The poshest county in the UK?

[Eyes98]

Which one county would you say is the outright poshest in the UK? Let’s not use Greater London here, and I know there will be social diversity in all, but which would you say is the poshest overall?
I’m going with Berkshire, darling.😂

What this thread proves is that only those who are smart know where smart people live

and everyone else doesn’t really understand the question

ho hum

back to Tatler

Lived in Kent and Surrey and can say there are certainly bad parts of both. Surrey is incredibly dull but lots of money usually from banking and legal roles. Kent is more interesting but possibly poorer over all.

I always thought places like Wiltshire would be where the real old money was, keeping far quieter than Surrey!

I think Surrey or Berks are the winners.

A lot of posters are confusing 'pretty villages' with wealth.

Every smart county needs its rough parts, otherwise where would the staff and tradesmen live?
🤣🤣🤣

A lot of posters are confusing wealth with posh is more like it I’d say …

Absolutely not Surrey (I live in a very green + beautiful part of the Surrey hills) - it’s expensive, it’s close to London. It isn’t smart in the way that parts of Norfolk / Aberdeenshire are.

ultimately the word ‘posh’ means very different things to different people though. And even the smartest rural areas have pockets of deprivation or urban areas that aren’t so ‘fancy’

I don’t think there’s a conclusive answer here OP

Quite!

Aberdeenshire is a good contender.

A lot of posters are confusing wealth with posh is more like it I’d say …

Agree, Virginia Water & Cobham are ££££ but not posh to me.

Surrey is a bit more nuanced than that. North Surrey is more suburban, which is likely due to it's proximity to London.
Towns like Haslemere and Cranleigh with it's surrounding villages are pretty and leafy.
Loads of National Trust properties, listed buildings and independent schools like Charterhouse and Cranleigh.
Surrey's definitely not like that all over, it has it's rough patches, but it's also not all new money either.

I'm not sure there is such a thing as a posh county. Over the road from me is a 'stately home' still lived in by the lord and not mational trust and my sons school is on another estate (as in country estate, not housing estate) but I think that sort of thing is scattered across the country fairly evenly.

Nobody smart ever went to cranleigh, that’s for sure

Footballers and new money isn't posh. I grew up near there.

My offering is wiltshire. Camilla's house is there, Marlborough, Bath, lots of expensive schools. Old money landowners.

Agree! I live in north Essex, on the border of Suffolk - a world away from Basildon but as soon as you say Essex....

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 at the thought that golf courses = posh
they are the antithesis of smart
but I agree, very surrey

Clearly lots of people here live in Surrey so are offended that others don't think it's that posh - which is very apt for Surrey residents 😆

Even more are confusing wealth with posh!

so how do you define posh?

There will be an ONS survey on this and posh will be defined by both the cost of housing and the income of the residents.

So it will come down to wealth.

If you want to define 'posh' as going to Glyndebourne, wearing tatty old tweeds, driving an ancient Jaguar, hunting, having an Aga or two, and eschewing the trappings of wealth as shown by Oligarchs, that's different.

Define posh please.

Posh is subjective.

It can't be applied to a county unless you evaluate the number of people there who you rate as 'posh'.

You can be wealthy AND posh- and sometimes they do go together (ignoring people like the Beckhams.)

I know I said this thread is pointless but I have to agree about Surrey, there's Haslemere, Cranleigh, Farnham, Godalming which are very upmarket, plus you have Virginia Water and the Wentworth estate which is off the scale......and then the flip side is Aldershot!

posh is not the same as wealth or class, but posh is about appearance & money helps

I have defined it, I quoted OED upthread. To be posh a person has to have more than just wealth. There needs to be a degree of ‘U’ there as well. In fact, the OED doesn’t mention money at all. It’s a way of being, not a bank balance. Albeit it does help if one has the funds to pay for the various trappings and activities that being posh tends to entail.

You absolutely can be wealthy and posh.

But posh is a cultural concept more than a economics concept.

At least it is to me. Clearly some see more overlap between wealth and poshness.

And yes agas are quite posh and there’s nothing wrong with tweed

Having lived in Eastleigh I agree, hole and shit come to mind!!

But Amazingstoke is great surely😂