Bigbury-on-Sea
Village · 109 residents
68Good
Good · better than 7 in 10 villages
Check Local Score out of 100 · 60 is typical for the country
Each arc is a topic, coloured by its score
What’s good
- Less recorded crime than is typical: 64 per 1,000 people a year against 100
- Transport scores 75, well above the typical 60
Check before you view
- Radon: part of the area is in an affected zone, and a home test is cheap
- Infrastructure scores 37, below the typical 60
The essentials
Everyday life
The area
Around Bigbury-on-Sea
Map outline: Official built-up area
Is Bigbury-on-Sea a good place to live?
Bigbury-on-Sea scores 68/100 overall, which the scorecard rates as good — 60 is typical for the country.
It stands out for safety (86) and transport (75).
It scores lowest on infrastructure (37).
Scores come from official data on safety, schools, transport, prices, health, food & drink and the local environment, for Bigbury-on-Sea in South West, each measured against the national average.
Summary of Bigbury-on-Sea
Bigbury-on-Sea announces itself through car parks and dunes rather than a conventional high street — this is a scatter of detached houses and holiday lets above the beach, the kind of place where the estate agent's board reads "Freehold, Detached" nine times out of twenty and hardly anyone is renting long-term. The population here is tiny and skews older, and you feel that in the pace of the place: this isn't a village built around a school run or a station platform, it's built around the tide table and the view.
There's no rail station in the picture and no commuting story to tell, so the practical question is really about housing and who else lives here. The one sampled school, Aveton Gifford CofE Primary, sits in the wider catchment rather than on the doorstep, and with a median age in the mid-fifties, this reads as a place people move to rather than one they raise young children in. Property is where the numbers do the talking without needing to be recited: a median sale price around £476,500 against a South Hams figure roughly 36% lower, and detached houses locally fetching above £515,000 against a national detached median nearer £420,000. This is a village priced for second-home buyers and downsizers with equity, not first rungs on a ladder.
Crime is genuinely low in absolute terms, and the safety grade — an A, the standout in an otherwise solid-but-unremarkable set of B and B+ marks — is the quiet spine of this place: theft and the odd incident of criminal damage make up most of what little there is, and none of it reads as a pattern to worry about. Connectivity is the one grade that dips, a C, which tracks with the isolation that also gives Bigbury its appeal — the beach, the dunes, the sea itself are the real amenities here, and you come for them rather than for restaurants or nightlife density. Health provision and general liveability score comfortably above the national run of things, but this is a place you drive to and from for most day-to-day needs rather than one where everything is on the corner.