Swallow Close Bicester, Cherwell

30 addresses across 2 postcodes (OX26), about 140 m long, classed as a local road. USRN 6801408.

  • Sales: 71 recorded sales since 1995; in 2025 the median was £531,000 across 1 sale.
  • Energy: 19 homes have an energy certificate (C: 4, D: 14, E: 1).
  • Flood: 14 addresses on its postcodes are in areas at high or medium risk of flooding from rivers, the sea or surface water.
  • Council tax: Most homes around it are in council tax band E; Band D in Cherwell costs £2,583 a year in 2026-27.
  • Broadband: Gigabit broadband is available to 100% of premises.
  • Transport: The nearest railway station is Bicester Village, about 830 m (0.5 miles) away in a straight line.
  • Green space: The nearest park or garden is about 190 m away.
  • Air: Background air pollution in 2024 was 6.9 µg/m³ of nitrogen dioxide and 6.8 of PM2.5, within UK legal limits.
  • Height: It is about 65 m above sea level.
  • Noise: 3 of its 30 addresses are modelled at 55 dB or more from road traffic.
  • Doctors: The nearest GP surgery is Alchester Medical Group, about 90 m away, with 3 practices within 1.6 km (1 mile).
  • People: About 650 people lived in the census areas around it in 2021; 74% of households owned their home and 44% of adults held a degree or other higher qualification.
  • Crime: 37 crimes were recorded within 250 m between September 2025 and August 2026, most often violence and sexual offences.

Sales on this street

Source: HM Land Registry Price Paid Data, sales registered up to 28 August 2026, loaded 28 October 2026. Sales reach the register two weeks to two months after completion, so the last two months are incomplete. Matched by postcode and street name.

Sales by year (standard sales only; repossessions and buy-to-let transfers excluded)
YearSalesMedian priceLowestHighest
20251£531,000£531,000£531,000
20222£434,650£419,300£450,000
20212£422,500£410,000£435,000
20191£400,000£400,000£400,000
20171£375,000£375,000£375,000
20152£440,000£345,000£535,000
20141£295,000£295,000£295,000
20132£330,000£330,000£330,000
20113£295,000£288,000£311,000
20101£250,000£250,000£250,000
20092£250,000£225,000£275,000
20082£260,750£232,500£289,000
Most recent sales (latest 50 of 71)
DateAddressTypePriceNotes
24 Jun 20256 OX26 6YLDetached£531,000
30 May 202215 OX26 6YLDetached£450,000
15 Feb 202210 OX26 6YLDetached£419,300
7 Sep 20218 OX26 6YLDetached£410,000
5 Mar 20214 OX26 6YLDetached£435,000
27 Jun 201920 OX26 6YLDetached£400,000
30 Nov 201730 OX26 6YLDetached£375,000
31 Jul 201526 OX26 6YLDetached£535,000
13 Apr 201530 OX26 6YLDetached£345,000
7 Mar 20141 OX26 6YLDetached£295,000
6 Nov 20134 OX26 6YLDetached£330,000
9 Aug 201311 OX26 6YLDetached£330,000
1 Nov 20119 OX26 6YLDetached£311,000
21 Oct 201116 OX26 6YLDetached£295,000
17 Oct 201117 OX26 6YLDetached£288,000
12 Mar 201030 OX26 6YLDetached£250,000
18 Dec 200914 OX26 6YLDetached£275,000
23 Feb 200921 OX26 6YLDetached£225,000
24 Oct 200821 OX26 6YLDetached£232,500
26 Sep 20084 OX26 6YLTerraced£289,000
26 Oct 20075 OX26 6YLDetached£273,000
12 Jun 200711 OX26 6YLDetached£285,000
8 Jun 20076 OX26 6YLDetached£285,000
27 Mar 200722 OX26 6YLDetached£297,500
22 Sep 200623 OX26 6YLSemi-detached£248,500
24 Jul 200630 OX26 6YLDetached£240,000
21 Jul 200617 OX26 6YLDetached£277,500
5 Jun 200622 OX26 6YLDetached£273,000
23 Jan 200625 OX26 6YLDetached£235,000
14 Dec 200524 OX26 6YLDetached£279,950
9 Dec 20054 OX26 6YLTerraced£276,000
16 Sep 20057 OX26 6YLDetached£226,700
26 May 20058 OX26 6YLDetached£217,000
22 Apr 200514 OX26 6YLDetached£242,000
10 May 200414 OX26 6YLDetached£233,000
29 Apr 200416 OX26 6YLDetached£220,000
17 Apr 200312 OX26 6YLSemi-detached£198,000
14 Feb 20033 OX26 6YLDetached£192,000
20 Nov 200212 OX26 6YLSemi-detached£188,000
11 Sep 200228 OX26 6YLDetached£182,000
24 Apr 20027 OX26 6YLDetached£179,000
15 Mar 20025 OX26 6YLDetached£170,000
3 Aug 200114 OX26 6YLDetached£169,950
29 Jun 20016 OX26 6YLDetached£162,000
7 Jun 200120 OX26 6YLDetached£181,000
25 May 200118 OX26 6YLDetached£156,000
23 Mar 200113 OX26 6YLSemi-detached£144,000
22 Dec 200016 OX26 6YLDetached£161,500
30 Jun 20004 OX26 6YLTerraced£177,000
26 May 200024 OX26 6YLDetached£149,000

