Eltham is a suburb with parks on most corners. The nearest green space is a couple of minutes from most front doors. The back gardens are real gardens. The high street has a lot of shops and very few pubs. People move here for the grass, and they get plenty of it.
The average home in Eltham is about 140 metres from public green space, with about 25 green spaces within a kilometre. Avery Hill, Sutcliffe Park, The Tarn, Well Hall Pleasaunce and Horn Park all hold Green Flag status, and the signposted Green Chain Walks link them so you can cross a fair stretch of south-east London without leaving the grass. Shooter's Hill rises to the north, and Severndroog Castle, restored in 2014, has an observation platform that looks out over the lot. Parents here have no excuse for a child who hasn't seen a duck.
Water is about 500 metres away on average, with about 16 bodies of water within a kilometre. Most are small: the Quaggy along the south-west edge, the lake at The Tarn in Mottingham feeding the Little Quaggy, the wetlands at Sutcliffe Park and the Shuttle rising in Avery Hill Park. The Thames is a couple of kilometres past the northern edge of town, and it doesn't play much part in local life.
The National Cycle Network is about 4.8 kilometres away on average, and no part of Eltham is close to it, so leisure cycling here means the parks and the green chain more than any signed route. A stretch of woodland off to the north-east survived the 1990s because campaigners took a planned road all the way to the European Court of Justice, which found the government had failed to assess its environmental impact properly. The woodland outlasted the road scheme.
The rated-premises list counts 506 shops, 21 restaurants and just 12 pubs in Eltham. Eltham High Street, one of London's major centres, is a shopping street first. A Friday night out tends to mean a restaurant table, or a train somewhere livelier.
Fine-particle air pollution across the Royal Borough of Greenwich averaged about 9 micrograms per cubic metre in 2024.
Eltham's character comes from its plateau. The High Street runs along the top, the palace stands on the edge of a scarp to the west, and from that edge you can see across south London. Below and around it are the interwar streets of Mottingham, New Eltham and Avery Hill, laid out in long rows of semis with the parks between them. The palace has been here since medieval kings used it, and the rest of Eltham grew up around its grounds.
Private outdoor space is generous. Eltham's neighbourhoods have about 71,000 square metres of garden for every 1,000 residents, which in London terms means proper back gardens, long enough for a shed, a lawn and an argument about who mows it. The parks are a bonus on top of a garden most people already have.
The valuation list holds 1,018 rateable premises across Eltham, with about 500 of them classed as shops and about 90 as offices. These are premises on the council-tax list for businesses, so some may be empty at any given moment. Even so, it is a town centre with a real retail base, and the office count shows that some local jobs are within walking distance.
Of the 354 food premises with a hygiene rating, about 83% hold the top score of five and about 1% are at the bottom end. Eltham's kitchens are, on the whole, clean.
No area of outstanding natural beauty, site of special scientific interest or ancient woodland overlaps Eltham. Its green space is made of parks, playing fields and managed open land, protected by being in public hands and well used.
The surroundings are one of Eltham's real strengths: a park close to almost every street, a proper garden behind most houses, and a high street that covers the weekly shop, if not the night out.