People who already own their house and have no plans to move again. Seven in ten own. The typical resident is closer to fifty than forty. Better than a quarter of households are one person on their own. Most people here made their housing decision a while ago and it stuck. This is not a place people pass through; it is a place they land in.
Around 72% of homes are owner-occupied and about 20% are privately rented, with a further 6% in social housing. In a county where holiday letting distorts a lot of local markets, that ownership level tells you the housing here is mostly lived in by the people who own it.
The census in 2021, which is the source for the population figures on this page, put the median age at about 47. The 25 to 44 age band accounts for roughly 21% of residents, which is the age group most likely to be arriving with young children and the group least represented here. That combination produces the texture of the place: not retired, not young, mostly the stretch of life where people have stopped moving house for fun.
Household income runs to roughly £47,600 gross, before tax, modelled for the financial year to March 2023 rather than for today. A separate net measure puts household income after tax at about £38,000 for the same kind of household. Neither figure says anything about wealth held in a paid-off house, which in a village with this much ownership is a substantial part of the picture that income statistics never catch.
On household make-up, about 28% are single people living alone, and roughly 16% are pensioners living alone, that second figure being a subset of the first rather than an addition to it. Couples with dependent children account for around 18%, and lone-parent households about 10%. A village with more than a quarter of households living alone and a median age of 47 is a village with a quiet weekday.
Qualifications spread widely. Around 34% of residents hold degree-level qualifications, about 12% hold none at all, and roughly 2% are full-time students. That is a broad spread of educational backgrounds rather than a sorted one, which is increasingly unusual in expensive rural places.
Self-reported health is good: about 84% describe their health as good or very good, and around 4% as bad or very bad. Two wider measures worth stating carefully, because they cover the whole Cornwall council area rather than Probus itself: smoking prevalence is similar to the England average at roughly 12%, and the preventable mortality rate is also similar to England. Neither is a statement about the people in this village, and neither should be read as one.
Communal establishments account for just 3 residents out of about 2,565, so effectively everyone here lives in a private household and the shares above can be read at face value.
The people are one of the more reassuring things about the place: settled, mostly owning, varied in qualifications, healthy by their own account, and living in an area that sits comfortably in the less deprived end of the national ranking without being anyone's idea of exclusive.