Crawley, West Sussex

It looks like we are going to be on the move , we need to be on the mainline train route to London Victoria and need to live within 0.5 miles of the train station (not asking much!) Does anyone know Crawley, what is it like? Does anyone know of any website where I can look at different areas. Also where else is nice to live along that trainline?

I don't want to move I have finally got a job I like and am seriously considering commuting 2 hours a day, all my friends are here and I like my house we are in but not going along with this isn't an option.

Thanks in advance

 Crawley is known within the aviation industry as "creepy crawley" - although saying that I actually quite enjoyed living there.  Quick & easy access to London and the rest of the world via gatwick airport, decent shopping although not the nicest area.   One of the nicer areas is Three Bridges and there is a big estate called Maidenbower which isn't too bad.  Three Bridges has it's own station too.

We lived in Horley which also has a train station and was a little bit nicer but you would need a car to get about to shops etc really.  Depending on your budget Reigate is fantastic and if we could have afforded it we would have definitely lived there.

If you are looking to rent thent here is plenty of availability around the Crawley area because there are so many temporary / transient employees because of the airport.

Thankyou for your reply our budget would be around three hundred thousand, not huge but we would rather live in a nicer area and have less house, if you know what I mean.  Willing to live anywhere along that trainline really the smaller the better.

Thanks again

Hmm... well, it's known locally as Creepy Crawley, but that may be just be because it's too obvious to resist. It's not a bad area, and most of the towns around there (Redhill, Horley, Three Bridges) tend to be on the Victoria line because it's so close to Gatwick. I haven't been there in a while but from what I remember, it's quite a new town, most of the houses are 20th century, so there's not much in the way of character. It has a good shopping centre. I can vouch for Horley being quite nice as I used to work there (it has a Waitrose, if that's any help) but that was nearly ten years ago.

Have you tried upmystreet.com? They do tend to drown you in statistics, but you can get an idea of typical earnings and crime figures for the area you're looking at?

raspberryjam:

Thankyou for your reply our budget would be around three hundred thousand, not huge but we would rather live in a nicer area and have less house, if you know what I mean.  Willing to live anywhere along that trainline really the smaller the better.

 

Thanks again

How far out are you willing to go? Hassocks is about an hour from Victoria (much closer to where I live) and is a lovely area, very close to Hurstpierpoint which is a sweet little village (although sadly doesn't have a railway station). You can get a decent amount of house for the money you have to spend.

A good way to find out what stations are on a particular line is on nationalrail.co.uk - hopefully this will work, it shows all the stations on the line:

http://ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/en/pj/jddc#20468779

Max train journey of about 1 hour 15 mins. Thank you for your help. The trouble is I don't want to move but has we are going to have to I want to move to an area that is nice. what are local hospitals like?

Thank you very much for your help

 The nearest hospital would be the Princess Royal in Haywards Heath, which has an A&E department and a maternity unit (both of these were threatened with closure, but I think they've been repreived - you may want to check that), or the Royal Sussex County in Brighton (where my dad had his heart bypass). They're both OK, I think, you can find out performance details here:

http://www.bsuh.nhs.uk/hospitals/waiting-times-and-performance/

Come to think of it, Haywards Heath is quite nice as well.

Thank you for your help

Gilda:

 The nearest hospital would be the Princess Royal in Haywards Heath, which has an A&E department and a maternity unit (both of these were threatened with closure, but I think they've been repreived - you may want to check that), or the Royal Sussex County in Brighton (where my dad had his heart bypass). They're both OK, I think, you can find out performance details here:

 

http://www.bsuh.nhs.uk/hospitals/waiting-times-and-performance/

 

Come to think of it, Haywards Heath is quite nice as well.

Sadly the hospital at Haywards Heath is going to be substantially downgraded - no maternity and a limited A&E.

However, friends of mine have just moved there and love it - they were in London and still commute there daily.  Burgess Hill might also be worth a look.

 Oh, said friends got a 4 bedroomed 'link' detached house with a big old kitchen (but a pocket handkerchief garden) for £280k last year - 20 minutes walk from Haywards Heath's train station.

 hey,

im from that way (lived in horley most my life)

I'd pretty much agree with what others have said, maidenbower, just behind three bridges station is lovely, and three bridges actually has more direct trains to london than crawley. u should be able to get a reasonable sized place fot your money too. quite a lot of crawley is, how shall i say....full of...eerrrm...well chavs!! its ok, and some areas are nice, but you really need to look carefully, it used to be just certain areas but now u kinda have to stork the road you wanna live and be on 'chav watch!!!'

i'd defo say that three bridges and maidenbower are your best bets tho. there are quite a few houses that are nice that you could walk to the station from, but like someone else said they are all modern houses, so not much charector, and pretty much non existant gardens!!

HTH

em x

Thank you, I have been looking at right move and found nice houses in Burgess hill, Hayward heath, Hurstpierpoint and Hassocks so maybe it won;t be too bad, it is just friends and a job I will need to find

 Crawley is one of the 'New Towns' (like Stevenage and Welwyn Garden City) - so there are a few older houses, but they are swamped by post 1947 building.  Some of which is a bit grim!

 Don't know what you do as a profession, but this may help

http://jobs.westsussex.gov.uk/ccm/portal/

raspberryjam:

Thank you, I have been looking at right move and found nice houses in Burgess hill, Hayward heath, Hurstpierpoint and Hassocks so maybe it won;t be too bad, it is just friends and a job I will need to find

where will you be moving from?? is it a massive move??

soz to be nosey!!

em x