Melksham is middle-aged and owns its house. Seven in ten households are owner-occupiers. The typical resident is in their early forties. Roughly one household in five is a couple with children. It's a town in the middle of the mortgage, in every sense.
About 70% of households own their home. About 13% rent privately and 16% rent from a social landlord. With that few private renters, buy-to-let hasn't taken over Melksham, and the landlords on the local forums are a minority, whatever their posting rate suggests.
The median age is 43, and about 25% of residents are between 25 and 44. That's a town with a solid core of working-age adults, and plenty of people either side who have views on parking.
Household income across the area is modelled at about £54,000 a year before tax. That figure covers the financial year to March 2023, so it describes the recent past rather than this year's pay packets, and it's a gross figure, before tax and deductions. It's a comfortable working-town income, the kind that runs a family car and argues about whether it needs a second one.
Everyday life follows ordinary household patterns. About 10% of households are headed by a lone parent, which is a practical fact about childcare, school runs and household budgets, and nothing more.
The full picture comes from the 2021 Census, the source for every population figure here. About 30% of households are one person living alone, and within that group about 14% of all households are a pensioner living alone. Couples with children make up about 20% of households. The mix is broad: family homes, retired homes and single households on the same streets, with no single group dominating the town.
On qualifications, about 24% of adults hold a degree and about 18% have no formal qualifications. Only about 2% of residents are full-time students. There's no university crowd here, and nobody keeps a rota for the drinking games. The mix is practical, and it's the qualification profile of a working town.
About 81% of residents describe their health as good or very good. For the wider Wiltshire council area, preventable mortality is better than the England average and smoking is similar to it, at about 8% of adults. Those are local-authority figures compared with England, not Melksham's own, and they describe the county's health rather than any one street's.
Who lives in Melksham is middling in the plainest sense: settled owners, working families and older residents living side by side, with nobody claiming the town for their own group.