Pembury belongs to people who've settled down and stopped refreshing property alerts. About seven in ten households own their home. The typical resident is in their late forties. About one household in six is a pensioner living alone. Students hardly show up. It's a village of people who've finished moving.
Every population figure on this page comes from the 2021 Census. About 72% of Pembury households own their home, outright or with a mortgage. Private renters make up about 11%, and social renters about 15%. Social housing outnumbers private lets here, which surprises anyone who assumed the village rented its spare rooms to commuters. There's no buy-to-let takeover. Those who buy here tend to stay.
The median resident is 47. Only about 21% of residents are aged 25 to 44, which is the age when people usually buy their first family home and then complain about the mortgage. Pembury does have that generation. It just has more of the people who complained about their mortgage twenty years ago and have since paid it off.
The Office for National Statistics modelled typical gross household income, before tax, at about £65,000 for the financial year to March 2023. That's a modelled figure for that year, not today's pay packets. It describes comfortable households, the kind that have a second car on the drive because they don't need to think about whether they can afford one.
The households divide in a way that fits the age. About 23% are couples with dependent children, and about 8% are lone-parent households. That's enough families to keep the primary school busy and the Saturday car boot full of child seats.
About 28% of households are a single person living alone, and about 16% of households are a pensioner living alone. The pensioners are part of the 28%, not extra. That's a large enough share of older people living on their own that the village's quiet is partly lived-in quiet: long-standing residents in houses bought for a family that has since moved away.
About 35% of residents hold a degree-level qualification, about 15% have no formal qualifications, and about 2% are full-time students. That's a broad mix of people who went to university and people who went straight into work. There's no university crowd. The students leave for somewhere with a nightlife and come back at Christmas to eat the fridge empty.
Only 139 people live in care homes and other communal settings, out of a population of 5,783. That's too few to change how the rest of these figures should be read. The shares describe the private households, and those households make up the village.
Pembury's population is a real strength: settled, comfortable and mostly owners. It suits buyers who want neighbours who stay put, and it will seem quiet to anyone who wants the neighbours out late.