Edwinstowe
Village · 4,291 residents
78Very good
Very good · better than 9 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: 48 per 1,000 people a year against 100
- 31 places to eat and drink
- Environment scores 80, well above the typical 60
The essentials
Everyday life
The area
Around Edwinstowe
Map outline: Official built-up area
Is Edwinstowe a good place to live?
Edwinstowe scores 78/100 overall, which the scorecard rates as very good — 60 is typical for the country.
It stands out for safety (81) and food & drink (81).
Scores come from official data on safety, schools, transport, prices, health, food & drink and the local environment, for Edwinstowe in East Midlands, each measured against the national average.
Summary of Edwinstowe
Edwinstowe wears its history openly — the sort of place where the streetscape still bends around Sherwood Forest rather than the other way round, and the pubs and gift shops trade as much on Robin Hood as on passing trade. It's a village in the fullest sense: compact, well-populated for its size, and visibly older in profile than the national average, which shows in the steady rather than youthful energy of the high street.
The practical picture is where Edwinstowe earns its keep. There's no rail station in the village itself, so this isn't one for the platform-and-laptop commuter crowd — you're looking at a car- or bus-based life, backed by a reasonable spread of local bus stops. Schools are a mixed bag on paper: King Edwin Primary and Nursery School anchors the village with decent size, and St Mary's Church of England Primary sits alongside it as a smaller academy option, though neither carries a published Ofsted rating here to lean on, which softens an otherwise solid schools grade. Housing is where the numbers genuinely surprise: a median price around £172,000 undercuts both the Newark and Sherwood district figure and the national by a wide margin, and freehold detached and semi-detached houses dominate sales — this reads as a place where a family house is still within reach of an ordinary income, not a stretch project.
Green space is generously provided for a village this size, and with Sherwood Forest effectively on the doorstep, the weekend shape here is obvious without needing to be spelled out — walking boots by the door, forest trails over shopping trips. The safety picture matches that unhurried feel: the overall grade sits well above the national average and crime is trending in the right direction, even though violence and anti-social behaviour still make up the bulk of what's recorded, as they do in most places this size. Nightlife and transport both grade unusually strongly for a village, which likely reflects Edwinstowe's pull as a destination in its own right rather than a commuter dormitory — people come here for a pint and the forest, not just to sleep between shifts elsewhere.