Yes, if you have made peace with the car. Eight in ten homes are owned outright or on a mortgage. The typical resident is closer to sixty than forty. Nearly two-thirds drive to work and almost nobody catches a train. This is not a village that got quiet by accident, and the people who live here would prefer you kept it that way.
The housing stock explains most of what the village feels like. On the council-tax valuation list, which covers every dwelling rather than only the ones sold recently, 36% are detached and 28% are bungalows, with terraces down at 7% and flats at 5%. That is a village built for people who wanted a plot and a bit of distance from the neighbours, and 26% of it went up before 1930. The energy certificates put the largest group in band D, at 44%, with 27% at band E or worse and only 29% reaching band C or above. Heating is the fact worth knowing before you view rather than after: 41% are on mains gas, which leaves the rest on oil, bottled gas or electricity, and 13% run on electricity alone. An electric-only bungalow with a band E certificate is a specific kind of winter, and it will not be the estate agent who mentions it.
Prices are what south Cornwall does to anywhere with fields around it. The Land Registry's last twelve months, to late January 2026, recorded 17 sales at a median of £310,000. Detached homes made up 12 of those at a median of £321,000, semi-detached four at £210,000, which is the entire spread of the village in two numbers. Council tax lands most dwellings in band D, and 31% sit in bands A or B, so the bill at the bottom of the range is genuinely lower than the sale prices suggest. Seventeen sales in a year is a thin market. If you want a particular thing here, you wait for it.
Renting is harder to pin to the village itself, because the reliable figure is the Cornwall-wide one: typical private rent across the Cornwall area runs at about £1,000 a month, up 5% over the year to April 2026. That is the county, not this postcode, and in a place where four in five homes are owner-occupied the rental market is whatever happens to come free.
On safety, the published rate is 34 crimes per thousand people over the twelve months to May 2026, which sits roughly 54% below the Cornwall average. That is the strongest number on the page and it is not a close call. Violence and sexual offences make up 45% of the total against 35% nationally, but the base is 102 recorded crimes across a year, low enough that a handful of incidents shift a share by several points. Reading a percentage mix off a hundred-odd crimes tells you less than the headline rate does.
Connectivity is where the arithmetic turns against you. Nobody in the travel-to-work figures takes a train and 0.4% take a bus, against 63% who drive and 27% who work from home. The nearest station is St Austell, and the Department for Transport's modelled times put the town centre at 11 minutes by car, 27 by public transport, and 51 on foot. Ten bus stops serve the village, averaging eight scheduled weekday departures each, with all ten getting some weekend service. Broadband is the compensation and it is a real one: gigabit-capable coverage reaches 90% of premises, superfast reaches all of them, and no premises sit below the universal service obligation. Mobile reception from at least one operator is effectively universal. The house works. Getting out of it is a driving question.
The environment is the reason people put up with the driving. Green space averages 173 metres from a postcode here, with nearly seven separate sites within a kilometre, and water is about 237 metres away. There is no Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty designation, no Site of Special Scientific Interest and no ancient woodland inside the boundary, which in Cornwall is unusual and means the landscape here is working countryside rather than protected countryside. Flooding is the weak point and it needs labelling carefully, because two different measures apply. On the postcode indicators, which include surface water, 18% of postcodes carry a high rating on at least one measure and 32% a medium one. In the Environment Agency's river-and-sea flood zones, the numbers are smaller: 4% of postcodes fall in zone 3 and 7% in zone 2, rising to 14% once climate allowance is applied. Surface water, not the sea, is the thing to ask about, and the sea is over three kilometres away in any case. The other ground fact worth carrying to a survey is radon: every postcode in the village sits in the highest band, and abandoned mine workings run under all of them, with as many as six directly underneath. This is a former mining village and it has not stopped being one underground.
Heritage will not get in your way. There are two listed buildings, both grade two, and no conservation area or scheduled monument inside the village boundary. Compared with most of Cornwall that is close to a free hand on windows, extensions and solar panels, subject to the ordinary planning rules like anywhere else.
The character follows from the ownership. 81% own their homes, the median age is 57, and modelled household income for the area runs at about £46,000 gross before tax in the financial year to March 2023. Nearly a third of households are one person, and one in five is a single pensioner. It is a settled village where people have been in the same house for a long time and intend to stay.
It suits a family or a couple who want a detached house with a garden, are comfortable driving to everything, and will use the broadband to work from the spare room. It suits someone downsizing into a bungalow who wants the countryside without a heritage officer's opinion on their front door.
It does not suit anyone who needs a train, a bus that runs when they want it, or a shop open after six. It does not suit a buyer who wants choice, because a market this small hands you what is available rather than what you pictured.
Polgooth is a good place to live, and the reason is the ground it sits on: the green space and the working countryside around it are its real strength, close enough to walk into on any given morning. The weak spot is water on the surface, and it is worth a specific question to a surveyor rather than a general worry. Everything else here is a trade you can see coming from the driveway.