Middle class towns

[midnightmoon8]

We drove home from holiday yesterday and passed through Marlborough where we made a lunch stop to break our journey. What a fabulous town! Everything about it felt so upmarket; the shops, smart people, etc. Where have you been that felt so 'posh'?

Can't believe someone said Canterbury. It's my closest city and I hate it! Absolute hole.

Bath is lovely.

Ashby- de - la - Zouch, I used to live there, it looks very classy even sounds classy but is full of pretentious twats give me Hull any day😂

Ah yes there's no snobbery like provincial snobbery crazydoglady!

Agree Booths is top notch!

You've obviously never been to Ilkley, Harrogate, Alderley Edge, Chester, Ponteland, Wetherby, North Leeds, Lytham St Annes or plenty of other of the nicer areas in northern England (and probably Scotland and North Wales too, but I don't know which areas specifically.

I live in 1, visit 1 almost daily, have lived in another, brother lives in a different one.

I also spend a lot of time working in the south east and there is a massive difference.

They may be nicer areas and middle class by northern standards but dont touch some of the London commuter villages and towns for affluence , education levels and cultural opportunities.

Booths is in deep financial trouble I believe? Then all you will have is Morrison’s!

Malton has a lot of rural deprivation as does Helmsley.

Pissing myself laughing that someone said Haworth! Trust me, it isn't. (And neither is Keighley..)
Middle class towns down south are DEFINITELY more uniformly wealthy than up North. Especially if commutable to London.

I live in Cheltenham, but it has it's issues - like all towns.

When I lived in Cheltenham it was in St. Pauls and down the road from the needle exchange pharmacy. There was a little alleyway to the back garden gate full of used needles.

God I was glad when we moved away.

All this thread shows is that everyone has a different interpretation and therefore the lists are pointless

Chester
Stratford
Harrogate

Isn't Hull a city?

If we're including cities then Oxford, York, Cambridge...

Went to Windermere recently and Booths (somewhere near!) was great!

Stamford
Olney
Oundle

Butterfly Oh gosh yes it is, how lower class of us to not know that, no wonder I love it

St Andrews
Rye

Salcombe has always been high on the Naice-o-meter. Full of yachting types having a sooper dooper time with mummy and daddy's money.

All this thread shows is that everyone has a different interpretation and therefore the lists are pointless

I though that. We need to have a definition of being a middle class town- a Mumsnet favourite topic!

I will start:
It has an Everyman or independent cinema if the town is large enough. If it is not large enough it has regular community screenings in the well used village hall.

Catching a cold
I live in Lytham St Anne’s
We have an independent cinema and have viewings in the pavilion and Lytham hall as well as an outdoor screen on the beach

I always loved Lewes in Sussex, worked there for a few years and just loved the vibe, the markets and how people actually seemed to care about the area and do something about it rather than just complain. Like when plans for a new build estate were revealed for an industrial area which had a lot of local community and charity groups using it the locals campaigned to ensure that those groups would be given new spaces to use in the new build estate because they knew it was going to happen whether they liked it or not. I liked that. A new build estate is being built near me now and so many people are moaning about it but nobody wants to actually do anything about it.

Cirencester is what is see as very middle class as well, beautiful place.

I have lived in some of the “middle class” northern towns named on here and also in a couple of the southern ones. They are all very much the same. There’s nothing “more posh” or “more cultured” about the southern ones.

What unites all these places though is that they still have their struggling residents, the poor, the homeless. They are just pushed out of sight. People walk past and ignore them. I have done lots of youth work/ charity work in these places and noticed how those struggling can feel very marginalised

Henley
Marlow
Windsor

Booths in trouble?
Hull has its good bits (Newland Park?)...
Glad someone mentioned Oundle. Oundle people love to mention what a middle class place it is. And the house prices! (Although anyone from the south east would find it cheap.)
I disagree about Huntingdon, unless they have pulled Oxmoor down.

Marlow, great chunks of Dorset; Wimborne, Corfe, Burford in the Cotswolds, Southwold in Suffolk, Padstow...

"Marlow" is short-hand in our house for ridiculously entitled behaviour - born from decades of shopping there. "Maidenhead' is likewise an insult

Hebden Bridge is very middle-class but in a lefty, old-hippy way.
Bakewell
Ashbourne (the centre anyway)
Arundel
Weybridge
Twickenham
Central Chester
Stow-on-the-Wold - they even have Cotswold stone walls to obscure branches of Tesco.
Richmond in Surrey - verging on upper-class, it's the most expensive place I've been.

Leamington Spa
Lichfield
Solihull
Ashbourne