Energy performance certificates

Source: Energy Performance of Buildings Register (MHCLG), register as at 1 November 2026. Latest certificate per address; certificates last ten years, so the oldest here dates from November 2008 and some homes have none. Address data © Ordnance Survey and Royal Mail, shown for understanding the energy efficiency of buildings only.

19 homes with a current certificate; median floor area 105 m². Most common: House, detached (19). Built: 1991-1995 (14); 1996-2002 (4); 1983-1990 (1). Tenure at assessment: owner-occupied (14); rented (private) (2).

Council tax

What each band costs in Cherwell in 2026-27: Band D £2,583 a year on average, including the police, fire and any county and parish charges.

ABCDEFGH
£1,722£2,009£2,296£2,583£3,157£3,731£4,305£5,166

Homes by band in the neighbourhood around this street: most are in band E (37% of about 540 homes).

Sources: Valuation Office Agency, Council Tax: stock of properties, homes at 31 March 2026 (counts rounded to the nearest 10; some small counts withheld), for the neighbourhood (census area of about 700 homes) around it, not just this street; Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, council tax levels 2026-27. Bands are charged as fixed shares of Band D; the actual bill depends on the parish and on discounts such as the single-person discount. Check a home's own band with the official council tax band checker.

Planning and heritage

  • Conservation area: no postcode centre in this street's postcodes is in one.
  • Listed buildings on or by this street: none.
  • Article 4 direction (removing permitted development rights): none recorded, though not every council has published theirs.
  • Tree preservation orders: none recorded, though not every council has published theirs.
  • Green belt: no.

Brownfield land registered for housing within 1 km (0.6 miles)

Source: planning.data.gov.uk (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government), compiled from councils and, for listed buildings, Historic England's National Heritage List. Conservation areas, Article 4 directions, tree preservation areas and the green belt are checked at each postcode's centre. Listed buildings and protected trees are counted on or by this street. Councils publish Article 4 directions, tree preservation orders and brownfield registers to different standards, and some not yet. Planning applications are not here: there is no national open record of them yet.

Roadworks

No street works under way, planned or finished in the last three months on this street, in permits up to 30 September 2026.

Source: Department for Transport, Street Manager open data, permits and works up to 30 September 2026. It is published once a month, so works arranged or started since then are not shown, and dates are the ones planned unless the works have started or finished. Emergency works are often permitted after they begin.

