Denham is a pretty village with an unpretty crime rate of about 94 crimes per 1,000 residents, and that number matters more to a buyer than the church, the golf club and the aerodrome put together. Most of the rest holds up, and some of it is very good. Green space is a short walk from almost every front door. The crime figure is the part a buyer has to price in before signing anything.
Thames Valley Police data puts Denham's published crime rate at about 94 per 1,000 people for the year to May 2026, roughly 44% above the Buckinghamshire average of about 65. The mix differs from the national pattern. Vehicle crime made up about 11% of recorded offences, against 5% across England and Wales, and criminal damage and arson about 11%, against 7%. The totals are small enough that a few incidents can move those shares by several points, so they describe this year more than they describe the village. Across the whole force, about 9% of crimes ended in a charge over the same twelve months, against about 12% nationally. That figure covers all of Thames Valley Police, but it is the one that tells you how often a crime report goes anywhere.
The Land Registry recorded 12 sales in the year to May 2026, at a median of about £540,000. That headline blends two different purchases: six semi-detached houses went for a median of about £615,000 and three flats for about £320,000. Most homes fall in council-tax band D, and only about 1% are in bands A or B. Band D costs about £2,530 a year here. Rent is harder to pin to the village, because the only figure comes from Buckinghamshire as a whole, where typical private rent was about £1,470 a month as of April 2026, up 5% on the year.
The housing has no one type that dominates. On the council-tax valuation list, detached and semi-detached houses each make up about 23% of homes, flats about 20%, bungalows about 18% and terraces about 17%. About 23% of homes were built before 1930. Among homes with an energy certificate, about half are in band D, a third in bands A to C, and about 16% in E or worse. About 77% heat with mains gas and about 9% with electricity alone. A bungalow share that high says plenty about who bought here first, and how long they planned to stay.
Flood risk is limited, though it isn't zero. About 2% of postcodes are in the Environment Agency's river-and-sea flood zone 2, and none are in zone 3. A broader set of postcode indicators also counts surface water, and on that measure about 7% of postcodes are flagged high risk on at least one indicator and about 27% medium. The second measure catches what the river map leaves out, so the two can disagree without either being wrong.
Denham Rail Station has direct trains to London Marylebone and High Wycombe, and Denham Golf Club Rail Station is also on the doorstep. Even so, only about 2% of working residents took the train to work in 2021. About 44% drove and 40% worked from home. About half of households run two or more cars, so the low train share is no mystery. There are 13 bus stops, with an average of about 42 weekday departures per stop, and every stop with timetable data also gets a weekend service. Gigabit broadband reaches about 87% of premises and superfast about 97%, and all the mobile operators cover about 98% of the area. About 98% of postcodes are close to road noise of 65 decibels or more. Junction 1 of the M40 is what makes the drive so easy, and it is also why you can hear it.
About 68% of households own their home and the typical resident is 43. The Office for National Statistics models gross household income for the wider area at about £59,000 for the financial year to March 2023. It is a comfortable, settled kind of place.
Heritage takes up more of the village than its size suggests. There are 45 listed buildings: two at grade I, one at grade II* and 42 at grade II. Denham also has its own conservation area. Owners of a listed building need consent for alterations, and the conservation area tightens what can change on the outside of everything else in it. Domesday recorded the village as Deneham in 1086, and nearly a thousand years later the paperwork still has to be filed before anyone changes a window.
For schools, Denham Village School and Denham Green E-ACT Primary Academy are the local primaries, and the two primary schools in the district averaged a Year 6 maths score of about 105. Ofsted has graded 80 of 94 settings across Buckinghamshire good or outstanding, 19 of them outstanding, but that is a county-wide count and says nothing about a particular gate. Harefield School is the secondary on the local list. The Department for Transport's 2019 model put the nearest secondary about 25 minutes away by public transport, and services may have changed since.
The surroundings are where Denham earns its keep. The nearest green space is about 140 metres from the average home, with about 11 within a kilometre, and water is about 370 metres away. Broadwater Park is among the open spaces close by. Walking the dog here takes no planning at all.
The village has always drawn people who had made it and wanted a hedge between themselves and the public. Raymond Baxter, the television presenter, lived here until 1978. Mary Hayley Bell, the actress and writer married to Sir John Mills, lived in Denham from 1975 until her death in 2005. Brian Connolly, who sang with Sweet, lived here until he died in 1997.
The right buyer wants a semi or a bungalow, fields close by, a fast drive, and a heritage village they can show off to visitors, and doesn't mind locking the car every night. Anyone who expects a place to be safe because it looks safe will find the crime figures hard to live with, and should look elsewhere.
Every day you will use the green space, because it starts almost at the door. The crime rate is what you think about when the car stays out overnight, and in Denham it is high enough that you will think about it. That leaves Denham a reasonable, middle-of-the-road place to live, and with the motorway that close, the phrase is fairly literal.