Sunday Times Best Places to Live: Chichester is named the best in the south east

Chichester has been named regional winner in the Sunday Times Best Places to Live guide. Judges praised its mix of history and modern culture, excellent schools, convenient transport connections, proximity to the South Downs National Park and shopping that meets most budgets.

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They said: ‘Chichester has both class and a heart. The beautiful historic town has welcomed the highest number of Ukrainian refugees per head in the country. It has good schools and transport links but it’s the easy access to both the South Downs and Chichester Harbour plus a healthy dose of culture from the Festival Theatre and Pallant Gallery that elevate it far above the south coast sprawl.’

Nine places are given an honourable mention, the next closest being Alresford in Hampshire, about which the judges wrote: ‘Pretty and peaceful, Alresford has good state schools and a nice selection of independent shops and cafes. It may feel out of the way, but Winchester is only a short drive away, and there’s always something going on in the town, with sports clubs for all ages, a community choir and theatre, a horticultural society and two arts societies.’

The other areas were Seven Dials in Brighton and Hove, which is said to have a ‘genuine village-feel, with its beautifully preserved Victorian terraced houses and villas, independent shops and views of the South Downs’; Folkestone in Kent – ‘fun… with entertaining public art at every turn and a colourful Creative Quarter filled with quirky shops and artist’s studios’; Guildford; Lindfield in West Sussex with its ‘duck pond, rose-covered historic houses and a pretty common full of dog walkers’; East Oxford; Reading; Reigate in Surrey and Wheathampstead in Hertfordshire.

Wadhurst in East Sussex was named the overall winner of Best Places to Live. It was praised by judges for its ‘good schools, convenient transport connections, an amazingly well-stocked high street and stunning scenery’. They said that it offers ‘pretty much everything needed for modern life in miniature’.

Previous overall winners are Stamford, Lincolnshire (2013); Skipton, North Yorkshire (2014); Newnham, Cambridge (2015); Winchester, Hampshire (2016); Bristol (2017), York (2018), Salisbury, Wiltshire (2019); Altrincham, Cheshire (2020); Stroud, Gloucestershire (2021); and Ilkley, West Yorkshire (2022).