Kate - it depends what you want to do with it. If you've got shed loads of pics and music to store then the laptop you have bought wil be just fine. SSD drives of a large capacity are still pricey and not yet in £300 laptops.
It's horses for courses - if you just surf the web and store a few docs then a small capacity SSD based laptop will be a good idea.
if you need the storage then you'll need a non-SSD drive to get the capacity.
Don't get too hung up on the techy talk - it's a laptop ffs - it will do what you need it to do.
At the budget end of the market you are right to stick with a famous brand. HP, dell, Lenovo et al will all do the job, and most importantly you'll be able to download any software or drivers you may need later on.
8gb and 1tb is fine.