Woodstock is home to settled, well-educated, middle-aged owners with comfortable incomes. Two thirds own their home. The typical resident is in their mid-forties. Over half hold a degree. It is a town of people who have finished climbing the ladder and now stand at the top admiring the palace wall.
Every population figure here comes from Census 2021. About 66% of Woodstock's households own their home, about 22% rent privately and about 10% rent from a council or housing association. Private renting at that level gives the town a working lettings market, and the town still belongs to the people who own the front doors.
The median resident is 46, and about 23% of residents are between 25 and 44. Woodstock's young adults are at work in their middle years or have moved somewhere cheaper, and the twenty-somethings are mostly elsewhere. Families who arrive tend to arrive with a deposit and teenagers, and the town fills up with people who already know where they are going.
The Office for National Statistics models household income before tax at about £74,000 for the financial year to March 2023, an average for the wider statistical area that includes Bladon, Wootton, Glympton and Kiddington. That is gross money, three years old, spread across a patch that takes in estate villages, so it describes the area's comfort better than any one household's payslip. It is money that pays for the house and still leaves change for the farm shop.
About 33% of households are one person living alone, and within that about 17% are a pensioner living alone. Couples with dependent children make up about 20% of households and lone parents about 8%. The town is split fairly evenly between houses with a school bag in the hall and houses where the visitors are grandchildren. One household in six is a single pensioner, which means a fair share of Woodstock's family-sized houses have one occupant and a lot of spare bedrooms.
About 52% of residents aged 16 and over hold a degree-level qualification, about 10% hold no qualifications and about 1% are full-time students. Oxford keeps its students, and Woodstock gets them back twenty years later, with a mortgage and a view on the parking. In the 18th century the town's skilled trade was cut steel fine enough for diplomatic gifts, and the skill has shifted from steel to spreadsheets.
Woodstock's population is one of its real strengths. It is educated, comfortable and staying put, and it runs a town that would otherwise have been run by Blenheim's visitors.