Homeowners in early middle age who have stopped house-hunting. Seven in ten own their home. Household incomes are comfortable. About four in ten have a degree. It is a village of people who have already found the house and plan to stay in it.
Ownership is the defining fact of Rudloe. About 71% of households own their home, about 15% rent privately and about 12% rent from a social landlord. The for-sale sign is a rare sight, and a to-let sign rarer still. People here tend to buy in and then sit tight.
The median resident is 42, and about 26% of people are aged 25 to 44. Old enough for a mortgage and a pension plan, too young for either to be paid off. This is not a retirement village and not a starter-home estate: it sits in the middle and seems happy there.
Median household income, before tax, was modelled at about £63,500 for the financial year to March 2023. That figure is two or three years old and is an average across the local area rather than a payslip, but it describes a village where most households are managing comfortably rather than stretching.
The household mix leans towards families and couples. Across Rudloe's 1,726 households, the 2021 Census counted about 24% as couples with dependent children and about 10% as lone-parent households. About 25% of households are one person living alone, and about 11% are a pensioner living alone, a group that is part of that 25% rather than on top of it. Enough families that the school run jams the lanes, and enough people living alone that a neighbour checking in still counts for something.
Qualifications run high. About 42% of residents hold a degree-level qualification, about 11% have no formal qualifications, and about 1% are full-time students. With students at about 1%, whoever you hear on the train is not from here, if they take the train at all.
Health looks good. About 87% of residents describe their health as good or very good, and about 3% as bad or very bad. At local-authority level, Wiltshire's rate of preventable deaths is better than the England average and its smoking rate is similar to England's. Those are county figures, not Rudloe's own, but they point the same way as the local self-reported picture.
About 108 people live in communal settings rather than private households, out of a population of about 4,200. That is too few to change the shape of the other figures.
Rudloe's residents are one of its real strengths: a settled, owner-occupied, well-qualified and mostly healthy population, the sort of neighbours who notice when a bin has not gone back in.