Flood risk

Rivers, the sea or surface water: in this street's postcodes, 7 addresses are in areas at high risk, 7 at medium risk and 14 at low risk. Each address counts once, at the higher of its rivers-and-sea and surface-water risk.

Rivers and the sea alone: no home is in an area at risk.

High: 3.3% (1 in 30) or more chance of flooding a year. Medium: 1% to 3.3%. Low: 0.1% to 1%. Very low: under 0.1%. The rivers and sea figures allow for flood defences. Counts cover whole postcodes, which can include other streets.

Flood zone for planning: no postcode centre on this street is in flood zone 2 or 3.

PostcodePlanning zoneAddresses at high / medium / low riskGroundwater
OX26 6YLnot in 2 or 3 4 / 2 / 3 unlikely
OX26 6YGnot in 2 or 3 3 / 5 / 11 unlikely

Sources: Environment Agency Flood risk: postcode search tool data (loaded 29 October 2026), Risk of Flooding from Rivers and Sea: postcodes in areas at risk (loaded 29 October 2026) and Flood Map for Planning (loaded 28 October 2026). Flood zones are checked at each postcode's centre point. These are models of areas, which their publishers say are not suitable for showing whether an individual property is at risk, and they do not cover flooding from sewers or drains. Check an address on the official long-term flood risk service.

© Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2026. All rights reserved. Some features are based on digital spatial data from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, © NERC (CEH); the postcode data is produced in part from PAF® and Multiple Residence Data, © Royal Mail Group Limited.

Height above sea level

The street's addresses are about 65 m above sea level.

Source: Ordnance Survey, OS Terrain 50, July 2026: the height of the ground on a 50 m grid, read at each address, in metres above Ordnance Datum (mean sea level at Newlyn). It is the lie of the land, not floor or threshold levels, and is accurate to a few metres. Being low-lying is not in itself a flood risk; the flood section above says what the flood maps show.

Broadband

Source: Ofcom Connected Nations, data as at January 2026. Percentages are of premises in each postcode that can get the service, not take-up or speed achieved.

Availability by postcode (% of premises)
PostcodeSuperfast (30 Mbit/s+)Ultrafast (300 Mbit/s+)GigabitBelow 10 Mbit/s
OX26 6YG100%100%100%0%
OX26 6YL100%100%100%0%

Getting around

Sources: Department for Transport, NaPTAN (every public transport stop), as at 31 October 2026; Office of Rail and Road, Estimates of station usage 2024–25 (which stations are on the National Rail network, and their journeys: entries and exits in the year to March); OurAirports (public domain, kept by volunteers); car parks and charging points from Overture Maps Foundation, release 2026-10-21.0, which gathers business listings from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and others: not an official register, so some will be missing, private or out of date. Distances are straight lines from the middle of the street, not routes, and say nothing about how often anything runs. Stations opened since the end of ORR's year appear when ORR publishes the next one, each December; heritage railways are left out.

NearestDistance
Railway stationsBicester Village 1.9 million journeys in 2024–25830 m (0.5 miles)
Bicester North 823,000 journeys in 2024–251.7 km (1 mile)
Islip 39,000 journeys in 2024–2510.1 km (6.2 miles)
Bus stops6 stops within 400 m (0.2 miles), 10 within 800 m (0.5 miles); nearest Langford Medical Practice Langford Village100 m
Car parksBicester Park and Ride2.3 km (1.5 miles)
EV charging pointsPoGo Charge2.5 km (1.6 miles)
Airport with scheduled flightsLondon Luton Airport LTN53 km (33 miles)

Local services

Sources: NHS Organisation Data Service, as at 31 October 2026: GP practices, community pharmacies and dental practices with an NHS contract, open now, each placed at the centre of its postcode; hospitals are NHS trust and Welsh health board sites named as hospitals, and may not have an emergency department. Police stations and cash machines from Overture Maps Foundation, release 2026-10-21.0, which gathers business listings: not an official register, so some will be missing or out of date. Distances are straight lines from the middle of the street. Nothing here says whether a practice is taking new patients or a dentist new NHS patients.

