Mostly settled homeowners who arrived with equity and intend to stay. Seven in ten own their home. The typical resident is in their mid-fifties. One household in five is a pensioner living alone. People come to Tenterden when they've finished climbing the property ladder, not to start.
All the population figures here come from the 2021 Census. About 73% of households own their home, about 14% rent privately and about 11% rent from a social landlord. Tenterden has its renters, but they're outnumbered by owners in every direction. The letting agent's window is short, and the estate agent's is full of houses sold with a garden and a mortgage-free buyer.
The median resident is about 55, and only about 16% of the population is aged 25 to 44. That age band usually carries the school run, the career ladder and the loft extension, and here it is thin on the ground. Evenings are quieter as a result. A late-night food spot that needs thirty-somethings to survive would struggle here, and there are no plans to find out.
Modelled household income averaged about £58,000 before tax in the financial year to March 2023. That's a picture of that year, not today's pay slips, and it is gross, before tax takes its cut. It fits a town where plenty of people are spending money they earned elsewhere, in a working life that ended some time ago or a house sale further up the country.
Households are more varied than the headline age suggests. About 31% are one person living alone, and about 20% of all households are a single pensioner living alone, which is part of that 31%, not in addition to it. About 14% are couples with children at home, and about 9% are lone parents. So the family households are there, just outnumbered by the quiet ones. Buyers with young children will find neighbours who remember the school run fondly rather than neighbours still doing it.
About 32% of residents hold a degree-level qualification, about 18% have no formal qualifications, and about 2% are full-time students. That's a broad spread, with graduates and people who left school at the first chance living on the same streets. The student share is small because there's no college here drawing young people in. They tend to leave at eighteen and come back at fifty.
Of the town's 9,035 residents, 138 live in communal settings such as care homes rather than private households. That's too few to skew the shares above. The age profile belongs to the people in ordinary houses.
Tenterden's population is middling on paper and solid in practice: owners, long stays, and a younger crowd that comes back later rather than staying on.