Stone-and-thatch cottages, long gravel drives, cars that skew Volvo estate rather than anything flashy — Appleton reads as the kind of village people move to once they've decided commuting further is a price worth paying for a garden and some quiet. There's no high street to speak of, just under two hundred people spread thinly across it, and the sense of a place built around houses rather than shops. The numbers back up that first impression of comfortable, settled money. A median house price of £640,000 against a national figure of £281,000 puts Appleton firmly in the well-off bracket, and even against its own district — Vale of White Horse, no slouch itself — homes here run 68% higher. The property market is almost entirely detached houses bought freehold outright, no new-builds in the mix, which tells you this is a place people buy into for decades rather than flip. Appleton Church of England Primary, rated Good, is the anchor for family life; with a median age pushing 49, though, this reads more as a village for households well past the school run than one full of young families. Green space is modest in scale — five pockets totalling under two hectares — but that's typical of a village this size rather than a shortfall, and the rhythm of life here leans on the surrounding countryside as much as anything formally mapped. There isn't a restaurant scene to speak of, and healthcare and shopping trips mean heading elsewhere; this is a place you drive out from, not one that keeps you in. Full-fibre broadband reaches about two-thirds of homes, which matters if working from home is part of the plan. The one figure that jars against all this calm is safety, and it jars in a good way: an A+ grade, with the crime total for the year sitting at just two incidents. Violence and sexual offences top the breakdown by share, but the raw counts across the board are low enough that they read as noise rather than pattern. Transport is rated strongly too, with a dozen stops serving the village, though this is a place better suited to those who drive than those chasing a rail commute. Appleton suits people who've already made peace with a quieter, costlier, older kind of life — not somewhere you'd land for the buzz, but somewhere you'd stay for the quiet.