Newark-on-Trent

Market square towns like this one tend to have a particular look — Georgian frontages, independent shops holding their own against the chains, a castle ruin doing quiet duty as a backdrop to ordinary life — and Newark-on-Trent fits that mould without trying hard. The streets around the centre carry a settled, market-town rhythm rather than a commuter-belt one, and the age profile bears that out: a median age of 40 puts it in line with the national average, not skewing sharply young or old.

The practical case for living here rests heavily on the trains. Two stations — Newark Castle and Newark North Gate — give you a genuine choice of routes, which is unusual for a town this size and worth more than the property price tag suggests. Schools are a more mixed picture: Barnby Road Academy and Christ Church C of E Primary are both rated Good, but the secondary data point, Magnus Church of England Academy, shows a Progress 8 score of -0.5, and the town's overall school grade sits at C+ against a B-range for almost everything else. That's the one grade that breaks the pattern here, and it matters if you've got children heading into secondary age. Housing, meanwhile, is genuinely affordable by national standards — a median price of £180,000 against a £281,000 national figure — and cheaper even than the wider Newark and Sherwood district by around 14%. Semi-detached freehold homes dominate the market, which tells you most of what you need to know about a For Sale board here: modest three-bed semis, owned outright rather than leasehold flats, changing hands in a market that barely turns over 2% a year.