Cranbrook is lived in by settled homeowners in late middle age with comfortable incomes and firm views on the village hall. Seven in ten own their home. The typical resident is nearly fifty. Fewer than one in five are in the 25 to 44 bracket. People tend to arrive in Cranbrook established rather than start out here.
About 69% of households in the Cranbrook area own their home. Private renting accounts for about 15% and social renting for about 14%. That's a place of buyers who stay, where a "To Let" board gets more attention on the street than it would in most towns.
The typical resident is 48, and only about 18% of people are aged 25 to 44. That's the age group that is busy building careers somewhere with a railway station, and the area feels its absence at the school gate and in the pub on a Friday. The rest of the town is old enough to remember when the bank had a manager and young enough to still be writing to the council about it.
Modelled household income before tax was about £62,000 in the financial year to March 2023. That's a gross figure for the whole household, averaged across the area, and it reflects that year rather than today. It describes a population that is comfortable, not rich, living among houses that cost a good deal more than a salary like that would buy.
The 2021 Census, which is the source for every population figure below, shows a mixed set of households. About 27% of households are one person living alone, and within that group about 15% of all households are pensioners living alone. Couples with dependent children make up about 20% and lone parents about 9%. So for every household with children at home, there's a quieter one where the most urgent weekly decision is whether the hedge needs cutting.
On qualifications, about 38% of residents hold a degree-level qualification and about 14% have none. Full-time students are about 1%, which makes sense in a town with a grammar school and no university, where teenagers study here and then leave to do it somewhere else.
About 1,021 residents live in communal settings rather than private households, which here means boarding schools and care homes. It's enough to note but not enough to change how the other figures read. For part of the year, some of Cranbrook's residents are thirteen and have a housemaster.
Who lives in Cranbrook is an ordinary, middling mix: comfortable, settled and a little older than average, with not much at either extreme.