Bowness-on-Windermere
Town · 1,981 residents
59Good
Good · better than 2 in 10 towns
Check Local Score out of 100 · 60 is typical for the country
Each arc is a topic, coloured by its score
What’s good
- 65 places to eat and drink
- 1 GP practice within a short walk
- Affordability scores 76, 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
- Transport scores 32, below the typical 60
The essentials
Everyday life
The area
Around Bowness-on-Windermere
Map outline: Official built-up area
Is Bowness-on-Windermere a good place to live?
Bowness-on-Windermere scores 59/100 overall, which the scorecard rates as good — 60 is typical for the country.
It stands out for food & drink (97) and health (84).
It scores lowest on transport (32).
Scores come from official data on safety, schools, transport, prices, health, food & drink and the local environment, for Bowness-on-Windermere in North West, each measured against the national average.
Summary of Bowness-on-Windermere
Bowness-on-Windermere reads like a place built for visitors first and residents second: boat hire signs, gift shops, tearooms, and a lake edge that pulls people off the pavement to stare at the water. The permanent population is small and notably older than the national average, and that combination — heavy footfall, thin resident base — shapes almost everything else about living here.
The practical picture is mixed in an interesting way. Schools are limited: the sample includes Goodly Dale Primary, a small community school, and St Martin & St Mary Church of England Primary, which takes the bulk of local children, alongside St Cuthbert's Catholic Primary, currently rated as requiring improvement. There's no secondary provision in the village itself, so families tend to plan around a move or a run out of the village once children hit eleven. Transport is the other quiet constraint — four stops serve the settlement and the connectivity grade sits only at C+, which tells you this is a driving village, not a commuter one; the appeal is the setting, not the links out of it. Housing, meanwhile, is dominated by flats held freehold, and detached houses here fetch around £700,000 against a national median nearer £420,000 for the same type — a For Sale board on the shoreline is pricing in lake views and tourist demand, not local wages, and that gap is worth sitting with before you commit.