Talk:List of towns and cities in England by historical population

Potentially invalid post -1801 figures

I have several issues with the listings of post-1801 figures. I suspect that these issues are from using data from different sources that use different boundaries. With differing methodologies, it is impossible to compare apples with oranges.

Stoke-upon-Trent

Stoke-upon-Trent is listed as being an extremely large town in the 1800s and early 1900s figures. However, that looks to me to be the entire area of what is now the city of Stoke-on-Trent - which only came into existence in 1910, rather than the now-component town. Stoke-upon-Trent was not at that time the largest of the Potteries towns - with Hanley being the only County Borough.

1901 census figures

As mentioned above, Stoke-on-Trent is listed - when at that time it did not exist. Salford also seems unusually large, with sources giving a population of 162,452 for the settlement. The figure of over 250,000 given is for the entire area now covered by the City of Salford, the larger metropolitan borough.

However, some other figures do use the settlement figures rather than the modern administrative units - Wolverhampton being one example (settlement 94,107 as given; modern administrative area 145,645).

This problem then continues through other censuses.

1971 census, and Middlesbrough

The figure given here is for the County Borough of Teesside (which included other towns), not the town of Middlesbrough itself.

Post-1971 censuses

Again, some figures use the Urban Subdivisions (which are the settlement data), and some use the local authority data, and some seemingly use neither!

Taking Dudley as an example in the 1991 census, the population of the settlement itself was given in the census as 192,171[1], whilst that given here is 186,000. The Metropolitan Borough of Dudley is a larger area, and had a population of 309,444 at that census.

Equally, the population of Wolverhampton is given at 1991 as 237,000 in this article - which compares with the local authority area of 248,454 and the (larger) settlement of 257,943.

Newcastle-upon-Tyne is given 259,500 - which is comparable to the size of the entire local authority district rather than the settlement figure of 189,150.

Fingerpuppet (talk) 08:41, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Your observations are certainly valid, and I invite greater authority to update aspects of the tables.

Where possible it is the settlement whose figure was used, but as you point out this is often poorly-defined and I'm sure every list would differ in some respects. I also followed the (heavily debated) List of towns and cities in England by population as the model of definition where possible.

For Salford and some others, I agree it seems to have shrunk but I suspect in many cases this is explained by a redefinition of the urban limits since then (cf Plymouth). (But do see, eg, [2], [3] , though they weren't my direct source, for evidence of the results of post-war reduction.) Ideally we'd want the list to be the list that would have existed of largest cities at the time, and not be modern boundary definitions, but as you say I may be incorrect in this with Stoke.

I agree that Middlesbrough does seem to jump in 1971, but my list of the time has separate figures for Middlesbrough, Middlesbrough conurbation, and Teeside (the latter oddly being the lowest), and it's the first of these I added. Presumably this was due to the abolition of Middlesbrough Borough in 1968, followed by the demise of Teesside in 1974? And your discrepancy for Dudley can perhaps be explained by the fact that your figure is for 2001, but refer to the 1991 table.

The data was from a number of sources, with 1851-1921 a single source, and the others from a variety. Not ideal, but I couldn't locate any single consistent resource.

Anyway, I didn't imagine the current tables would be the final results, and hope corrections will be made where justified. Though I doubt tables on which all will agree will prove impossible...

Smb1001 (talk) 21:28, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I think I understand where the problem comes from post-1801 regarding both Salford and Stoke. If you've used Vision of Britain as a source, then you need to be extremely careful as to which dataset you are looking at. In many places, it's not obvious whether you are looking at the data for the settlement, or the modern like-named local authority. There will be many occasions were settlements shrink in size - Salford being a prime example where the population has shrunk, simply because of the lowering of population densities over time.

In the case of Middlesbrough, there are no authoritative 1971 figures for the settlement, and as you say Middlesbrough County Borough was disestablished in the late 1960s and replaced by the County Borough of Teesside.

As for Dudley et al, those actually are the 1991 figures! It's not at all obvious from the URL, though. Compare the given figures with the 2001 census - Dudley 192,171 (1991) and 194,919 (2001).

St.Helens

The same applies. St.Helens is a borough of four constituent towns, created in the mid-19th century and subsequently developed into the conurbation it is today. It's exactly what is not included in this list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.2.129.132 (talk) 18:42, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Wrong. St Helens the borough was created as administrative centre for the four townships within which there were several villages, and a wider area of unparished land and populace. The area was already known as St Helens (mentioned by name in Parliament over 120 years earlier) and the town is given a population figure in documents dating from the late 1700's (and in several census afterwards). St Helens the town is now considered to be any part of the original townships. St Helens the metropolitan borough meanwhile is now the administrative centre for the wider area with St Helens the town as the seat. Koncorde (talk) 16:54, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Where are the sources for these dates?

Hi. Just a note, that there are no sources for post 1901 dates listed in the references. Were these figures someone's personal project or is there any basis for them? None of the tables have any citations at all. I would think there are census stats available in the UK that are retrievable... It is an interesting distribution of information but doesn't seem to have any statistical verification... Anyone want to find online historical census sources? Stevenmitchell (talk) 20:26, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Possible source

I needed this data for a research project and found the 2oth century tables unusable due to lack of citations. I finally found good data here: http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/place_page.jsp?p_id=20002 Search for a placename, then click on "Units and Statistics". You can find population tables for pretty much all cities there, but there's not an overview. It's annoying... Hope this helps! X14n (talk) 12:55, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Table?

More useful to put this data in a big table to compare changes? Is drawing a graph considered OR? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.174.92.245 (talk) 10:01, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

London

What? why would London be measured totally differently to the rest?

Why does London get a figure for Gtr. London?

1991

Inner London = 2,625,245

2001

City of London = 11,500 City of Birmingham = 977,099

There is little point in comparison tables if the information is totally incorrect and extremely misleading.

It seems there is something a little biassed here ... either do the metropolitan areas of all, or do the city pops, but for goodness sakes don't mix them up like that, especially with such a biassed version for London! Chaosdruid (talk) 06:39, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with this. There seem to be some serious problems with this article. Unless decent sources can be found it may have to be deleted. --John (talk) 09:01, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

And yet it still exists with misleading figures comparing apples with Mars bars. I'm very interested in the subject but this article lacks credibility. Not just London, some figures are for local authority areas, others for towns within boroughs. Complete rubbish. 151.224.60.182 (talk) 22:04, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Norwich

In 1662 has 60000 by 1750 down to less than 12k and then according to Norwich back up to 35,633 by 1800? Is this accurate?--Kitchen Knife (talk) 13:43, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Inaccuracies in the definition of time periods

The medieval period in England is usually defined as extending from about 500 to 1485. I'll reorganize headings etc. accordingly. Nesbit (talk) 19:46, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Cited estimates of town populations in Norman period

These are largely based on the 1086 Domesday Book. I found two sources (Russell, 1948; Darby, 1977) and have entered the estimates from each. They differ for a variety of reasons but most notably in the multiplier used when deriving number of people from the number of households reported in Domesday. Russell uses 3.5, while Russell claims that 4.5 or 5.0 is more widely accepted. I will delete the uncited estimates that previously appeared in this table. Nesbit (talk) 00:33, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Table for 1100 under Late Medieval heading

The table has no citations and shows only names of towns without populations. Let's delete it. Nesbit (talk) 04:26, 14 February 2023 (UTC)