Cookham is mostly settled, comfortably off homeowners in the second half of their careers or past them. Nearly eight in ten households own their home. Around half the adults have a degree. The typical resident is closer to fifty than forty. Students barely register. Most of Cookham did the hard part some time ago.
Every population figure here comes from the 2021 census unless stated otherwise. About 78% of Cookham's households own their home, outright or with a mortgage. About 13% rent privately and about 9% rent from a council or housing association. Ownership on that scale means most homes in the village belong to the people living in them.
The median age is 48. Only about 20% of residents are aged 25 to 44, the years when most people buy their first home, and in Cookham that first purchase has usually happened somewhere else.
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. That is gross income, before tax and deductions, and it is a few years old. In Cookham, much of the wealth sits in the houses themselves, so the payslips only tell part of the story.
About 27% of households are one person living alone. A subset of those, about 15% of all households, are a single pensioner. Couples with dependent children make up about 23%, and lone-parent households about 7%. Cookham is a village of family homes, some of them still full and a fair number now down to one occupant.
About 51% of residents aged 16 and over have a degree-level qualification, about 10% have no qualifications, and only about 1% are full-time students. So half the village has a degree and hardly anyone is studying for one now, which is what happens when most people graduated years ago.
About 89% of residents describe their health as good or very good. Across Windsor and Maidenhead as a whole, the smoking rate of about 7% is better than the England average, and so is the preventable mortality rate. Those two are borough-wide figures compared against England, so they don't measure Cookham itself.
The community is one of Cookham's real strengths: settled, healthy, well educated and comfortably off. Most residents have lived in the same place for years.