Lyme Regis

Steep streets of stone and render run down to the harbour, the shopfronts a mix of independent galleries, fossil shops and cafés rather than chain retail, and the people you see about are more likely retired or holidaying than commuting. This is a village in the fullest sense — small, self-contained, built around the Cobb and the sea rather than any office district — and the median age north of sixty tells you plainly who has chosen to settle here.

There's no rail station in Lyme Regis itself, which shapes everything else about who lives here: this isn't a commuter base, it's a destination for people who've arranged their working life (or retirement) around being here rather than getting away from it. Schooling is a mixed picture worth sitting with — The Woodroffe School, the secondary, holds a Good rating with a solid Progress 8 score, but St Michael's CofE Primary is rated Requires Improvement, and with only two schools serving the area there isn't much choice if that one doesn't suit. Housing leans heavily toward detached houses bought outright: freehold sales outnumber leasehold by more than two to one, and a For Sale board here is far more likely to be on a house than a flat, though flats do come at a notable premium locally compared with the national picture. At a median of around £429,000, prices sit comfortably above both the Dorset and national averages — call it a well-off corner of the South West rather than an expensive one by London standards, and the market itself has been flat over the past year rather than moving in either direction.