Artsy liberal places to live in the U.K.? (But still beautiful)

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We live in London but our work is going wfh pretty much completely. We both wfh part time, but now it looks like it’ll be permanently that way, with maybe one meeting a week in London.

DH and I like living in London, but open to moving and our young DS does not like living in london. Whenever we go to the countryside for the day he says “can we move here?!”. So now we’re thinking maybe we’ll try out living somewhere else.

We are from London so actually don’t know much of the UK!

Can anyone suggest a liberal, artsy place to live that is beautiful and has a great community? The thing I like best about london is how easy it is to find a very friendly community.

No idea where to start!!!

Our family is London or SE, friends London or SE / SW so somewhere easy to get back to for that.

Any suggestions welcome! And we will start taking day trips!

Lots of Totnes suggestions - just a warning that it is really small and very quiet by comparison with most other places being mentioned here.

Hastings has a seedy and rundown parts also has the highest number of registered sex offenders and paedos than any other places in UK !

Brighton - great fun

Hay on Wye is lovely during the Book Festival season but it is miles from anywhere ... the OP has said she wants to be fairly close to her friends and family to get back for day visits. Some of the places mentioned on here are really isolated and insular. I live in what is considered a beautiful part of the country but it is incredibly small minded (at times) and although I have found enough people to make good friendships etc the prevailing attitudes are just incredibly insular and unwelcoming to anyone who may have different views or opinions. Be very careful where you choose.

My house is for sale in Bath 😉 we love it here. Hour and 15 to London on the fast train. Will you Need to go to London regularly.
Cambridge is also a good shout but traffic terrible. Bristol, edinburgh would also be good shouts.

Forgot to say Lewes also has direct trains to Victoria.

To whoever upthread who said wherever you'll move you'll find 'your people'. I disagree. We moved out of London (about 5 years ago) to a place where we completely failed to meet like-minded folk. We gave it a good shot (nearly 4 years) and then moved again to one of the places mentioned frequently on this thread, which is really where I'd wanted to go in the first place, but we were lured elsewhere by a much bigger house. Confirmed that location should trump house every single time. We're now in a smaller house, but we are much much happier.

OP do look really closely at schools. Hastings, for e.g., which is a bit of a marmite place anyway (the old town is lovely, but is a very small proportion of an otherwise quite deprived town) I think has no good secondary options and the primaries are patchy.

And I second the person who said rent for a year first, if you can.

Leigh on Sea DOES have an artsy side and liberal types so there is a community to join if that’s what you are looking for. BUT that community is outnumbered by the TOWIE contingent.

I think artists are drawn by cheap rents to places like Hastings and Margate but that doesn’t mean the community as a whole is arty and liberal or they’re even attractive towns. The times I’ve been to Hastings I’ve thought it was very “sad” in the traditional sense. Some really ugly buildings and very run down looking sea front. The old town is nice but quite small. I think when I visited I struggled to find a nice coffee spot. St Ives and Edinburgh would be way too far to travel back to a London for meetings. Another point is how often you would want to visit to travel friends. Anything north of London is probably going to require you to navigate round the M25 to visit your friends in the SE. If this is only an occasional thing then obviously no problem but as I dare say you know traffic there can be appalling.

Hastings has problems, no doubt about it. It’s Marmite, as pp said. If you don’t like it but like the area, somewhere like Lewes would be better (it’s a lot more expensive and the trains are slower). If you don’t like Hastings you might also struggle with Folkestone and Margate.

Hastings & St Leonards have tons of good coffee places, independent shops, little galleries etc. Two independent cinemas. Lots of live music. Decent pubs, cafes and some restaurants. It’s gentrified enough to be nice but still plenty of useful shops etc. (Old Town is very gentrified).

Schools may be an issue though.

I’m glad to hear that about Hastings.... it definitely had potential.

Lot's of these places are screamingly white though and make my teeth itch as they dont have any proper bloody shops. Lewes especially - plus be careful of stuff like SEN provision outside the major hubs, it can be an eyeopener.

Another Stroudy here, moved from Peckham. I don't live in Stroud itself, one of the other lovely towns around it. Excellent community spirit, so much stunning geography. A short trip to Bristol for city life / shops and an hour and 20 on the train to London I think.

Chichester hasn't had a mention. But that's nice, good theatre, lots going on in the area and near the sea

If you have to go to London even once a week I wouldn't recommend quite a few of the places on here, with the exception maybe of Cambridge or Norwich. People often mention Frome for example. It has a train station but you would I think have to change at Westbury for London. I have travelled on this line a lot. It usually has packed trains with two or three carriage trains. In the New Forest, by comparison, empty trains with multiple carriages go through Brockenhurst regularly from Dorset.

Stroud is maybe OK too - I don't know that trainline.

I’d recommend Cheltenham good schools, bars, restaurants and various festivals (ie racing, literature, jazz). Good direct train line into Paddington.

I was raised in Stroud area which is just down the road from Cheltenham but spent the last 20 years living in London (Putney, East Dulwich) just moved back this year. I decided on Cheltenham as I would find the Stroud area rather quiet after London.

I'm east Herts by Stansted airport .We are in middle ,1 mile have 1000 acres of national trust land another mile other way fair size town centre but also strong feeling of community .

Saffron Walden/Elsenham may also suit you Op. Cheaper than Cambridge .I also like Epping

Sadly Tory Mp but the town is laid back lots going on also strong HE community .Good transport links road or railway

I really wouldn't recommend Stratford upon Avon. It's not artsy nor liberal. The RSC is a completely separate entity from the rest of the place. There were (are?) a couple of good schools when I lived there but it's very conservative and my experience of community activities was that it's almost entirely middle class retired people who don't want new people coming in and changing what they've done for the last 40 years.

But then I wouldn't give up living in London. I like what Creative Folkestone has done to the town, and know people who love living in Whitstable, but I also know some who have come back to London because it hasn't been what they had hoped.

Definitely make sure you know what you're letting yourself in for. Moving to a pretty village might seem ideal but when there's only 2 buses a day into the nearest town and the last bus home leaves at 5.30pm, it can feel very isolated. Particularly as a teen (this was my experience of growing up in the middle of nowhere at least)

@ChristopherTracy, obviously Lewes isn't as diverse as London but has a lot of language students and its proximity to Brighton helps. It has a huge Tesco, Waitrose and Lidl!

I live close to Stroud and not far from Cheltenham. I'd never live in Cheltenham, it is a place for the elderly and certainly not artsy or liberal with a small L. It is mainly populated by retired colonel types in the nice bits and several large and frightening criminal families in the not so nice bits.

Bridport would be my suggestion too.

I also echo the disagreement with "you'll find your people". If you live in a place and the overwhelming vibe of the place isn't you, then it's stifling. Of course you'll find probably (maybe) find some people like you, but when you're out in town, on the streets, in your job and the overwhelming population is different to you it's hard to get past. It's why I will never live out of a city again!

Scrolling through this thread instead of doing my work .....you can buy a whole street of houses in Norwich at the moment

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-87113891.html

Oxford Cleveland battle wells rye deal - Hastings is very rough old town is artsy though - Worthing maybe