Any info on Elsenham, Essex?

[BlueBeam]

Hi! Hoping someone can help.

We are newlyweds looking to upsize so we can start a family and have seen a lovely house in Elsenham village near Bishops Stortford.

We know nothing whatsoever about the area aside from having a little drive around. What’s it like to live there? Are people nice? Is this considered a “nice” area to live or should we consider different villages instead?

Our current area is around 40 mins away and has jumped massively in price since we bought our little 2 bed 3 years ago. For this reason we have been considering Bishops Stortford and surrounding areas, but we’re not really familiar with the lay of the land!

Any insight would be gratefully received as we love our current town so this is a bit of a scary leap for us!

TIA x

I imagine you'll get quite a bit of airplane noise as very close to stansted

@theredspindletree thank you for responding. This was a concern (hubby wouldn’t be able to bare constant noise!) but we did some research and apparently the flight paths don’t go over Elsenham

Is it famous for jam? For some reason that's what it's making me think of ...

@TheRoseTurtle I have googled and apparently so! 😂we like Jam so that’s a tick hehe

Jam factory at Gaunts End has been gone for years , I have known the area most of my life and have watched its development with interest
It has grown massively over past two decades and continues to do so along with its surrounding villages ( Henham ) to become a bit of a sprawl
Some parts of Stansted are better ,some not so much , Saffron Walden has a decent market town feel to it . Bishops Stortford has become very over developed with associated traffic problems
The country needs new homes and I am not knocking the developments , Elsenham is no longer a village that it once was , however is connected with the mainline , 20 mins drive to the M11 and has a few small shops
Ben Maher the gold medal winner has a huge house just outside Elsenham , not sure about schools
Its proximity to Stansted Airport will probably rubber stamp further development
There's worse places you could live but some villages will be blighted by Aircraft

Agree with @billysboy - we're looking at a possible move to Bishops Stortford soon for schooling, so have been looking at that whole area, but it's a pragmatic 'head' move, and we're very aware that that area of Herts/Essex is becoming overdeveloped and is ripe for further house building - a serene rural idyll it definitely isn't! The area is generally fairly pleasant though.

If you are planning a family you may also want to think about schools; I think Elsenham would increasingly be out of catchment for many of the Bishops Stortford schools (some of which have fiendishly complicated admissions policies), so you'd potentially be looking at options in Newport/Saffron Walden.

Just to add that we looked at Saffron Walden as well, which was lovely, but felt a bit too big of a jump for us atm, given that we both have elderly parents in north London.