Spec me a nice area to live, near Crawley

Soldato
Joined
9 Jul 2006
Posts
3,322
Location
London
So, I've gone and got myself a job down in Crawley, starting in September (yay for me :)).

The thing is, I live up in Bedfordshire and have no idea about the West Sussex/Surrey area. I've got a couple of months to find a nice place to live, so hoped that the few of you who live in that area may be able to provide me with your opinions - where's cheap/expensive, nice/rough, which roads tend to turn into carparks in rush hour, etc.

There are three things to bear in mind though.
1. Has to be within commutable distance to Crawley (for obvious reasons).
2. Ideally situated so that it won't take a day to travel back up to Bedford/Milton Keynes.
3. Ideally near to or within a town, as I'm pretty fed up with living out in a tiny village where I am now :p

The obvious and simplest choice would be to live in Crawley itself, but I've heard it's not that nice a town, or is it?
 
Associate
Joined
18 Dec 2005
Posts
1,449
Location
Londontown
Live in Horsham! Reasonable sized town, nice lovely and suburban if you don't mind that sort of pathetic middle class living! 15 - 20 minute drive Crawley. My ex-gf's dad did a Milton Keynes commute every now and then with relative ease. I think wherever you live in West Sussex the long bit to getting to Milton Keynes will be the bottleneck by the M25.

Horsham area in general is reasonably expensive but if you look around well enough i'm sure you'll find something reasonably priced.

The outlying villages of Horsham are alright as well. Places such as Southwater are reasonably nice and cheaper than Horsham itself - it's pretty much a giant new house estate with some old parts to it. Other villages are a lot smaller but just as nice.


Crawley itself is an absolute dump - i'd try and avoid living in it and too close to it really. Full of chavs. And the closer to London you get the more crowded and more expensive it gets (I think).

Hope this helps a bit... Any more questions about the area and I'll try and help in one way or another, i'm from Horsham if you haven't gathered.
 
Associate
Joined
18 Dec 2005
Posts
1,449
Location
Londontown
jidh007: Horsham sounds like a possibility then, thanks for that. Is all of Crawley a dump then? Usually there's a good part somewhere in large towns!

There's a few parts of it which are just full of immigrants such as Langley Green, also known as Langladesh :rolleyes:

There are of course some nice parts but I think I just tend to write all of Crawley off as it is quite different to Horsham. The issue with Crawley is that it's just got an absolutely bizarre social mix and a lot of the housing and buildings just popped up in the 60's and 70's making it quite an ugly place. In fact for some background Crawley is one of those post-war towns they just 'built', it used to be called Crawley Newtown back in the day haha. Three Bridges, Worth and the bit around Goffs Park are from what a recall the 'nicer' parts of Crawley. There's also a few villages scattered around the outskirts such as Pease Pottage which might be worth a look in?

Haha yeah SideWinder I know Pulborough, got a few friends who live there. Do you know West Chiltington road? :p

Edit: North Horsham might be worth a look in, it's not as nice as say west Horsham or whatever but basically it's a lot cheaper and in fact nearer to Crawley.
 
Last edited:
Soldato
Joined
19 Feb 2004
Posts
15,102
Location
Darlington, UK
Horsham or the surrounding area would be perfect, I grew up there. No idea what it costs to live there these days.

Southwater is nice which is a village just outside of Horsham, probably stupidly expensive these days.
 
Soldato
Joined
3 Oct 2005
Posts
6,330
Location
England
Crawley is full of chavs. Horsham is nice, or there's Dorking which is about a 30 min drive away. It's a nice little town although doesn't have a great selection of shops e.g. clothing unlike Horsham.

yes we have chavs but they're everywhere these days and its no where near as bad as crawley.

Although according to findaproperty.com house prices are much higher than Horsham
 
Caporegime
Joined
7 Mar 2003
Posts
28,189
Location
Krispy Kreme drive thru
I'll be working at Thales, in the industrial estate on Manor Royal.

So those places are the nice end of Crawley? :p

Not really a nice end to crawley, but they are the better areas. stay away from bewbush and ifield and of course langledesh.

Manor Royal is a nightmare during rush hour but you can get onto a few ways from the areas i have just mentioned, which helps :]


Sexretspy mentioned Dorking, i wouldnt bother. its an old peoples home and bloody costly compared to the nicer part of crawley.
 
Associate
Joined
13 Sep 2008
Posts
158
I currently work for a relatively large employer whom have their head office in Crawley. Can I ask who you are working for?

Crawley is a dump, someone I work with lives in Horsham and he says its completely different. Seem to be quite a lot of nice places nearby but not Crawley itself!
 
Caporegime
Joined
22 Jun 2004
Posts
26,684
Location
Deep England
Sexretspy mentioned Dorking, i wouldnt bother. its an old peoples home and bloody costly compared to the nicer part of crawley.

Weird that, this girl at work used to live in Dorking and says she hated it, turned her into an alcoholic as there was nothing to do except drink. If I could afford it then I'd live in Dorking like a shot - I guess that's how you know when you're getting old :p

@OP - another vote for Horsham, suits your requirements perfectly. I moved there 2 years ago, don't have many complaints. I'm sure there are nice areas in Crawley, where the airline pilots live for example, but I've yet to find them ;) I'm afraid Crawley just looks like one big council estate whenever I drive through (with my car doors locked!).
 
Associate
Joined
27 Aug 2004
Posts
428
Location
Surrey
If your working for Thales, could live in Northgate, its not bad, very very close to town. If you don't mind driving in, look at the country retreats, copthorne, crawley down, getting into crawley in the morning is relatively hassle free, bit of traffic, but it always moves.

My office is based there, and there are a couple of decent pubs in town.

Three Bridges would be my suggestion though, trains back from london at all hours of the night, trains direct to bedford. Actually not too bad a place to live.
 
Back
Top Bottom