Wiltshire

[Frenchboat]

So we have outgrown our house in the Home Counties and now turning our thoughts to moving to a different county.

Wiltshire has grabbed our interest as it looks beautiful, has much nicer houses in our budget but can also access London(I think?)

We have never actually visited so plan to do so soon. We know nothing about the area where is best to start when considering good schools and nearby links to London?

Ideal would be a pretty village.

Also what is Wiltshire like to live in?

Thank you :)

Start by looking at commuting times from various places, if that's a factor. We have friends in a sought after village in Wilts, but one of them has a horrendous commute to central London. It is a beautiful county. Don't forget the costs of commuting either.

Wiltshire is a big county, with some lovely areas & some not so nice ones.

Do you have a daily commute to central London? The cost of a season ticket & parking needs to be factored in.

Do you want city, town or rural living?

State or independent schools?

Well the commute from Chippenham is 1hour15mins but due to get shorter once all the work on the train lines is finished. And there are lots of pretty villages commutable from there plus good school - would you be going state or private?

However, I wouldn't want to commute daily to London from here. My DH works in London 3 days a week but stays up to reduce the commute.

Salisbury to Waterloo is about 1hr 30 mins, there are some lovely villages with a half hour drive. But 2 hours+ each way is a long haul if you had to do it daily.

My DH often stays over too.

Hi thanks everyone :)

Right now dh works from home so wouldn't commute but his industry is quite volatile so we wouldn't want to cut ourself from London incase there is another round of redundancies. So somewhere which there is still a staton reasonably close.

Which places have train stations?

Probably prefer state schools to keep outgoing a low but I'm not sure how expensive private schools are there? They are anything from 15-30k where we are now...

Which are the best good schools?

Google is your friend OP

There are some great state schools about.
Can we ask your requirements re the house? Budget, beds, how rural?

I love it here in Wiltshire but much of the county isn't commuter territory and has fairly poor transport links. You need to be close to the M4 if driving in or 1.20 from Chippenham to Paddington. Rail links in the south of the county are poor, though Salisbury to Waterloo is around 1hr 30 mins. Salisbury is the only part of the county with grammar schools though there are lots of high performing schools, both state and independent, throughout the county. Most of the county is not particularly ethnically diverse and some towns have an older than average population.

The presence of Salisbury Plain and the MOD means that there are fewer towns and villages in the east of the county which would otherwise make for ideal commuting.

Until December 2014 we lived in a village half an hour from Salisbury. We work from home but DS lived in London at the time and his GF often caught the train from Tisbury which was our nearest station - not sure of timings/frequency of trains though.

We were close to the Dorset border where property was a little less expensive than hotspots such as Marlborough. Some of our neighbours/friends had second homes there whilst their main home was in London.

We bought our house as a major unmortgageable project in 2011 and got it for a reasonably good price. By the time we sold prices had risen considerably but the market was still relatively slow moving. I think things have changed/prices risen in the time since we sold.

There were quite a few good independent schools nearby, but I can't help with fees as the independent DS went to was in Hampshire

Sherston is a lovely village. Local Secondary school in Malmesbury is Ofsted Outstanding. Has a great pub, busy village social scene, 15 mins or so to Junc 17 M4 and 25 mins to Chippenham train station. 30 mins or so to centre of Bristol, 40 mins to Bath. Lots of other nice villages around Malmesbury.

I lost my Samsung Galaxy mobile phone walking around Fonthill lake near Tisbury yesterday, desperate to find it as I am lost without it?