Stonehouse is mostly home-owning households in middle age, earning middling incomes and living in family-sized houses. About two in three own their home. The typical resident is in their early forties. Fewer than one in three hold a degree. It is a town of people with steady jobs and settled lives, more comfortable than flush.
At the 2021 census, which is the source of every population figure here, about 68% of households owned their home, about 13% rented privately and about 17% rented from a council or housing association. Stonehouse has more social tenants than private ones, which gives it a broader mix than the commuter villages around it, where social renting is rare.
The median age is 43, and about 25% of residents are aged 25 to 44. That puts the town at the stage where the mortgage is being paid down but has not yet disappeared, and the main use of the second bedroom is still being argued over.
The Office for National Statistics models gross household income, before tax, at about £54,000 for the financial year to March 2023, averaged across the town's three middle-layer neighbourhoods. That is enough to run a semi with two cars on the drive and still worry about the energy bills, and since it describes income from a few years ago, wages have moved on since.
About 29% of households are one person living alone, and within that group about 15% of all households are a pensioner living alone. Couples with dependent children make up about 20% of households, and lone parents about 10%. Many of the three-bedroom semis built after the war were bought for families who have since grown up, and their third bedroom now holds an exercise bike and a mountain of Christmas decorations.
About 31% of adults hold a degree or equivalent, about 17% have no formal qualifications, and only about 2% of residents are full-time students. That spread fits a town that has always mixed skilled work and trades with office jobs. In 1558 two local clothiers bought the manor, and the town has been run by people who make things, in one way or another, ever since.
Of the town's 9,915 residents, 343 live in communal establishments such as care homes rather than in private households, and the area has three care homes. That group is too small to move the figures above much, and with no university or barracks in the town, there are no halls of residence or military quarters distorting the averages.
Stonehouse is a middling, ordinary place for its population mix: not wealthy, not deprived, and largely made up of working households with mortgages and grown or growing children.