Stamford / Market Deeping, S Lincs

[imabeautifulfennelcalledjoan]

There's a chance we may need to move to the Peterborough area for work. We wouldn't want to live in the city itself. We live in a gorgeous Herts market town at the moment and want to find something similar. Stamford looks perfect but pricey! We also like the look of The Deepings. Primary schools are important. Anyone know these two towns / areas? Thank you!

Ooh, who did you see?

I love rutland water. Some great pubs in the villages.

Austin Healey. He was on Strictly. I thought he was a footballer but DH informs me that he played rugby for Leicester.

Castle cottage cafe is really nice, I'm glad to hear it's still thriving.

For some reason I cannot post, whenever I try, mumsnet is saying message is invalid
I'll try to split my message, it's short and completely innocuous, I don't understand why it's not letting it through!

Yeah, who did you see? :)

Oakham is not dead! But Stamford is far busier, it has tourists coming in at the weekends by the busload (because of its architecture and to visit Burghley), plus it is just 2.5 times bigger (population wise), has a pedestrianised High Street and naturally far more shops.

Lots of people from Leicester come to Rutland water for a day out.

Ok, by removing the words one by one, I've discovered that it was the adjective which I had before 'architecture' that made my message invalid!!!

medieval

Hmm, now it lets it through!

But I couldn't post my message until I removed it

I really do want to see Stamford. I think it's my type of place! I noticed that they do vintage fairs there. But we could pop over there easily if we do end up in Oakham.

My main priority now is getting DD into a good school so we need to move fast if we're going to do it.

Does anyone know Catmose Primary or Brook Hill Academy. They both seem good from what I've seen and I am guessing that they my will be oversubscribed. Sadly we can't afford to send her to Oakham School....

How bizarre nodowntime!

I just tried to copy my message about Oakham and Stamford, inserted the word medieval before architecture, and it made the message invalid again. Just the words medieval architecture on their own are fine! how bizzare.

imabeautifulfennelcalledjoan

Even though it was the opposite end of town for us, my kids went to Oakham C of E, and it was absolutely brilliant, they thrived there! If they head is still the same (Mrs. Gibson), I'd highly recommend it.

I guess Catmose primary must be what was called a Southfields school when we lived there, it was not as good at the time. Brook Hill at the time wasn't an Academy, it was a really good school with Outstanding Ofsted as far as I remember, but the governors and the staff weren't actually as nice and welcoming as C of E's.

None of the schools ten years ago were oversubscribed, but then lots of new houses have been built since then, so not sure of the situation now.

Just googled Oakham C of E school out of curiousity, and it looks like Mrs.Gibson left or retired and the school has gone downhill in some areas :(. A shame...but basically there are no really rough areas in Oakham, and no really bad schools, I'm sure C of E one will get better soon even if it needs improvement in some areas currently.
If you will settle in a catchment area of a good school, you are pretty much guaranteed a place, though obviously like Oakham C of E's fate shows, schools can change esp. if good leaders leave, so I wouldn't make a catchment area your main priority when choosing a house.

Oakham is lovely, (and has a fab gym) but Stamford has much more going on. Lots of cafes, pubs and restaurants- plus independent shops. Loads of lovely walks (I run and have a horse so can promise you there's plenty of great walks) and there's always something going on in town. I moved from big city and was worried about having nothing to do etc.. But it's honestly the best thing I did! We planned to stay for a year, but ended up buying here and onto 5th year now, friends and family love to visit too. It really is a beautiful place. Would you be fussed about downstairs bathroom? There's some lovely 3beds that pop up 5-10min walk from town on 'good' roads for about £270k but most have 1 downstairs bathroom and need a bit of modernising... ill try and find an example!

this is 5-10mins walk from town, has a drive too! Quite a busy road though

[Priory Road, Stamford
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-37483806.html]

Dammit! Messed that up, hold on...

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-37483806.html

Ooh, that house is lovely! We definitely need a trip to Stamford too. It was too much to do both yesterday. I think we may head up there at the weekend.

Re the housing estate in Oakham - I was wondering how the feel of the place and infrastructure would be affected by so many new houses. It's going to put a real strain on schools, GP surgery etc. DH liked the new estate but I felt a bit hemmed in there when we drive around it. I'd prefer a house in an established area.

We found mice period property on Brook Road near Brook Hill school. It needs work but has potential. But I wasn't surre about the road or school. The Ofsted looks good. I noticed that about Ofsted C of E school. Someone else had recommended it but then I saw that the Ofsted had gone down. A similar thing has happened to our local school though. Apparently Ofsted are much tougher now in their inspections. We will visit the schools rather than go completely on the Ofsted reports.

Sorry for all typos. Am baby juggling again....

Brook road was really nice and quiet when we lived in Oakham, I remember going up it a lot at weekends to go for a walk, there were footpaths just up the hill.
Yeah, school ratings can go up and down, we also made our decision on visiting rather than reports alone.

For me Oakham was shockingly small, but I moved after living all my life in the centre of a multimillion city within 5 min walk of cinemas, nightclubs, art galleries, museums, massive shopping areas open 24/7 and completely reliable working 5AM to 1AM public transport. Of course it was a difficult adjustment!
Now I understand that Oakham is quite genteel and lively, at the time I thought it was a sleepy one horse town ;)

Still it is a bit of a one horse compared to Stamford... In Stamford apart from far more shopping at least there is an Arts centre/theatre/music hall/cinema (blockbusters are shown later than nationwide, but shows classic/arthouse/foreign language films regularly), and numerous pubs, restaurants, wine bars, tea and coffee houses and Indian-Chinese etc places.
Good primaries are getting oversubscribed though.

nodowntime I ccompletely get what you are saying. We lived in London -zone two - for a decade. I was devastated to leave London for Hitchin. But then I actually realised that I loved small town life - bumping into people and tootling around with DD. Oakham is much smaller than Hitchin but has a similar feel. It's good to know that Brook Road is quiet. I do like the house there.

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-38260131.html

Lots of space and potential!

It's been interesting to read this as we're also looking to relocate to this area, hopefully in the summer/autumn time. We originally (last year) started off looking in Spalding but then veered across to Bourne, Market Deeping and Stamford. Then on our last visit in October we visited Oakham and really liked it. We're off to Oakham again this weekend for another fact finding trip (we're moving up from Kent). We loved Stamford but our DD is yr 5 now so we're really looking towards state secondary schools and I don't think they are that good in Stamford (?) which is why we've ended up liking Oakham so much. Our DS is now thinking of Leicester Uni for this September so fingers crossed after waiting for him to finish his A levels we can finally get ourselves on the move !

Good luck with your fact finding mission Ihavecoldfeet, I hope that it goes well. We have the same reservations re secondary schools in Stamford. I like the idea of being close to Leicester. I picked up some leaflets about cultural stuff and there seems to be quite a lot going on there.

Sorry - I am posting under two names again. It does different names depending on whether I'm on my laptop or phone...

Yes we're looking round Leicester tomorrow as well funnily enough as DS has a conditional offer at DMU so we're going to the open day there and then he's getting train back to London while we nip over to Rutland overnight and go and view some of the new builds in Barleythorpe on Sunday. I also like the idea of being fairly close to Leicester, I work for the NHS (secretary) so I'm hoping I might get something in Leicester NHS. We're only 40 mins from London and on top of Bluewater shopping centre atm, DH is originally from E.London so not sure if we're going too rural with Oakham and Rutland as a whole!

Let me know what you think of Barley Thorpe. I'm in two minds about that area as it's not near primary schools, which is my main concern. But DH liked it there. Hope it goes well!