Mostly homeowners over fifty, on solid middle-income money. Seven in ten households own their home. The median age sits at about 50. Household income runs at around £61,000. About a third of households are single-person, with around a fifth of those being single pensioners. This is a village whose demographics describe a settled, mid-career-to-retirement population that's been in West Sussex long enough to own the house outright.
Tenure does most of the explaining. Around 70% of households are owner-occupiers, which is well above the national average and the sharpest indicator of how stable the resident base is. The renting picture splits roughly evenly between private and social: about 12% of households rent privately and about 15% rent socially, for a total renting share of about a quarter. The high social-rental figure for a village of this size is what stops the demographic profile reading as straightforwardly affluent: the housing mix carries an older social-housing footprint alongside the private homes, and that combination has been part of the village character for a long time.
The age profile leans older. A median age of about 50 tells you that the village skews towards mid-career and early-retirement adults, with the share of working-age people in the 25-44 bracket sitting at about 20%. That figure is low compared with a market-town average, which is what you would expect for a Sussex village that doesn't have the train station to attract early-career commuters. The under-fifties who are here are mostly already in established households rather than passing through.
Money sits in the comfortable middle. Typical household income runs at about £61,000, which is a respectable South East figure and consistent with the village sitting in the most-prosperous quintile of England on the deprivation index. The unemployment share is low. The degree-level qualification share runs at about 35%, which is solidly above the national average and reflects the kind of professional and semi-retired population the housing market filters in. The income figure isn't London-money and isn't trying to be: it's the income level of established Sussex households who priced into the village a decade or more ago.
The household make-up is mixed in the way villages of this size usually are. About a third of households are single-person, a fifth of which are pensioners living alone. Couples with children account for around 18% of households, lone-parent households for about 10%, and the rest are couples without children at home, larger family groups and shared adult arrangements. The single-person share is on the high side for a village, which is partly the pensioner footprint and partly reflects the smaller terrace and flat stock at the lower end of the property market.
Above average, in the prosperity-and-stability sense. A village of mostly settled owners, mid-life to retirement, with enough renting and enough mixed household types to keep it from reading as monoculture.