Where should we move to near York? (Yorkshire)

[LeafyYork]

Hello! Myself and my husband currently own a house west of York City Centre and both have jobs we love near York train station.

We're looking to move further out of York for the following reasons:

1. to move somewhere 'greener' (we love hiking, especially in the North York Moors)
2. to get into a catchment area for a good secondary school for our children (we're currently in the catchment for York High which we've only heard bad things about)
3. to upsize (our family is growing, and we can't afford to upsize in York and still be in the catchment for a good secondary school!)

We really need to be within a 40 minute drive of York train station. My husband can't get public transport to work as he does shift work, but we'd love to live near a train station.

Easingwold and Knaresborough are on our radar and both seem relatively affordable for us. I love Thirsk but it's just too far from York for us.

Does anyone have any comments on living in Easingwold or Knaresborough or any other suggestions?

Thanks!

Malton? Train station, good secondary, closeish to the North York Moors (and the Wolds and coast), decent secondary.
Although may be a bit longer than 40 mins to drive to York train station in rush hour.

Thanks for the reply, Malton is lovely. To be honest I think we just assumed it would be too expensive for us but we may be wrong so it's definitely worth a look. I wonder what the traffic/ driving is like there.

Easingwold is great! The secondary is outstanding. Also well connected with buses for secondary school aged children. The town council is actively trying to get a bit more going on in the town on a weekend - there is live music for free in the square each weekend in the summer and a new artisan market once a month.

I would avoid any of the new build developments at the end of the town nearest the secondary school though. There have been flooding problems at that end for decades when the weather overwhelms the drains and i've no idea how they have built so many houses down there into the existing drainage systems 😳

Thanks for the reply! Easingwold does look like it ticks a lot of boxes for us. I was a bit worried about the lack of a supermarket and whether it was a victim of too many houses being built without extra infrastructure being built to support the growing population! And thanks for the heads up on the new builds, that's really good to know!

So there is one big coop but its pricey. Ok in an emergency. Planning has been granted for a large supermarket plus fuel station on the outside of the town, but as far as i know, no one supermarket has yet committed to the site. Everyone i know either goes to Thirsk (aldi, lidl, tesco), York or gets an online delivery and just does top ups locally.

That makes sense. We'll definitely keep it on our shortlist!

Bump 😊

I used to work at Easingwold School before it academised. The school's leadership team from HOD upwards were a really horrible bunch and I would not have even slightly recommended it for SEN or behavioural problems, and I'd have recommended to do a hard swerve if you're not white.

However, since they have academised, they seem to have cut off a lot of the dead wood in leadership (who were appalling) so maybe the outstanding rating is consistent and not a blip (you get them sometimes, and sometimes when the school gets reinspected they go back down to where they always should have been, see David Young Community Academy in Seacroft, Leeds, which just reacademised with a new name to publicly distance themselves from their special measures which followed hot on the heels of an "outstanding" inspection). But I'd look very carefully at who was still working there before I ever considered sending my children to what is now called Outwood Academy.

The thing is though, if you're not happy with Easingwold's only secondary school, your kids are going to have to travel a long way to get to the next nearest school and public transport isn't great so for me whether I was happy with the school (as it is now) would be very central to that decision.

I've also seen a lot of non-farming young people finish school around the North York Moors and being forced to move away to get any job at all because there just aren't the jobs near where they live, even if they didn't go to uni. Flamingoland is the region's big employer for first-time jobs that aren't in agriculture. There's a similar issue in East Riding (e.g. Beverley, Driffield).

I'd go for West Yorkshire any day, like Harrogate, Knaresborough, Otley, or a nice part of Leeds if I ever moved anywhere around there again. Knaresborough has so much more going on for young people, so much to do in and around the town, and is a skip and a hop to Harrogate which has a decent hospital.

I wouldn't rule Thirsk out, it's 20 mins on the train into York and 40 mins drive on the A19 generally.
Good schools and quality of teaching is really high.
Near the dales and the Moors too.
The town is growing and I expect local services will only increase

Another thing to think about is to check the train lines to see which ones are direct to York and which ones require a change in Leeds to get to York because that adds about 20 minutes onto any journey and some towns are on totally random train lines.

Thirsk also has a reasonable enough Tesco.

Great point, I don't think Easingwold has a train station, which probably limits you a bit.
Also a fan of Tesco !

Pocklington? East Riding is much cheaper. Or anywhere headed East from Monks across.

I really wish York was not so expensive!

Or move North to be in catchment for Huntington and JoRo?

Flamingoland?? Absolutely rubbish. I have a lot of peers working successful professional jobs in York and the surrounding areas, including for major Civil Service employers based in York and Leeds. My peers first time jobs were in hospitality all around Easingwold and York followed by degrees / college away from home and then for many a return "home" to save up for the first flat / house share whilst beginning work in financial services, civil service, local government, NHS, solicitors etc. I can't think of a single person that i know from school days who went to work at Flamingoland

It has a bus route to York which takes 30mins and runs every 30mins. Which given the trains between Thirsk and York are only 2x per hour, works out not much differently in timing. The tesco is a great asset though (also the new McDonalds! 😅)

Harrogate and Knaresborough are both in North Yorkshire.

