Meeth in South West has a Check Local Score of 65/100 (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.
Meeth is the kind of place where the houses are mostly detached, mostly stone or render, and mostly bought outright rather than mortgaged into a leasehold flat — there's barely a terrace or a flat to speak of, and freehold accounts for almost everything sold. It's a farming-country hamlet in West Devon rather than a commuter satellite, and the age profile backs that up: the median resident is pushing fifty, a decade older than the national average, which tells you this is a place people settle into rather than pass through.
There's no rail station here, and the payload doesn't give you a secondary school on the doorstep either, so this is a driving life, full stop. What it does have is Hatherleigh Community Primary and Highampton Community Primary, both rated Good, both small — Highampton has fewer than thirty pupils, the kind of school where the head knows every child's name. House prices sit just under the West Devon median, about 2% below the district average, and comfortably under the national figure too, with detached homes locally trading well below the national detached price — you're not paying a premium to be here, you're paying for space and quiet.
Green space is thin on the ground in the official count — under half a hectare logged — but that undersells a village surrounded by open Devon countryside rather than defined by a municipal park. There's no named restaurant or pub in what's on record here, so don't expect a high street social scene; this is a place where weekends happen in gardens, on footpaths, or in the car heading to Hatherleigh or Okehampton. Full-fibre broadband reaches most homes, which matters more than it used to when the nearest shop is a drive away.
The one figure that jars against the otherwise settled, comfortable picture is crime: safety is graded top of the scale, and the raw number is tiny — 21 incidents in a year — but well over half of it is violence and sexual offences, which is a heavy skew for a village this size. With numbers this small a handful of incidents swings the percentages hard, so it's worth reading as noise rather than pattern, but it's the one figure worth asking a neighbour about before you commit. This suits someone who wants land, quiet, and a slower clock — not someone who needs a train platform or a lively evening out on tap.
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.