Wallingford
Town · 8,341 residents
81Very good
Very good · better than 9 in 10 towns
Check Local Score out of 100 · 60 is typical for the country
Each arc is a topic, coloured by its score
What’s good
- Less recorded crime than is typical: 55 per 1,000 people a year against 100
- 64% of residents live within five minutes of a park
The essentials
Everyday life
The area
Around Wallingford
Map outline: Official built-up area
Is Wallingford a good place to live?
Wallingford scores 81/100 overall, which the scorecard rates as very good — 60 is typical for the country.
It stands out for safety (84) and environment (81).
Scores come from official data on safety, schools, transport, prices, health, food & drink and the local environment, for Wallingford in South East, each measured against the national average.
Summary of Wallingford
Wallingford has the look of an old market town that never quite got swallowed by anything bigger: red-brick and timber-framed frontages, independent shops rather than chain fascias, and the kind of streets that fill with dog walkers and pushchairs rather than commuter traffic. It attracts a settled crowd — the median age here is a shade over 44, older than the national and regional averages — and that shows in the pace of the place as much as in any statistic.
The practical picture is a little more nuanced than the postcard suggests. The town's own station belongs to the Cholsey & Wallingford Railway, a heritage line rather than a commuter artery, so anyone needing a fast run into London or Oxford will be looking at a drive or a bus connection rather than a walk to a mainline platform. Schooling is solid rather than spectacular on paper — Wallingford School, the local secondary, posts a Progress 8 score of 0.31, comfortably positive — and the town has a working cluster of primaries including St John's and St Nicholas' Church of England Infants', giving families options without the frenzy of catchment competition you'd find closer to a city. Housing here leans firmly towards freehold houses: terraced and semi-detached properties dominate the sales mix, and a median price around £375,000 sits above the national figure but below both the regional average and the wider South Oxfordshire district, where prices run about 3.5% higher — this reads as one of the district's more accessible corners rather than its most expensive.