Buying near High Wycombe - where to set up our young family?

[curiousparent2]

I am new to posting on mumsnet, so here goes..

DH and I plan to sell our Clapham flat and buy near High Wycombe. Basically, to get for the same price a decent sized place with garden that is more suitiable for kids but still in commuting distance to London for us both.

I've followed a few mumsnet posts on areas of High Wycombe and gather the centre is to be avoided and the surrounding sub-urbs and villages to the north are recommended locations. I'm not sure about the West. We have one DS aged 21 mo who is currently in a nannyshare and hope for a couple more DCs in the coming few years. We want to set up in a house where we'll stay for a while, so good for primary and secondary schools.

Recommendations for good areas in catchment of good schools? We have a reasonable budget (due to silly London escalation of prices)

And - for childcare of younger kids, do others around High Wycombe use/recommend nurseries or are nannies/nanny-shares the norm for working parents?

Many thanks in advance!

I will try to reply tomorrow when my brain is more engaged!
X

Have you considered Maidenhead? With Crossrail coming in a few years, there is a lot of regeneration planned in the centre, and there is some lovely housing stock around, and good schools too. We just moved here at the start of this year (from Streatham) and we are finding it absolutely lovely.
We use a local nursery but there are lots of childminders / nannies around by the looks of things.

Beaconsfield, GX, the Chalfonts and villages in the Chilterns are very pleasant. HW itself is a bit grotty but North of HW is Princes Risborough, Monks Risborough, Whiteleaf, Hughendon Valley, Speen, Bledlow, Radnage, Great Hampden and several others, all of which are very pleasant. If you have any villages in mind you should look up the schools on Ofsted. Hardly any village schools will be useless but the town schools can be variable.

Bucks is a grammar school county, so the key here is to live in the catchment of a good secondary modern, just in case. If you want private for secondary there is little demand and little choice, especially for boys.

Easy!
I know the answer, it's Marlow, it's a lovely town with fab schools, you can easily drive to high Wycombe for quick trains to london. There are great schools in marlow. It's a nice size and has a lovely town centre.

I don't think high Wycombe is that bad but the town centre is a bit grotty.

HW itself isn't very nice at all. I head over to either Westfield or Milton Keynes for clothes/gift shopping.

You've got Hazlemere, Widmer End, Holmer Green, Holtspur, The Kingshills & Naphill, Walters Ash & Lacey Green - they're all within 10 mins drive of HW and are quite green compared to London - these all have busy main roads but do have good schools.

Downley has a great school, people move there for catchment and it has a common, village hall etc & is 3 or 4 mins drive into HW.

Bledlow is major ££££ as is Beaconsfield, Gerrards X & Marlow (No train station at marlow)

Princes Risborough & Old Amersham are market towns but not the "busy" you are probably used to.

Have you used Google Streetview? I always find it very useful when looking at properties online.

Sandcastle Nursery in HW has a great reputation & there is a Busy bees off the main road but by the large green open park. Talking of parks, Hughenden has a great one & the school there is good too apparently.

Thanks all for your quick and helpful advice. We have seen some reasonable looking places in Holmer Green and will add Downley and Hughenden Valley to our near-to-HW search. I will now also investigate Marlow and Maidenhead, thanks for the tips. I'm hoping these towns are also in grammar school areas.. Thanks again!

Some of the to be avoided areas would be Micklefield, castlefield, totteridge, cressex, Abercrombie avenue and surrounding area..
There are so many nice places though, just like any town!!

and if your nice we can have coffee

RGS and John Hampden (both boys) and Wycombe High for girls are three of the best schools in the county.

Agree that Marlow much nicer than High Wycombe , and very close to these schools, but will be more ££££.

I grew up in Beaconsfield, very nice, very middle class!

Maidenhead is Berkshire. Not grammar school county. You must look at Bucks.

Ok, so it's not the biggest or busiest station but Marlow does have a train station. The trains are quite frequent at busy times but only take you to maidenhead (I think) where you change for quick trains to paddington.

Depending where you need to get to it is often best to drive to High Wycombe and catch the super regular trains direct to Marlybone (parking is £7)

You do have to be careful as some estate agents will say that a house is in a nicer area such as Booker, Penn, Downley etc , when they are actually in less desirable areas such as Castlefield, Totteridge, Cressex etc.

If you want to give us road names you are thinking of looking at houses down then we can tell you if they are in the area the ea's are leading you to believe!!

Marlow is a grammar school town (bucks) Sir William Borlase.
If your DSs are particularly academically gifted, Maidenhead is in range of an Eton scholarship, if that is attractive for you.

LL12, Beanymonster and 18yearsoftrying thanks for the lists of local areas to try/avoid. In terms of road names- we have seen houses we might like on Green Road, Penn Road (Hazelmere), and in Holmer Green: Tuckers Drive, Beech Tree Road and Todd Close. As someone pointed out, many of these areas seem to be based around main roads- I'm not sure therefore how much of a community feel there is. Ie will High Wycombe be out 'community' on which case should we be considering Marlow?! Thanks again!

Nice villages near high wycombe:

Penn
lane End
Great Kingshill
Great Missenden
Bolter End
wheeler End
Freith
Tyler's Green

Marlow is very nice place.

But sooo busy on the weekend with day visitors

You will hate going out

Try Thame instead for the same feel

Lacey Green is nice

Yes, Lacey green is lovely and still not too small to have no pub.
Right on the chilterns doorstep too

Lane end has a not great school. I would give Downley a miss too. It had one very over subscribed school and is basically just a huge housing estate with some nice and some very not nice roads. The other school is not great. Downley is very much Wycombe.

I like Hughenden Valley. The school there is good AFAIK. Booker is very much Wycombe too with another not great school.

Marlow is a beautiful town and I would love to live there. You do still need to be careful of school catchment for primary. It has several schools but I wouldn't recommend Foxes Piece catchment.

Have a look at Bourne End.

This is part of the problem about some of the areas, somewhere like Booker has it's catchment primary in Cressex as there are no schools in Booker (Booker Hill school is in an estate which happens to have a Rd called Booker Hill but is in Sands not Booker)
Part of Booker is part of High Wycombe, ie: by the common and village hall, you are in the catchment of a not good sec school in Cressex, the other part of Booker by the airpark is part of Great Marlow (diff postcode) and is in catchment for the sec school in Marlow.