Census 2001 Maps

1. Interactive map of religious affiliation in England and Wales, 2001

This tool was created using Ordnance Survey’s OS OpenSpace API. Type in your postcode to find the religious mix of your local authority, or scroll into areas of interest.

The rest of this page is currently under reconstruction – thank you for your patience.

2. 2001 Census religious maps for England

The 2001 Census collected data on current religion for people usually resident in England and Wales at the time of the Census. More information on the religion question is available from the ONS here.

Seven religious categories were available: Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, and None. The question was voluntary and those who chose not to respond are listed as ‘Religion Not Stated’. There was also a ‘write in’ option for those who fell into a different religious category, who were in general grouped together as ‘Other’.

Click on each map to enlarge, and click here for further information on data sources.

2.1.1 Distribution of Buddhist population of England, 2001, by district authority.

2.1.2 Distribution of Christian population of England, 2001, by district authority.

<< Other Religion

Many people chose to write in their own religion on the Census form. Some were allocated to one of the main religious categories, but 151,000 were grouped together as ‘other’. The largest groups were:

Spiritualist: 32,000

Pagan: 31,000

Jain: 15,000

Wicca: 7,000

Rastafarian: 5,000

Baha’i: 5,000

Zorastrian: 4,000

Those who wrote in ‘other’ without specifying a religion were coded as ‘No religion’, as were those who wrote in Jedi, Agnostic, Atheist and Heathen.

<<Religious Diversity

Diversity is measured here using Simpson’s Index of Diversity.

The SID equals 1 minus the sum, across all categories of people, of the proportional abundance of each group squared. The SID equals zero if there is only one group in the population, and approaches 1 as the number of groups increases and the proportional distribution between the groups becomes more equal.

This measure is commonly used in sociology and ecology to measure diversity, and is mathematically related to the Herfindahl index used by economists as a measure of industrial concentration.