Nursery move number 4 - are we overthinking this?

[Londonone23]

Nursery move number 4 — are we overthinking this?
My partner and I have been back in London since 2021 after years living abroad, and if I'm honest, we've never quite found our footing here location-wise. We lived in SE London for a while, where our son attended a nursery we absolutely loved, then moved to Teddington in January. The area is great, but the commute is brutal. Door to desk is 1hr 20min, and with nursery drop-off it stretches to 1hr 30min each way.
We're both heading back to four days a week in the office from September, we're thinking about a second child, and the maths just doesn't work. Nearly three hours of commuting a day, each, feels unsustainable.
So we're seriously considering moving again, this time to Barnes or Mortlake, which would cut 20-30 minutes each way off the journey.
Here's the bit that's keeping us up at night.
Our son has already been to three nurseries, one in SE London, then two here in Teddington after the first one wasn't quite the right fit. He's now really happy and settled. The thought of moving him to a fourth nursery, knowing he'll start school next September (a fifth new setting in as many years), feels pretty awful.
We're weighing two options:

1. Move to Barnes/Mortlake but keep him at his current nursery, driving him there and back each day, adding roughly 30 minutes each way plus parking costs. It's the opposite of solving the time problem, but it's temporary. The catch is that "temporary" means somewhere between 6 and 12 months, as we need to be settled in a new address in time for school applications, which open in September and close in January.
2. Move him to a new nursery closer to wherever we land. He's adapted well every time before, but we're aware that's not a reason to keep testing it.

He's a brilliant, resilient kid and I suspect we're more stressed about this than he would be. But I'd love to hear from anyone who's navigated something similar. Did you prioritise the commute or the continuity? If you moved your child to a new nursery in their final year before school, did it actually matter? And has anyone found a creative workaround, a childminder for drop-offs and pickups, some kind of nanny share, anything that meant the nursery question became less of a daily logistical headache? Would love to hear any hacks people have used.

Any chance you can get him into a school nursery for the school he could go to? In retrospect I wish we had been able to do that as Ds loved his nursery but took a while to make school friends as the majority were at the school nursery together.

He will have quite a long time to settle in at the new place if you move quickly so I would do that. If you are lucky he might even make friends with children who end up at his school reception place.

It's not ideal but I doubt he even remembers some of the nursery places that he's been to before.

I would look for a school with nursery attached in your new area and move him there, use a nanny or au pair or childminder for school drop off/pick up and school holidays (you'll need that once he starts school anyway).

My eldest son went to three different nurseries before he started reception. The first move was due to us relocating, then we moved again as we weren’t keen on his first nursery in our new location.

I have to say that, with the benefit of hindsight, I regret that we had to do this. He’s a very social and confident little boy, but the moves definitely unsettled him, especially as he got older. The transition to reception was more difficult than I had anticipated. He still talks about his friends from the first nurseries.

In your position, I would aim to either move him to a preschool setting at the school he is likely to go to. Otherwise, I would keep him at his current nursery and just endure the 6-12 months of added inconvenience!