Help needed - where's nice to live near-ish Keele?

Lemony

Newbie
Hi Staffordians - I need your advice. I'll be moving to Staffordshire with my partner's job in the New Year, and need to narrow down where to live. He'll need to be able to commute to Keele, and I haven't found a new job yet so need to be within reach of as many places as possible. We're currently living in a big city, and I think I'm going to find the transition back to small-town countryside living (first time in over a decade) hard - I don't want to be too isolated, but I wouldn't want to live in a bigger town that wasn't that nice just for the sake of it. We'll look at buying if we like the area.

This is a bit of a rambling question, so if anyone can offer any suggestions I'd be very grateful. I'm looking forward to being closer to green stuff after 10 years of big cities anyway!
 

c0tt0nt0p

Well-Known Forumite
Welcome to the Forum @Lemony !

Depends how far your partner wants to commute each day to Keele I'd imagine. There are good parts to Newcastle-Under-Lyme which is close to Keele, but equally Stone (between Stoke and Stafford and 25 mins drive from Keele) is a nice place.
 

Wormella

Well-Known Forumite
Pretty much anywhere around here is pretty close to green space, so that's not an issue. If he's working at Keele I'd be looking at Newcastle Under Lyme - which has a certain charm and easy access to shops etc - but it is a bit rubbish for connections out (no train station).

I know lots of people who live in Stafford (good train links & green spaces) and the commute to Keele isn't horrid at all.

Stone is probably also worth looking at (does have a train station but only 1 train an hour which seems to get cancelled with some frequency)
 

proactive

Enjoying a drop of red.
Trentham is quite nice or if you fancy a bit of village life then Barlaston is great with a couple of decent pubs and on the edge of the Wedgewood Estate. Decent rugby club, too.

There's also Yarnfield which is pleasant and they're building lots of new houses there if that's your bag.
 

Confused

Well-Known Forumite
My grandparents lived in Madeley and I spent a lot of time there when I was growing up. It is a really picturesque village, that's grown somewhat over the years. There is a wide spread of different housing types from ex local authority and ex miners homes to quite large bungalows and larger houses. A lot of houses have been built in the last 20 years on the old college site.

You would really need a car as it's 7 or so miles outside Newcastle and a bit further to Crewe. There used to be a good bus service to both those places and Keele but I don't know whether that is still the case.

http://www.madeleyvillage.co.uk/
 
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