Todmorden

Todmorden sits in that steep-sided stretch of the Pennines where stone terraces climb the hillside and the valley floor barely has room for the railway, the canal and the high street to squeeze past each other. It's a place that attracts people who want hills on the doorstep rather than a polished town centre — walkers, artists, canal-boat types, and a fair few who've moved out from bigger West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester towns for the space and the scenery. The average age here, mid-forties, tells you this isn't a graduate-flat sort of town; it's a settled one.

The practical picture is a good one for anyone who needs to get to a city without living in one. Todmorden Rail Station and Walsden Rail Station both sit within the town, giving you two stabs at the line rather than one, and the transport grade here is about as good as these things get. Schools are a mixed bag in the reassuring sense — Shade Primary, Ferney Lee Primary and Castle Hill Primary are all rated Good, and Todmorden High School carries the same rating, so a family moving here for the secondary years isn't gambling. Cornholme Junior, Infant and Nursery School bucks that pattern with a Requires Improvement rating, which is worth knowing if you're house-hunting on that side of town specifically. Housing itself is overwhelmingly terraced stone-built freehold — three-quarters of recent sales were terraces, and most owners hold the freehold outright — which is the classic Pennine mill-town board: solid, unfussy, and a long way from London prices. A median house price around £172,500 is roughly half the national figure and comfortably above neighbouring Burnley, so you're paying a premium for the valley setting relative to that immediate area, even though nationally this still counts as affordable.