Settle

Terraced stone cottages line the streets here, the kind that turn up on calendars, and the age profile tells you who's behind the doors — this is a place where the median resident is pushing 55, not raising toddlers or chasing a graduate job. It has the settled, unhurried air of somewhere people move to rather than pass through, and the housing stock backs that up: of recent sales, the large majority were terraces, almost all freehold, which speaks to a market of small, solid, owner-occupied homes rather than new-build estates or rental blocks.

The practical spine of the place is Settle Rail Station, which puts you on the line without needing a car for everything, and with 13 local stops feeding into it, getting around the wider area is more workable than the village's tiny population might suggest. Schooling is thinner on the ground — there's one school serving the area, rated in the "good" band rather than outstanding, so families weighing this move will want to look at options a little further afield rather than assume everything's on the doorstep. Property here runs cheaper than the region and the country: a median around £228,000 sits well under both the North Yorkshire figure and the national average, and terraced homes specifically undercut the national terrace price too, so your money goes further, especially if a terrace suits your needs.

Green space is generous for the size of the place — ten separate plots amounting to nearly seven hectares, more per head than the regional average — so dog walks and evening strolls aren't a planning exercise. Full-fibre broadband reaches the large majority of homes, which matters if remote work is part of the plan. The crime picture needs a careful read: the raw number of incidents each year is tiny, only five in the last twelve months by the headline count, and safety is graded firmly among the better end nationally with a flat trend — but weigh that against the fact that the local crime rate sits enormously above the North Yorkshire average, a gap almost certainly produced by the mathematics of a very small population rather than any lived sense of danger. Violence and anti-social behaviour make up the bulk of what's recorded, in line with the regional pattern, not a spike unique to Settle.