People who did their moving some time ago. Home ownership is the default setting here, not an achievement. The typical resident has passed fifty. Close to a third of households contain exactly one person. This is not a town people pass through on the way to somewhere better, it is a town people stop in and then stay.
Every population figure here comes from the 2021 census, and the tenure split is the clearest single fact about the place: about 73% of households own their home, roughly 14% rent privately and around 13% rent socially. A town where nearly three quarters own is a town where the housing market moves slowly, neighbours know each other by default and houses come up for sale less often than in places with more churn.
On age, the median resident is about 51, and only around 20% of the population falls into the 25 to 44 band. That is the age structure of a place built for settling rather than starting out. The people who arrived in their thirties for the gardens and the drive are now in their fifties with the same gardens and the same drive.
Household income for the area came in at roughly £57,000 gross in the financial year to March 2023, which is before the tax and the pension and everything else has taken its share. After tax, the modelled figure is about £39,000. Both describe 2023 rather than this morning, and both describe an area average rather than the household next door, but the shape they give is a comfortable, two-earner, nothing-flashy sort of income.
Household make-up follows the age profile. About 31% of households are one person living alone, and roughly 19% are single pensioners, that second group being part of the first rather than an addition to it. Couples with dependent children make up about 18%, and lone parents about 8%. Families are here in real numbers, but this is not a place where school-gate households set the tone.
On qualifications, roughly 27% of residents hold a degree-level qualification and about 18% hold none at all, with full-time students at around 2%. That mix is unremarkable for a Somerset town of this size, and it describes the population rather than ranking it. What it does explain is the absence of student energy: nobody is here for a university, and the town is quieter for it.
Health reads well. About 81% of residents describe their health as good or very good, with roughly 6% describing it as bad or very bad. At Somerset level, the preventable mortality rate is better than the England benchmark and adult smoking, at about 11%, is similar to England. Those two are county-wide figures rather than this town's own, so read them as the health backdrop, not a verdict on the street.
Only 18 people live in communal establishments rather than private households, so the household figures above describe essentially the whole town rather than a filtered slice of it.
The population here is ordinary in the least insulting sense of the word: settled, owning, middle-aged and comfortable, with a real minority of renters and young families keeping it from becoming a retirement village. If you want a place with an edge, a scene or a demographic churn, this is not it, and the people who live here regard that as the entire point.