Folkestone

Folkestone's high street has that particular seaside-town mix you either warm to or don't: independent cafés and gallery fronts sitting alongside empty units and charity shops, with the Harbour Arm end feeling like a different town entirely from the Old High Street. It's a place that's attracted a steady trickle of Londoners and creatives priced out elsewhere over the past decade, alongside a settled local population that's been here generations. You notice the mix most on a walk down from the station towards the seafront — renovated Victorian terraces giving way to more workaday streets, and back again.

The practical picture is a town that works if you don't need to commute daily into central London. Folkestone West and Folkestone Central both run rail services, with Sandling also in the mix, so you're not short of stations — but this is a place people tend to move to for a slower pace, not to shave minutes off a season ticket. Schools are a genuinely mixed bag: Morehall Primary and Sandgate Primary both carry Good ratings, and Turner Free School is Good too, though its progress score sits below average and The Harvey Grammar School (selective, non-Ofsted-rated here) posts a stronger one — the borough's grammar system means outcomes vary sharply depending which school your child ends up in, more than in most towns this size. Housing is where Folkestone quietly makes its case: a median price of £270,000 is below both the national figure and the £310,000 typical across the wider Folkestone and Hythe district, and freehold houses dominate sales over flats, so a "For Sale" board here usually means a whole terraced or semi-detached house, not a leasehold flat share.