Edithmead in South West has a Check Local Score of 59/100 (good), drawn from official data on safety, schools, transport, housing, amenities and the local environment, each measured against the national average — a score of 60 is typical for the country.
Edithmead barely registers as a place you'd drive through by accident — a scatter of detached houses off the A38 near the Somerset Levels, more hamlet than village, with the M5 humming somewhere in the background. There's no high street to speak of, no obvious centre of gravity. What you're buying into here is space and quiet, not amenity.
The numbers back that reading up: a population in the sixties and a median age in the mid-fifties tell you this is a settled, older community rather than a commuter feeder or a place raising young families in bulk. Somerset's countryside logic applies — three bus stops and no rail station in the data mean a car is not optional, it's the whole infrastructure. The one school on the local radar, Brent Knoll Church of England Primary, serves the wider area rather than Edithmead itself, which fits a place this small: you're schooling, shopping and socialising outside the parish boundary as a matter of course.
Housing here leans detached and freehold almost without exception, which is exactly what a For Sale board on this lane would tell you before you'd read a word of the particulars — this is a place where people buy once and stay. Prices sit noticeably above the Somerset norm, close to forty per cent higher than the county median, putting Edithmead among the pricier corners of a fairly ordinary-earning region (income here sits just above the middle nationally, affordability graded among the better end locally despite the raw price tag). Green space and garden do the work that a park would elsewhere; there's no named local green space in the picture, but with hectares of Levels on the doorstep that's rarely the constraint.
The crime figure needs unpacking rather than repeating: three incidents in twelve months sounds trivial until you see it's mostly one category — violence and sexual offences — driving a rate that looks startling next to Somerset's average, over fifteen times the parent rate by the raw comparison. With a population this small, a handful of incidents swings the percentage wildly; the safety grade itself sits solidly above the national average, and the trend is flat, not worsening. Read the shape, not the multiple.
This suits someone who wants a freehold house with room around it, doesn't mind driving for a pint, a doctor or a school run, and finds a settled, older, quiet neighbourhood restful rather than isolating. It won't suit anyone wanting rail commuting, walkable amenity, or the buzz of a proper village centre — those things simply aren't here, and no amount of searching the postcode will conjure them.
Data last updated: 15 August 2026
Pick another area to line them up side by side — the verdict, both Check Local Scores, and what actually separates them.