Cambridge

Summary · written from the figures for Cambridge

Cambridge reads like a city built around bicycles and old brick — narrow lanes, college walls, students and academics on every corner, and a density of life (well over 3,500 people per square kilometre, noticeably tighter than the regional norm) that makes it feel more urban than its size suggests. This isn't a sleepy market town; the population skews young, with a median age under 32 against a national figure closer to 40, and that shows in the energy of the place as much as in the crowds outside the station.

The practical picture is a mixed one. Cambridge Rail Station is the single rail option serving the whole city, which for a place this size and this economically important is a pinch point worth knowing about before you commit to a commuting life — the transport grade sits at a C while almost everything else in the area scores comfortably higher. Schools fare better: St Matthew's Primary and St Paul's CofE Primary both carry Good Ofsted ratings, and St Bede's Inter-Church School is the nearest Outstanding-rated secondary, so families have solid options even if not every school in the sample has a published rating. Housing is where the character sharpens into something specific — this is a Freehold, terraced-house market at heart, with houses comfortably outnumbering flats in the sales sample, and a median house price of £485,000 that sits close to the wider Cambridge district figure but is nearly 40% above the national median. A terraced house here typically sells for over double the national terraced price, which tells you the "For Sale" board on a Victorian terrace street is really advertising scarcity and academic-city prestige rather than square footage.

Pick what matters to you and the areas reorder. Choose an area to see why it ranks where it does, then open its report. Or see the report for Cambridge as a whole, with every figure and the map.