Historic County Statistics

The Historic Counties Trust is undertaking a project to produce and analyse detailed statistics relating to the historic counties of the United Kingdom.

The need for statistics based on the historic counties is important for two reasons:

To enable studies of population and other demographic indicators across decades and centuries on the fixed geographical reference frame over which our history has been played out;
To present important contemporary national statistics on a set of units which are familiar to the public and which conform to commonly held notions of community and identity.

The results of the first stage of this project have been completed and can be found in:

The Demography of the History Counties

GIS data from the project can also be downloaded:

Shape file of historic counties with statistical data from 2011 Census as attributes;
CSV of Historic County with statistical data from 2011 Census;
CSV of each Census Output Area (England, Wales and Scotland) and Small Area (Northern Ireland) from the 2011 Census along with the relevant Historic County Standard (HCS) Code.

GIS Data from Demography of the Historic Counties Project

Some key results from this publication are featured below.

Table 1. Population of Historic Counties from 2011 Census

County	Area	Population	Density
	(sq miles)	2011	(persons/sq mile)
Aberdeenshire	1,950	380,495	195
Anglesey	277	69,751	252
Angus	899	264,044	294
Antrim	1,175	615,701	524
Argyllshire	3,110	64,819	21
Armagh	512	178,598	349
Ayrshire	1,129	367,676	326
Banffshire	641	46,537	73
Bedfordshire	468	602,847	1,288
Berkshire	722	842,804	1,167
Berwickshire	457	26,458	58
Brecknockshire	742	67,598	91
Buckinghamshire	746	916,903	1,229
Buteshire	225	12,534	56
Caernarfonshire	563	139,065	247
Caithness	618	26,486	43
Cambridgeshire	858	460,448	537
Cardiganshire	693	75,784	109
Carmarthenshire	937	184,232	197
Cheshire	1,035	1,668,894	1,613
Clackmannanshire	48	50,957	1,061
Cornwall	1,365	533,594	391
Cromartyshire	370	7,074	19
Cumberland	1,525	306,241	201
Denbighshire	668	277,680	341
Derbyshire	1,017	1,148,373	1,129
Devon	2,621	1,133,463	433
Dorset	1,005	543,296	541
Down	950	528,983	557
Dumfriesshire	1,063	77,160	73
Dunbartonshire	241	262,419	1,089
Durham	1,022	1,467,037	1,436
East Lothian	267	74,882	281
Essex	1,591	2,999,248	1,885
Fermanagh	715	61,170	86
Fife	504	365,493	725
Flintshire	260	215,390	828
Glamorgan	827	1,321,460	1,598
Gloucestershire	1,293	1,147,106	887
Hampshire	1,656	2,099,640	1,268
Herefordshire	837	183,631	219
Hertfordshire	633	1,157,166	1,828
Huntingdonshire	366	211,776	579
Inverness-shire	4,211	118,077	28
Kent	1,611	2,747,715	1,706
Kincardineshire	380	77,670	204
Kinross-shire	73	11,223	154
Kirkcudbrightshire	899	47,546	53
Lanarkshire	879	1,008,014	1,147
Lancashire	1,909	4,942,364	2,589
Leicestershire	836	975,403	1,167
Lincolnshire	2,687	1,038,510	387
Londonderry	816	247,971	304
Merionethshire	676	37,874	56
Middlesex	285	4,000,927	14,038
Midlothian	362	621,610	1,717
Monmouthshire	542	514,723	950
Montgomeryshire	796	61,956	78
Morayshire	476	67,654	142
Nairnshire	200	13,894	70
Norfolk	2,057	807,721	393
Northamptonshire	998	838,786	841
Northumberland	2,019	797,006	395
Nottinghamshire	843	1,096,617	1,301
Orkney	376	21,349	57
Oxfordshire	754	512,345	680
Peeblesshire	548	19,074	35
Pembrokeshire	625	122,122	195
Perthshire	2,493	156,371	63
Radnorshire	470	25,821	55
Renfrewshire	245	508,064	2,074
Ross-shire	3,089	69,503	23
Roxburghshire	666	50,800	76
Rutland	152	37,677	248
Selkirkshire	267	16,010	60
Shetland	551	23,167	42
Shropshire	1,342	472,027	352
Somerset	1,633	1,053,504	645
Staffordshire	1,176	2,159,392	1,836
Stirlingshire	447	244,092	546
Suffolk	1,505	775,099	515
Surrey	759	2,975,836	3,921
Sussex	1,466	1,612,454	1,100
Sutherland	2,028	12,803	6
Tyrone	1,260	178,440	142
Warwickshire	918	1,632,885	1,779
West Lothian	120	154,830	1,290
Westmorland	785	87,466	111
Wigtownshire	487	26,618	55
Wiltshire	1,374	682,380	497
Worcestershire	709	1,125,037	1,587
Yorkshire	6,081	5,218,838	858

This table presents the areas, populations and population densities of the historic counties as defined by Defintion A of the Historic Counties Standard (HCS). These have been derived from data from the Office for National Statistics UK 2011 Census, utilising county border data from the Historic County Borders Project.

Map 1. Population Density of Historic Counties from 2011 Census

This map presents the population densities (person/sq mile) of the historic counties, calculated from the 2011 Census and presented in Table 1.

Table 2. Welsh Speakers in Historic Counties of Wales from 2011 Census

County	Total Welsh	Percentage Welsh
	Speakers	Speakers
Anglesey	38,568	57%
Brecknockshire	10,272	16%
Caernarfonshire	71,524	53%
Cardiganshire	34,926	47%
Carmarthenshire	78,265	44%
Denbighshire	44,704	20%
Flintshire	28,654	14%
Glamorgan	148,931	12%
Meirionethshire	21,550	59%
Monmouthshire	46,683	9%
Montgomeryshire	12,697	21%
Pembrokeshire	22,607	19%
Radnorshire	2,635	11%

This table presents the total number of residents in each historic county who answered "Yes" to the question "Can Speak Welsh?" in the 2011 Census. The percentage column expresses this total as a percentage of the population total for "All usual residents aged 3 or over". These have been derived from data from the Office for National Statistics UK 2011 Census, utilising county border data from the Historic County Borders Project. The historic counties are as defined by Defintion A of the Historic Counties Standard (HCS).

Map 2. Percentage of Welsh Speakers in Historic Counties from 2011 Census

Terms of Data Use

The data from this project is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

The Historic Counties Trust would appreciate an appropriate acknowledgement of the use of the data, along the lines of:
"This [project/mapping/website/publication etc.] made use of data provided by the Historic Counties Trust's Historic County Statistics Project."