NearestDistance
GP surgeries3 practices within 1.6 km (1 mile); nearest Alchester Medical Group90 m
Pharmacies4 pharmacies within 1.6 km (1 mile); nearest Jardines Pharmacy90 m
NHS dentists6 practices within 1.6 km (1 mile); nearest Causeway Dental Practice1.2 km (0.8 miles)
HospitalBicester Community Hospital1.5 km (1 mile)
Police stationWaddesdon Police Station7.9 km (4.9 miles)
Cash machinesCashpoint® 9 Sheep Street Lloyds Bank1.2 km (0.7 miles)

Parks and green space

Source: Ordnance Survey, OS Open Greenspace, April 2026: public parks and gardens, play spaces, playing fields and allotments, with their entrances. Distances are straight lines from the middle of the street to a site's nearest entrance (or its edge where none is recorded), not walking routes; sizes are the area OS maps for each site. Some sites, such as school playing fields, may not be open to the public.

NearestDistance
Park or garden2 within 800 m (0.5 miles); nearest Unnamed 15 ha190 m
Play area17 within 800 m (0.5 miles); nearest Unnamed 1,080 m²330 m
Playing field2 within 800 m (0.5 miles); nearest Unnamed 2.1 ha390 m
Allotments1 within 800 m (0.5 miles); nearest Bicester Allotments 6,750 m²720 m (0.4 miles)

Within 800 m (0.5 miles): 2 parks and gardens, 17 hectares in all.

Landmarks

The nearest historic landmark is Wretchwick deserted medieval settlement, a scheduled monument, 390 m south-east. 6 listed buildings are within 1 km (0.6 miles).

Historic places
NameWhat it isFrom the middle of the street
Wretchwick deserted medieval settlementScheduled monument390 m south-east
Natural landmarks within 5 km (3.1 miles)
NameWhat it isFrom the middle of the street
Graven HillHill1.4 km (0.9 miles) south-west
Gravenhill WoodWood1.6 km (1 mile) south-west
Blackthorn HillHill2 km (1.3 miles) south-east
Foxey Leys CopseWood2.2 km (1.3 miles) west
Longlands SpinneyWood3 km (1.9 miles) north
Weir PondLake or reservoir3.1 km (1.9 miles) south-east

Sources: Historic England's registers through planning.data.gov.uk (MHCLG), and Cadw through DataMapWales (Welsh Government): World Heritage Sites within 10 km (6.2 miles), battlefields within 5 km (3.1 miles), registered parks and gardens within 3 km (1.9 miles), scheduled monuments within 2 km (1.2 miles), and Grade I and II* listed buildings within 1 km (0.6 miles). Ordnance Survey, OS Open Names, October 2026: named hills, valleys, lakes, woods, wetlands and coast (it has no rivers). Distances are in a straight line to the middle of each site, and being on a register does not mean there is public access.

Air quality

Source: Defra, modelled background air pollution, annual means for 2024, for the 1 km square that holds the middle of the street. These are background levels, away from the kerb: beside a busy road nitrogen dioxide in particular can be several times higher. UK limits are the legal annual limits for England and Wales; the World Health Organization's 2021 guidelines are much stricter, and most towns and cities are above them.

Annual means in µg/m³ (micrograms per cubic metre of air)
PollutantHereUK limitWHO guideline
Nitrogen dioxide (NO2)6.94010
Fine particles (PM2.5)6.8205
Particles (PM10)11.54015

All three are within the UK legal limits; PM2.5 is above the WHO guideline, as in most towns and cities.

