Moving to Hampshire

[Memi141518]

Goodevening

We are moving to Hampshire first week of July , as my husband has been transferred to Basingstoke .

We are looking for nice areas to live , our top choices so far being : Fleet, church Crookham and Hook

We have two children, a 2.5 year old son (starting school next year) and 3.5 month old daughter so good schools (hopefully with "outstanding" ofsted reports) are a main thing for us too.

We're looking for a nice place to live with young families and hopefully make some new friends. We are moving from Canterbury so we don't have a lot of time to visit the place to consider where to live exactly.

We have come for a couple of visits and we thought Hook felt a bit like an older village with more older couples, Fleet more active same as church crookham.

We're not that fussed about commuting to London just a quite lovable area for kids and us.

Any suggestion would be much appreciated, we're not too fussed about being in a city or anything, would love a village-y feel, one of the main attractions Hampshire has is lots of open spaces (parks, woodlands, etc..) as our son's energy levels are increasing daily and we need somewhere where he can burn off all that extra energy.

Any comments, suggestions, ideas would be very much appreciated.

Thanks a lot!

Hi, I don't know if you have been there already but Petersfield is a nice little town.
Good luck on your house hunt 😀

Alton

Thank you for your help 😊 but I think that is a bit too far from Basingstoke for us.We were thinking more toward north east Hampshire about 20 to 30 minutes drive.

Haven't thought about Alton before. We will have a look.Do you know what the schools are like there?

No, sorry, I don't know about the schools. My parents lived there for years, I've just sold my mother's house. And prices are dropping.

Thank you

Have you thought of actually on the outskirts of Amzazingjoke? (I have lived there for 10+ years).

There's Chineham which has good links to Reading and is still 10 minutes max drive from the centre of town, or Hatch Warren which is the other side of Basingstoke and still only 10 minutes to town. There's also good links to Winchester from Hatch Warren.

You could also look at old Basing or Dummer if your budget could afford there - not much parking for some houses but really lovely and quite rural but very close to Basingstoke.

Bramley and Mortimer are both on a train line, close to Basingstoke and very nice places.

Hello! We live near and work in Basingstoke. Fleet is lovely but you are paying London commuter belt prices. Hook is having lots of building work done and the school is defo 4 form entry if not 5. Hartley Whitney is very jolly hockey sticks. We live on the other side of town on the Oakley, overton, Whitchurch side. You get more house for your money but it's obviously slightly further away from London. Our local school is outstanding. Alton is fine but pretty cut off and the drive to Bstoke is a rubbish one down a fast windy single track road which has lots of accidents.

Thanks, we'll definitely think about the outskirts of basingstoke

Thanks for your help. To be honest we more or less fell in love with the feel of the Fleet/ Hook area or something like it. We didnt feel Hartley wintney was the best fit for us amd a bit too expensive. We're gonna rent at the beginning and then buy if we see ourselves settling there permanently.

We haven't actually considered the Oakley, overton, Whitchurch area. Sounds really interesting, so do you think it's more like fleet or Hook in your opinion

Fleet and Hook are both extremely large a more town like than villages, I wouldn't really recommend either of them tbh.

There are a lot of nice villages in the surroundings of Basingstoke though.

Perhaps consider, Oakley, Overton, Bramley, Silchester, Old Basing, Hartley Wintney, Cliddesden, Sherbourne St John, Sherfield on Loddon, Monk Sherbourne, Mapledurwell or Nately Scures.

Almost all of those villages have outstanding primary schools and the ones east of Basingstoke will be in catchment for Robert Mays which is a very good secondary, the villages south of Basingstoke are in catchment for Perrins, Overton is in catchment for Testbourne secondary which is also good.

I think that you'd get the smalltown/big village feel of Fleet/Hook in Oakley,Overton or Whitchurch tbh, although Oakley doesn't have so many facilities. Whitchurch is the largest town of the three and the secondary there is outstanding I believe(Testbourne).

Oakley and overton are much more villagey than hook. I grew up in Hook and now live in Oakley. Oakley is very quiet with only 4 or 5 little shops. Overton is busier and has more pubs, shops etc. I think Hook and Fleet are more like towns and have supermarket etc where as Oakley and Overton don't. Hook and Oakley are both nice Oakley is more like hook was when I grew up 30 years ago, much smaller and quieter just depends what you want. Oakley and Overton are cheaper than hook and fleet. My ds starts at Oakley in sept and so far we are very impressed, it's two form entry and outstanding.

Thank you guys very much ; your advice was very helpful 😊😊

Soupforbrains suggestions are good. Lovely part of the world.
I'd go for Hartley Wintney.

I live in Church Crookham and love it. Great community and semi rural setting - I can be out in the middle of nowhere in minutes on my bike. Handy for Farnham and Guildford which are fab for shopping. No kids but the schools seem good.

We moved to Crookham Village 20 years ago and love it. Brought up 3 kids here. Happy to answer any questions.

Think about Newbury and surrounding villages, the commute to Basingstoke is easy and some lovely places to live