The Religious Census of 1851

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Until recently, no comprehensive survey had been undertaken into religious affiliation and practice in Britain other than once in 1851. As part of the same exercise as that year’s general Census an enquiry was made into the numbers present in religious services on Sunday 30 March in that year, and into the provision made on their behalf.

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The report was published in 1853. It contained tables for each registration district in Wales and in England showing the numbers present in religious services and Sunday schools for each denomination on that day in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening. (Census of Great Britain 1851. Religious Worship in England and Wales. Report and Tables.)

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In Wales there were 40 registration districts, divided into 181 sub-districts. The district boundaries did not correspond with those of the historic counties or that between Wales and England. So Welsh districts on the border included small parts of England while some Welsh parishes were included in English districts.

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The census took place through local officials in each sub-district distributing forms to each place of worship in their area asking how many were present at each service. After the completed forms were collected by them they were forwarded to the registrar for the district and thence to the Registrar General’s office in London. There they were collated by the clerks, area by area, and a count made of the number present in the services for each denomination in each registration district at each time of day. That was the information published in the report’s tables.

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More than a century later the Celtic Studies Board of the University of Wales commenced collecting together and reviewing the original forms submitted by the individual places of worship in Wales. Eventually they were published in two volumes in 1976 and 1981 under the editorship of Ieuan Gwynedd Jones and David Williams. (The Religious Census of 1851. A Calendar of the Returns Relating to Wales).

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The first map is based on the tables published in the report of 1853 and shows the number of people present in Nonconformist services for each registration district in Wales and those in England which could be included on the map. The second shows the number present at the services of the established Church, and the third gives the total for all denominations.

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The fourth map is based on the information given on the forms returned by each Nonconformist chapel, as published by the Board of Celtic Studies. The total attendance is shown for all services and Sunday schools held on that day; therefore any individual who was present at two or three services would have been counted two or three times.

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However, the detailed information from the census should not be over-interpreted, for a several reasons:

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• There were lacunae in the information forwarded to London. For example, the map shows an area of obvious comparative weakness for Nonconformity in north-east Anglesey. However, information for the large parish of Amlwch was given only for four Calvinistic Methodist chapels, but, according to S. Lewis's directory for a few years earlier, there were also an unspecified number of chapels belonging to the Wesleyan Methodists, the Baptists and the Independents. Therefore it is possible that the contrast shown on the map between that area and those neighbouring did not exist in reality.

• The information sent on to London is missing entirely for one Welsh registration district, that of Ffestiniog and for one in England which extended into Wales, that of Great Boughton (Chester).

• The validity of the information provided by ministers or officials of the chapels has to be relied upon. Some had undertaken a detailed count but others had made a very rough estimate, in many cases to the nearest hundred. Some Anglicans alleged at the time that the large congregations recorded for some chapels were due to fraud, but it is not evident that there was any widespread deliberate over-counting.

• The figures given in the census report for each registration district were often – but not always - significantly lower than the total figures given by the individual chapels, for reasons that are not clear. Therefore the map for sub-districts in Wales is produced on a different basis to those showing whole districts in Wales and over the border.

• Several chapels with large congregations were located on parish and registration sub-district boundaries and drew much of their congregations across those boundaries. In order to avoid creating false contrasts as a consequence, some sub-districts, or parts of them, had to be combined. Also combined were some of the smallest sub districts, with a population of less than 2,000. On the other hand, some sub-districts were divided when it seemed clear that there were significant differences in the appeal of the chapels between different areas within them.

 

For all that, the geographical pattern revealed by the maps is clear enough. There was a significant difference between Wales and England in in the numbers attending Nonconformist services and Sunday schools and in the total number attending the services provided by all denominations together. There was much less variation in attendance at Anglican services, although the numbers were naturally somewhat lower in the areas where Nonconformity was strongest.

Within Wales the strength of the chapels varied greatly between one area and another. In many parts of the north-west particularly the numbers attending all Nonconformist services and Sunday schools were well in excess of the population of the area, which suggests how common it was to attend chapel two or three times on a Sunday.

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Only along the border were there areas with Nonconformist attendances so low as to compare with those common in England. Otherwise the most obvious areas of comparative Nonconformist weakness were in the ancient Englishries of south Pembrokeshire and Gower. Another area with a relatively low attendance at Nonconformist services was the Teifi valley in south Ceredigion and north Carmarthenshire. This was the area known to the Calvinistic Methodists as “Y Smotyn Du” (the black spot) where they found it so hard to make headway, having been preceded there by the Unitarians.

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Another thing which is apparent is that towns did not fully reflect the pattern of the rural areas in which they were located. In the north-west, where Nonconformity was strongest, the appeal of the chapels seemed to be weaker in Caernarfon and Bangor than in the neighbouring quarrying and agricultural areas. In the south-east Cardiff was similarly an outlier. On the other hand in south Pembrokeshire chapel attendance was higher in such towns as Haverfordwest, Pembroke Dock and Neyland than in the rural areas.

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There was a general correlation between the more strongly Nonconformist areas and the strength of the Welsh language in the same period, but that was not true in the details. For instance the majority still spoke Welsh in the part of rural Monmouthshire lying between the coalfield to the west and the river Usk to the east but Nonconformity was of little account there. In the Teifi valley, as already mentioned, the chapels were relatively weak in a wholly Welsh-speaking area.