Purton is lived in by settled owners in their middle years, most of whom arrived to stay and did. Eight in ten own their home. The typical resident is fifty. Families with children at home are outnumbered by people who have sent theirs off. It's a village that buys once and then spends thirty years on the garden.
About 78% of households own their home. Private renting accounts for about 11%, and social renting another 11%. The owners set the tone. Few people pass through Purton on the way to somewhere else, and the "for sale" board is an occasional event rather than street furniture.
The median resident is 50, and people aged 25 to 44 make up about 19% of the population. The generation that usually buys first homes, has babies and complains about nursery fees is a minority here. That shapes everything from how busy the pubs are on a Tuesday to who turns up at the parish council to object to the new houses.
Household income, modelled by the Office for National Statistics, averaged about £60,700 before tax in the financial year to March 2023. That's a gross figure and three years old, not what anyone takes home today. It describes comfortable, two-income territory more than wealth, which fits a village of well-kept semis rather than gated drives.
Every population figure here comes from Census 2021. About 26% of households are one person living alone, and within that, about 15% are pensioners on their own. Couples with dependent children make up about 18% of households, and lone parents about 8%. So there are more people living alone than couples bringing up children. The bungalows and the smaller houses are carrying as much of the village as the family homes, and anyone expecting a street full of children on bikes may find a street full of immaculate hedges instead.
About 32% of adults hold a degree-level qualification and about 16% have no formal qualifications. Full-time students make up about 2%. That's a working village of trades, offices and retirement, not a university commuter town, and nobody here is filling the street with student recycling.
About 82% of residents describe their health as good or very good. Across Wiltshire as a whole, the council area's preventable mortality rate is better than England's, and its smoking rate is similar to England's. Those are county figures with an England benchmark, not Purton's own, and they say more about the county than about the people on any particular street.
Purton's population is a strength of the place. It's stable, comfortably off and healthy, and it has no plans to go anywhere.