St. Ives

St. Ives shows itself in the light first — narrow granite lanes tumbling down to the harbour, whitewashed cottages with studio windows cut into the roofline, and a working fishing fleet still hauling in beside the tourist crowds. It's a town that has spent over a century attracting painters and now attracts second-homeowners and retirees alongside them, which gives the streets a particular rhythm: quiet and local out of season, dense and visitor-driven when the weather turns.

Beyond that visible character, there isn't enough underlying data here to responsibly break down schools, transport links, or the fine grain of the housing market — so I won't guess at numbers or name specific stations, schools, or streets that aren't confirmed. What can be said with any confidence comes from the surrounding county picture: Cornwall's typical house price sits close to the national figure, and property here has long commanded a premium over that simply for the setting and the light, which is a large part of why artists and retirees have historically outnumbered young commuting families.

If you're weighing up St. Ives, the honest answer is that its character is easy to feel and hard to quantify from the outside — you'd want to walk the town in both January and August before deciding, because the two versions of this place are genuinely different propositions.