Settled owners in their fifties, and more of them living alone than most people would guess. Around three-quarters own their homes. Roughly one household in three is a single person. Couples with children are outnumbered by them. This is a place full of people who have already done the family part rather than people in the middle of it.
On tenure, about 74% of households across the Ilminster area own their home, with roughly 14% renting privately and about 11% in social housing. Renting here is less a lifestyle stage than a queue, and anyone hoping to test the town for a year before buying is competing for a small pool of property against people who need it rather than fancy it.
The age profile follows from that. The median resident is 52, and the 25 to 44 band accounts for about 19% of the population. That is the age group most other places rely on to fill flats, staff the pubs and generate noise complaints, and here it is a minority interest.
Household income was modelled at about £53,000 gross, before tax, for the financial year to March 2023. That figure describes a period now some way behind the current housing numbers, so treat it as the shape of local earnings rather than a live salary survey.
Household composition, from the 2021 census that underpins every population figure on this page, is where the town gets genuinely distinctive. About 30% of households are one person living alone, and roughly 18% of all households are a pensioner living alone, that pensioner group being part of the single-person figure rather than an addition to it. Couples with dependent children make up about 16%, and lone parents about 7%. Set that against a housing stock where three and four-bedroom homes dominate, and a decent share of this town is one person rattling around in a house built for five.
On qualifications, about 32% of residents hold a degree-level qualification and roughly 16% hold none at all, which is a wider spread than the postcard version of a Somerset market town implies. Full-time students account for about 1% of the population, so nothing here runs on a term timetable and nobody's parking arrangements collapse in October.
Health reads well. Around 81% of residents describe their health as good or very good, with about 4% reporting bad or very bad health. Widening out to Somerset as a whole, the local authority's preventable mortality rate is better than the England benchmark, and smoking prevalence, at about 11%, is similar to England. Those two are county-level measures with a national comparison attached, not readings taken on any particular street.
Almost everyone counted here lives in an ordinary house rather than an institution: just 117 residents across the area live in communal establishments, so the household figures describe effectively the whole population.
Who lives here comes out as thoroughly ordinary in the statistical sense, which is neither a compliment nor a complaint. Comfortable, older, overwhelmingly owner-occupied and healthier than the county average, with no particular concentration of advantage or disadvantage to argue about. It is a town that will feel entirely normal to anyone over fifty and slightly like a waiting room to anyone under thirty.