The happiest place to live in Merseyside has been revealed in Rightmove Happy at Home 2022 study

Rightmove’s annual Happy at Home study, now in its 11th year, asked over 21,000 people how they feel about where they live.

The results show that having a sense of belonging to your local area is the most important contributor towards happiness, along with having a strong sense of community, and polite and friendly residents.

This year, coastal town St Ives in Cornwall has been named the happiest place to live by residents. Galashiels in the Scottish Borders is in second place, and the market town of Woodbridge in Suffolk is in third place.

But, how do Merseyside towns and cities rank?

Happiest places to live in Merseyside

Out of all North-West towns and cities, Southport was rated the 7th happiest place to live by its residents. On a national level, the popular coastal town ranks at number 62.

The historic town in Sefton, which was named as one of Rightmove’s UK coastal hotspots last year, is thought to have inspired Napoleon Bonaparte to build the tree-lined boulevards of the Champs-Élysées in Paris.

Sefton often recieves high praise and is a sought after area to live, with Hightown being named as one of the poshest places to live in Britain, earlier this year.

Wirral is close behind, ranked 8th regionally and 74th nationally. The highest rated area in the North-West is Northwich, which also ranks at 16th on a national level.

Five facts about Southport

• In the mid-1800s, Prince Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, the future Napoleon III, is rumoured to have lived for a brief period in accommodation just off Lord Street. It is claimed Southport is the inspiration behind the tree-lined boulevards of the Champs-Élysées in Paris.

• Southport has been awarded £37.5 million from the government’s Towns Fund, with £30 million of the total grant earmarked for a new Marine Lakes Events Centre. The new events complex would replace the existing Southport Theatre and Convention Centre. The planned centre, together with a sound and light show pier attraction leading into the adjacent lake, is at the heart of Sefton Council’s plans for Southport’s regeneration.

• Housed in a beautiful 19^th century building on Southport’s Lord Street, The Atkinson is home to music, theatre, art, literature and history. Its impressive collection has over 3,500 artworks and 25,000 pieces of social history, which are displayed on rotation across its museum and galleries.

• With an Art Deco clubhouse, the Royal Birkdale Golf Club claims to have held more championship and international events since World War II than any other course in the world and has been voted the number one golf club in England.

• The British Lawnmower Museum in Southport includes ‘Lawnmowers of the Rich and Famous’ and equipment owned by Prince Charles and Princess Diana, Queen guitar player Brian May, comedian Eric Morcambe, Coronation Street actress Jean Alexander and gardener and presenter Alan Titchmarsh.