Road and rail noise

Source: Defra, strategic noise mapping Round 4 (England), modelled for 2021 and published in December 2023, and its airport maps of the same round for the fifteen largest English airports, published in April 2026: Lden, the average sound level over a whole day with extra weight for the evening and night, on a 10 m grid, read at each address. These are models of traffic, not measurements; they leave out smaller airports and airfields, industry and neighbours, and a room at the back of a house is often much quieter than the front. The World Health Organization's guidelines are 53 dB for road traffic, 54 dB for railways and 45 dB for aircraft (below the lowest level shown here).

Addresses by modelled noise level (Lden, dB)
LevelRoad trafficRailways
55 to 5930
Under 552730

3 of the street's 30 addresses are modelled at 55 dB or more from road traffic, above the WHO guidelines.

Climate, daylight and earthquakes

Monthly temperatures and rainfall, sunrise and sunset through the year, and earthquakes recorded nearby since 1970 are much the same across the area, so they are worked out once for Cherwell: see them on the Cherwell page.

Nearest schools

Source: Get Information About Schools (Department for Education), 1 November 2026; Ofsted monthly management information as at September 2026. Distances are straight lines from the middle of the street to the school; catchments and admissions are not shown. Since November 2025 Ofsted gives report-card grades by area, not one overall grade; older grades stand until a school is re-inspected.

SchoolPhaseAgesDistanceInspection
Langford Village Community Primary SchoolPrimary3–11120 m No published inspection
Graven Hill Primary SchoolPrimary2–111.1 km (0.7 miles) No published inspection
Longfields Primary and Nursery SchoolPrimary3–111.3 km (0.8 miles) Report card (Jun 2026): Curriculum and teaching: Needs attention; Achievement: Needs attention; Attendance and behaviour: Expected standard; Personal development and wellbeing: Expected standard; Inclusion: Expected standard; Leadership and governance: Expected standard; Early years: Needs attention; Safeguarding standards: Met
Launton Church of England Primary SchoolPrimary3–111.6 km (1 mile) Requires improvement (Feb 2024, overall grade under the previous framework)
St Mary's Catholic Primary School, Bicester Roman CatholicPrimary4–111.8 km (1.1 miles) No published inspection
Brookside Primary SchoolPrimary3–111.9 km (1.2 miles) No overall grade (Mar 2025, graded inspection without an overall judgement): Quality of education: Good; Behaviour and attitudes: Good; Personal development: Good; Leadership and management: Good
The Bicester SchoolSecondary11–182 km (1.2 miles) Good (Mar 2024, overall grade under the previous framework)
The Cooper SchoolSecondary11–182 km (1.2 miles) No overall grade (Feb 2025, graded inspection without an overall judgement): Quality of education: Good; Behaviour and attitudes: Requires improvement; Personal development: Good; Leadership and management: Requires improvement

Food hygiene ratings nearby

Source: Food Standards Agency, Food Hygiene Rating Scheme, extract of 1 November 2026. Each rating is shown with the date it was given; a business may have been re-inspected since the extract. Within 500 m (0.3 miles) of the middle of the street.

BusinessTypeDistanceRatingRated
belle’s bakes OX26 6YLOther catering premises40 m5 Very good27 Jul 2026
Tesco Express OX26 6XXRetailers - other80 m5 Very good25 Feb 2015
The Nightingale OX26 6XXRestaurant/Cafe/Canteen80 m5 Very good12 Feb 2025
Cleverchefs Catering Ltd OX26 6SXSchool/college/university90 m4 Good24 Oct 2025
Sun Wah OX26 6XXTakeaway/sandwich shop90 m5 Very good28 Oct 2026
FLTR OX26 6XXRestaurant/Cafe/Canteen100 m5 Very good21 May 2026
Kidz Zone Club OX26 6SXOther catering premises130 m5 Very good1 May 2026

Crime within 250 m

Source: data.police.uk street-level crime, September 2025 to August 2026. Police forces move every crime to the nearest of about 760,000 anonymised map points before publishing, so these are crimes near this street, not on it, and a busy point can collect crimes from a wider area. Counts are of records, not convictions.

