Do idyllic places to live still exist in and around London?

[Kerfluffle]

I was just reminiscing with a friend and we are not really sure it does anymore. She was raised in Leatherhead where you can apparently still leave your front door open during the day (if you want to!) without anything happening.

It needs to tick these boxes:
Little/no antisocial behaviour and low crime rate. Safe for teenagers to walk home in the dark
Excellent nearby hospital with high staff retention/satisfaction
Lot of green spaces and community centres
Some form of transport link into c. London (even if it is a couple of buses per day)
Affluent population (I know - but I am looking for an ideal!)

North Kingston ticks a lot of that, ir Richmond. Couldn’t leave your front door open though, or I wouldn’t!

Thank you - which local hospital is good around there if you don't mind me asking?

Kingston hospital

I would say kingston /hampton wick/ Teddington

There is nowhere in a big city that is immune to crime.

My sister lives in a gorgeous enclave in Kensington. Its the sort of area Americans want to film for movies about quaint British life. She’s had her car stolen three times since living there.

I live in a leafy London suburb with good schools and a good hospital nearby. Car theft and burglary rates are high. A schoolgirl was sexually assaulted on her way home a couple of weeks ago.

I don’t believe a safe, quaint area of London or the surrounds exists.

Sounds exactly like where I live - it's perfect. Not near London though. Don't understand the fascination with London, when the property is so expensive and the crime rate is so high? I'm in a modern town, just outside Edinburgh. We have all the things you are looking for, plus a bonus of 5 white sandy beaches. Our house, over looking sea, only cost us £201k (9 years ago) - in London it would be well over a Million quid. And I say this as someone who used to live in London!

@Magentax I'll have a look - thanks
@Crikeyalmighty do the other two places have proper shopping facilities?

@TortugaRumCakeQueen I love Edinburgh too but I need the milder weather and everyone I know lives down south.

My neighbour used to insist you could leave the door open (actually we accidentally left our back door open and went out for the day earlier thus year ) but I wouldn't ever deliberately do that. We live in a nice area outside London but car theft is pretty common. There is a hospital not all that far away but no idea what their staff morale or retention is.

Fair enough! I moved up here, not knowing anyone (except for my husband and kids), you do make new friends. Not for everyone, I know I've missed a lot.

I doubt there are unspoilt idyllic places anywhere in the U.K., unless you go to the northern tip of Scotland. I’m in rural Essex, where all the villages have been ruined by ghastly new build estates. The little village my grandparents lived in was quiet and idyllic back in the 1980s. I would go there as a child and pick blackberries, cycle the country lanes, visit the little village shop, etc...it was lovely. Today, it’s more like a small town. Two massive housing estates have been built, and the sleepy village shop is now a big new CoOp. As for the country lanes, they are more like the M25. Instead of birdsong, all you hear in the screeching of souped up car engines and the explosions of modified exhausts. I laugh when I hear Londoners talk about retiring to the countryside for peace and quiet. Good luck with that.

No, and if they still do them they will be built over in the next few years.

JoonT "I laugh when I hear Londoners talk about retiring to the countryside for peace and quiet. Good luck with that."

yes, someone was telling me he lives near a nature reserve in Norfolk...I forget the name...he said in the last two years it's been massively built on, as close to the reserve as the law allows.

I don't mind the big supermarkets but the identikit estates on small plots are not what I have in mind. I suppose an area with spacious, detached, old houses with large front, side and back gardens so that you can still feel a sense of solitude at home.

St John's Wood is safe (as safe as Leatherhead anyway), has spacious, detached old houses, an excellent local hospital, is a short walk from Regent's Park and has a tube. So, if you have a spare £15 million, I'd look there 😉

I don't know about leaving your front door open anywhere bar the most remote places in the UK!

But apart from that...
Blackheath? Very idyllic village great transport links, green spaces, QE hospital in Charlton?

Barnes?

Richmond?

Hampstead Village?

Highgate Village?

South Bucks in the area bordered by the M40 & M25 fits the bill. Surprisingly rural outside of the main towns with busy villages, my village has a fairly endless social calendar at this time of year. Good trains to London.

Marlow and a number of market towns/villages along the Thames to Reading are similar.

I wouldn’t leave my front door open but there really isn’t anywhere in the SE connected by public transport where you’d do that. My FIL grew up in Leatherhead & wouldn’t call it the kind of place I’d be happy leaving my front door open.

Teddington, Esher, Beaconsfield...

St John's Wood - if only...!
I am not desperate to leave my front door open (the opposite, if anything) but I would like to live somewhere where if there was an emergency or it was left open on the odd occasion then all would be well!

What is your budget?

What does that actually mean? I live in East London and could leave my door unlocked - I would imagine years would go by without anyone thinking to try my door to test if it were locked or not, everyone would assume it was.

or do you mean literally leave it wide open? If so I had a neighbour do that, went out all day and anyone could have walked in and helped themselves. No one did though - I assume everyone thought there was someone at home, otherwise why would the door be wide open!!

We wanted what you described and we couldn't find it ... so we moved to Winchester.

It's an hour into Waterloo which is not ideal but it is all of the things you describe. Not particularly cheap but our budget went much further here than it would have in London. Our quality of life has improved considerably since moving here and the DC love it.

(I still wouldn't leave my front door unlocked though!)

I think what my friend was saying is that in Leatherhead, the kids would play out and leave their front doors open even though they were out of sight. They would pop in and out of one another's houses for several hours a day during the school holidays without worrying about their own safety or the safety of their home, even if their parents were at work all day.

@Kerfluffle I think your friend must've seen that a long time ago. Aside from the local housing association estate, I've not seen kids play outside like that anywhere really.

Admittedly, times have changed and it may no longer be realistic.