Settled owners rather than arrivals with a five year plan. About two thirds own their homes. The typical resident is in their forties. A quarter of households are one person living alone. Nobody is passing through on the way to somewhere better, which is either the entire appeal or the whole problem, depending on how old you are when you get here.
On tenure, the 2021 Census puts owner occupation at about 64%, with about 17% renting privately and about 17% renting from a social landlord. That even split between private and social renting is not the profile of a chocolate box village, and it is the clearest sign that this place has a working history rather than a decorative one.
The age profile is middle aged without being retired. The median age is 44, and about 22% of residents fall in the twenty five to forty four band. There are young families here, but they are not what sets the tone.
Household income was modelled at about £46,000 gross before tax, or about £36,000 once tax comes off, for the financial year to March 2023. That describes that year rather than this one, and it is a modelled figure for the area rather than a survey of anyone's payslip.
There are 1,111 households in total. About 25% are one person living alone, and about 14% are a pensioner living alone, which is a subset of that first figure rather than an addition to it. Couples with children account for about 20% and lone parent households about 15%. The census is the source for every population figure on this page, so all of these describe the same snapshot rather than a rolling count.
On qualifications, about 24% of residents hold a degree level qualification and about 18% hold none at all, with full time students at about 2%. That is a mixed picture rather than a ranking of anybody, and in an area where trades, farming and industry have always paid the bills, a qualification count was never going to be the most useful description of what people can actually do.
Health looks reasonable on the self reported measure, with about 80% describing their health as good or very good and about 6% describing it as bad or very bad. The wider benchmarks are measured for Cornwall as a whole rather than for this village: the council area's preventable mortality rate is similar to the England figure, and smoking prevalence is similar to the England figure too. Neither of those says anything about any individual living here, and neither should be read as a verdict on the people who do.
The community measures are the weakest part of this area's case. Incomes are modest, the national deprivation ranking places these neighbourhoods in the lower third and has not shifted since 2019, and there is no sign of the churn that usually brings money in behind it. What that buys instead is a village where people know each other because they have not gone anywhere.