37 recorded crimes by category
CategoryCrimes
Violence and sexual offences17
Other theft7
Anti-social behaviour3
Other crime3
Shoplifting2
Public order2
Criminal damage and arson1
Drugs1
Vehicle crime1

Most of these are attached to: On or near Partridge Chase (7); On or near Avocet Way (6); On or near Peregrine Way (5); On or near Swallow Close (4); On or near Falcon Mead (4).

People and work

Source: ONS Census 2021, taken on 21 March 2021, for the 2 Output Areas (small census areas of about 125 households each) that this street's postcodes are in: 646 residents in 246 households. The census was taken during a lockdown, so working from home is high and travel to work low compared with now. ONS swaps a few records between neighbouring areas and adds small amounts of noise to counts to protect privacy, so small differences mean little. Industry is not published for areas this small.

Who lives here

Around this streetEngland
Median age3640
Children under 1520%17%
Aged 65 and over8%18%

Homes

Around this streetEngland
Owned (outright or with a mortgage)74%61%
Owned outright25%33%
Shared ownershipunder 1%1%
Social rentedunder 1%17%
Private rented25%21%

Work and commuting

Around this streetEngland
Adults (16 and over) in work77%57%
Unemployment (of those working or looking for work)3%6%
Retired (of adults)11%22%
Long-term sick or disabled (of adults)under 1%4%
Work mainly from home (of those in work)38%32%
Travel to work by car or van47%48%
By train, Underground, metro or tram2%4%
By any public transport, including bus3%8%
On foot or by bicycle11%10%
Work within 10 km (6 miles) of home (of those who travel to work)49%65%
Work 30 km (19 miles) or more away12%8%

Education and languages

Around this streetEngland
Degree or other higher qualification, Level 4+ (of adults)44%34%
No qualifications6%18%
Apprenticeship as highest qualification4%5%
Main language English (aged 3 and over)94%91%
Cannot speak English well or at allunder 1%2%

Deprivation

The neighbourhood around this street is in decile 10 of 10 on the English Indices of Deprivation 2025, where 1 is the most deprived tenth of England's 33,755 neighbourhoods and 10 the least.

Source: English Indices of Deprivation 2025 (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government), by LSOA (about 1,500 people), through the ONS Postcode Directory. The index combines income, employment, health, education, crime, housing and living environment; it ranks areas against each other and does not describe any one household. Ranks in England and Wales are worked out separately and cannot be compared.

What has changed

  • Food hygiene ratings Sun Wah (takeaway/sandwich shop, OX26 6XX) re-inspected, still 5 Very good (rated 28 October 2026) found 31 October 2026

Everything that has changed on and near this street

Postcodes on this street

Source: ONS Postcode Directory August 2026, ONS UPRN Directory September 2026, OS Open Linked Identifiers September 2026. A postcode can cover more than one street; the share shows how many of its addresses are on this one.

Nearby streets

Peregrine Way · Merlin Way · Ravencroft · Avocet Way · Kingfisher Way · Falcon Mead · Hawksmead · Partridge Chase · Osprey Close · Turnstone Green · Sandpiper Close · Heron Drive

All the streets in OX26 and across Cherwell.

What this page cannot tell you

  • Whether a particular house is at risk of flooding, subsiding or anything else: the flood map is a model of areas and there is no property-level data here.
  • What a home is worth now: sales are historic prices for the homes that happened to sell.
  • How safe the street is: crime points are moved to anonymised locations and many crimes are never reported.
  • Whether you would get a place at a school: distances are straight lines, not catchments.
  • Who lives on the street now: census figures describe the small areas around it in March 2021, during a lockdown.
  • How long a journey takes or how often anything runs: transport distances are straight lines to the nearest stops.
  • Whether a GP practice is taking new patients, or a dentist new NHS patients.
  • How loud a home is inside, or noise from industry, neighbours or smaller airfields: noise figures are models of road, rail and air traffic outside.

How each figure on this page is matched to the street and worked out: methodology.