. The same borough figures put a four-bedroom home at about £2,720 a month. About 41% of Cookham's households have four bedrooms or more, so renters here are mostly shopping at the top end of that table.
Thames Valley Police figures give Cookham a published rate of about 38 crimes per 1,000 residents in the year to May 2026, about 44% below the Windsor and Maidenhead average. When a crime does happen, the force as a whole charged someone in about 9% of cases over the same period, against about 12% nationally, and ranked 37th of 42 forces. That charge rate covers all of Thames Valley, so it says nothing about Cookham in particular. The low crime numbers come from the village. The police can't take much of the credit.
On schools, Holy Trinity CofE Primary School, Cookham Rise Primary School and Cookham Dean CofE Primary School all serve the village. The five primaries in the local postcode districts average a scaled score of 106 in Key Stage 2 maths. The one secondary counted in those districts averages an Attainment 8 score of about 48. Ofsted has graded 25 local settings. Twenty-one are good or better, two of those outstanding, while three require improvement and one is inadequate. Furze Platt Senior School and Sir William Borlase's Grammar School are both on the list of nearby secondaries, and having a grammar school in reach changes how some parents spend Year 5.
Cookham Rail Station is on the Marlow branch line, and Maidenhead Rail Station is where you change for the main line. At the 2021 census about 2% of working residents took the train to work, about 33% drove and about 57% worked from home. The 23 bus stops average about 41 weekday departures each, and every stop with timetable data has a weekend service. Superfast broadband reaches about 98% of premises but gigabit only about 60%. Every postcode gets 4G or 5G from at least one operator. For most of Cookham the commute runs down the phone line, so the gigabit gap is the transport problem that matters.
Flooding needs proper attention here. On the postcode indicators, which include surface water, about 13% of postcodes carry a high risk on at least one measure and about 23% a medium one. In the Environment Agency's river-and-sea flood zones, about 10% of postcodes are in Zone 3 and another 10% in Zone 2. The agency has 32 recorded flood events, the latest in January 2003, when the main river overtopped its channel where there were no raised defences. Put the exact address into the Environment Agency's long-term flood risk service and get an insurance quote early. On the plus side, the nearest green space averages about 150 metres away, with about nine within a kilometre. Widbrook Common, Cock Marsh and Winter Hill are all common land. The view from Winter Hill across the Thames Valley is free, which makes it unusual in Cookham.
Cookham has 64 listed buildings: three at Grade II* and 61 at Grade II, with nothing at Grade I. One conservation area, Hedsor Road and Riversdale, falls inside the area's boundary box. Changing a listed building, inside or out, needs listed building consent, and a conservation area restricts what you can do to the outside. Church Gate House is thought to have been the Abbot of Cirencester's residence when he was in town. Its owners today need permission to change windows the abbot would never have seen.
About 78% of households own their home and the typical resident is 48. The Office for National Statistics models median household income at about £74,000 before tax for the financial year to March 2023, averaged across the surrounding area. The Chartered Institute of Marketing is based at Moor Hall, in a village that has never needed much marketing.
Cookham suits buyers with equity from an earlier sale and work that doesn't need a daily train. It also suits families aiming at a well-regarded primary, and anyone who wants common land and the Thames within walking distance and will pay for the privilege. If you work from home and don't mind a flood check in your conveyancing, you'll fit in easily.
It suits first-time buyers poorly, and the same goes for anyone who needs an easy rail commute from their own front door. Renters on a borough-average budget will struggle with the house sizes. If a quick extension is part of the plan, the listed buildings and the flood maps will slow it down.
The history is longer than the commute. By the 8th century Cookham had an abbey, and Cynethryth, the widow of Offa of Mercia, was later one of its abbesses. In 2021 a University of Reading team found the abbey's site next to the parish church. In 1611 Emilia Lanier made the village the subject of the first country house poem, "Description of Cookham". Later residents include Steve Backshall, Chris Barrie, Wendy Craig and Jessica Brown Findlay. Backshall has explored some of the planet's harshest terrain, and in Cookham the British Geological Survey puts every postcode in class 3 or above for shrink-swell clay.
Cookham is a good place to live, and somewhere you need to plan your way into. Its real strength is the community: settled, mostly owner-occupied, healthy and well-off. The weak spot is value. Every room is priced as though the village knows it would sell anyway, and so far it has.