Northallerton?

Thanks for the thoughtful response :) You make a good point about the next nearest school being really far away. We'll look into Knaresborough some more, we hadn't heard of it until recently so we have some exploring to do.

Do consider Malton/Norton - it sounds like it might tick a lot of your boxes. Although the car journey to York Train Station rarely takes less than 40 minutes. There are hourly trains to York though and the journey takes about 25 minutes.

Malton and Norton are actually two towns seperated by the river and railway, so two good secondary schools and 3 primary schools (and several more in the surrounding villages).

There's easy access to the coast, moors, and York/Leeds. There are 2 supermarkets, a small hospital with a well run Urgent Care Dept and lots of other positives.

Thank you, it does look lovely but that's obviously reflected in the price!

His shifts are 7am to 7pm or 7pm to 7am so I'm hopeful on the traffic, but maybe I'm being too optimistic.

"No, no one from North Yorks ever worked at Flamingoland, they're all solicitors and top level civil servants!!!!!!"
5 seconds later: "All my friends' first-time jobs were in hospitality"
🤦‍♀️

People with parents with enough money to support them enough to get through their qualifications (whether that's being able to "keep a room" available for them in the house to live in and later return to whenever they prefer not to pay rent, monthly allowances, or many things in between) or who secure an apprenticeship in a meaningful topic do quite well in North Yorkshire. As they do everywhere.

However, there is a disparity between those and the young people who NEED to get jobs after GCSEs in order to actually go to uni. And an even greater disparity between them and those who don't even consider uni because of the insurmountable financial burden or physical distance between them and anyone who will employ them in their first job. Most of those kids end up moving away from the area to get jobs and don't go to uni until much later in life. North Yorkshire has some of the richest and poorest areas in the north of England, so what is true of one demographic isn't at all true of another.

Having seen 150-300+ children per year finish school in various schools around N. Yorks year after year for 13 years, I have a very different insight into leavers' destinations across the socio-economic strata than someone taking theirs/their friends' experiences as representative of everyone (really hope that PP doesn't work with stats in their high-level amazing career).

It's nice to be proud of where you grew up and what you've done, but it doesn't help work out where is a good place to live for other people.

Also apologies to another PP for my factual inaccuracy, Harrogate/Knaresborough are indeed in North Yorks, I should know this, I got married in Harrogate (gorgeous 18th century building) after scouring all the registry offices on the NYCC website to find the biggest one that would fit all our guests! 🤣🤦‍♀️

First time jobs, im talking about 16, 17, 18 so whilst still studying, not jobs after formal education to which the inital part of my post refers. But you knew that - you are just being obtuse to be rude. I am one of those to whom you refer. I worked bloody hard in a pub during sixth form to save up for uni. I had no financial support from parents during uni, i supported myself through student loans and part time jobs. I graduated and got a job and a junior civil servant and have worked my way up to be a "top level civil servant" (as you call us). So i know exactly what can be achieved by someone of my "socio-demographic".

This conversation started about Easingwold School. I went there. So my peer group isn't some abstract, out of the norm example. Its directly relevant to the comment you made about Easingwold School. I clearly defer to your superior knowledge on other schools over 13 years but frankly your post implies that anyone moving to a rural area is consigning their kids to zero prospects. And that simply isnt true as i have pointed out.

Check the reliability of the trains too if you end up on a train route into York. TransPennine is awful!

We deliberately chose not to live somewhere with only one train an hour (having relocated from somewhere with eight an hour into London) as it's such a long gap to wait when a train is cancelled and too unreliable to be feasible for work.

What are the schools like compared to elsewhere? As a family that's moved to York from Surrey my perception is that all the York secondaries are a lot better than anything we left behind down south. The primary we're currently using is considerably better than any we saw in Surrey!

You're moving and you weren't specifically asking about this, but I couldn't read your negative comment about York High School without countering it.

York High is a good school. It had a fantastic atmosphere when we looked round on the open day, before my child started there - the most welcoming and buzzing of all the local schools we visited. It has recently had a 'good' Ofsted rating. The open evening was the day after their (likely gruelling) Ofsted visit so the energy and enthusiasm from staff was impressive and very telling of the culture at the school. It has robust behaviour policies, is very strong on SEND and pastoral care, and has great extra curricular opportunities.

It has a negative reputation based on past performance and, perhaps, less effective behaviour management systems but things have been turned around in the past few years. Very often, the negative things I hear about the school are based on snobbish views about the catchment area which is a really sad way to write children off.

My child started there this week and is very happy. My view is not just built on our short experience - I have also had positive reports from others whose children have been there for longer and also people who have visited the school in a work capacity and have nothing by praise for it.

Strensall? I have family who live here and it seems a nice location between York and the countryside. They have kids and seem happy with the schools, no idea which secondary catchment they’re in or how long the drive to the train station would be.