Greenwich

Greenwich announces itself in the mix of buildings before it does in any one landmark: terraced Victorian streets giving way to newer flat developments, market crowds thinning into quieter residential roads within a few minutes' walk. It's a place that has absorbed a lot of London's overspill without quite losing its own edges — you'll see period conversions sitting next to postwar estates and the occasional new-build block, and the population density here runs well above the national average, more than double it in fact, which tells you this is a packed, urban stretch of the city rather than a suburban pocket of it.

The practical picture is a good one for commuters without being a dazzling one for school obsessives. With seventeen rail connections in the area and stations including Eltham and Kidbrooke, getting into central London or out toward Kent is straightforward, and the transport grade reflects that. Schools are a mixed bag rather than a uniform strength: Ark Greenwich Free School carries an Outstanding rating with genuinely strong progress scores, but it sits alongside a string of merely Good primaries and academies, and the borough's average Ofsted score is only middling against the London figure. Housing here is dominated by flats and freehold sales in fairly even measure with leasehold, and at a median price of £447,000 — essentially flat against the wider borough — it undercuts the London region's £490,000 median while sitting comfortably above the national one; this is a place where a For Sale board most often means a period terrace or a purpose-built flat, not a detached house, and the numbers bear that out plainly.