People who have finished moving house. Three-quarters own the roof over their heads. The typical resident is well into their fifties, and a third of households are one person living alone. Children are a minority pursuit here. This is a town of settled householders, and everything from the bungalow stock to the timetable of the day has arranged itself around them.
About 74% of households own their home, with roughly 16% renting privately and about 10% in social housing. Ownership at that level sets the tempo of a place. Turnover is slow, neighbours stay put, and the street does not recast itself every September.
The median age is 56. Only about 16% of residents fall in the 25 to 44 band, the age group most towns quietly depend on for their weekday momentum, and that gap is the clearest single fact about who lives here.
Median household income before tax ran at about £42,400 in the financial year to March 2023, a modelled figure describing that year rather than this one. After tax, the equivalent comes to about £35,150. Both are area averages rather than a salary anybody is actually handed.
The Census in 2021, which is the source for every population figure on this page, counted about 34% of households as one person living alone and about 21% as a single pensioner, the second group sitting inside the first rather than beside it. Couples with children account for about 14%, and lone-parent households about 7%. This is a town built out of small households, which is why the housing stock is what it is and why the schools are somebody else's concern for most of the people paying council tax.
About 28% of residents hold a degree-level qualification, about 19% have no qualifications at all, and roughly 2% are full-time students. That is a wide spread rather than a narrow one, and it describes a population that arrived here by a lot of different routes and for mostly the same reason.
Of roughly 5,900 residents, about 110 live in communal establishments such as care homes rather than private households, so the household shares above describe the 5,826 people in ordinary homes. Small enough not to distort the picture, large enough to be worth stating rather than glossing over.
Who lives here is neither the town's headline attraction nor its weak point: an older, settled, largely owner-occupying population, comfortable without being well off, stable without being sealed shut.