Places of worship

What is being counted?

This is the ONS July 2024 snapshot of places of worship in England and Wales, published on 2024-10-17. The 13 building classes are retained as published. The generic “Place of Worship” classification is a building type in the source; it is distinct from the combined “All places of worship” total.

These are building records. They do not count worshippers, congregations, services or residents by religion. A building classification does not establish whether a site is currently active or how many people use it.

Religion groups and original building types

The Christian group includes Church, Cathedral, Minster and Kingdom Hall. Kingdom Halls belong to Jehovah’s Witnesses, who identify as Christian. Mosque, Gurdwara, Hindu Temple, Buddhist Temple and Synagogue map to their explicitly named religion. The original 13 building types remain available.

These are cautious building-type groupings, not a complete count of every site belonging to a religion. OS does not define Abbey as exclusively Christian, and Chapel includes institutional worship spaces. Those types, together with the generic Place Of Worship and Religious Meeting Place, remain in “Religion not specified by building type”. Unassigned does not mean without religion. Read the OS definitions ↗ · Jehovah’s Witnesses’ own description ↗

Disclosure and coverage are different

A published number means the source has disclosed that classification count. It does not certify that the source contains every relevant active worship premise. Sites may be missing, out of date or classified differently, and a building record does not establish current activity. The 2024 ONS/OS table, GRO register snapshots and our dated institutional-website checks have different definitions and coverage. We retain each source’s figures separately.

The map’s suppression patterns describe which source cells are withheld. They do not show how complete the source is in the real world. We do not recover withheld cells or allocate broad building classes to religions by assumption.

Why so many counts are withheld

ONS applies a confidentiality threshold: counts below five are marked [c]. In this table, 3,073 of 4,134 building-type cells (74.3%) are withheld. That is a share of cells, not buildings. The 13 detailed types include rare categories across 318 districts; all 318 combined area totals remain published. There are no published zeroes in the category cells, and the lowest disclosed count is five. A withheld cell does not establish that a building exists.

The same rule appears in ONS’s wider amenities publication. ONS calls it confidentiality protection but does not explain the specific rationale for withholding these public-site counts or attribute the rule to OS licensing. We do not assume a reason beyond what it publishes. ONS explanation and source notes ↗

Published totals and subtotals

“All places of worship” uses each area’s separately published total. For a religion group, the tool adds only disclosed component values. If any component is withheld, the result is labelled “Published subtotal”; the withheld-component count remains visible. Hatched colour or a dashed circle distinguishes a partial subtotal from a complete count. It must not be treated as an exact religion total or used for complete rankings between areas. A selection with every component withheld has no numerical subtotal.

National subtotals follow the same rule across all districts. The CSV separates complete counts, disclosed subtotals, status and withheld components while retaining all 13 original columns. No protected cell is set to zero, estimated or recovered by subtracting other counts from a total.

Maps and the optional school layer

Worship figures use the local-authority districts in the July 2024 record. Boundaries are simplified for display; the map is not a street-level directory. Larger authorities can contain more buildings simply because they cover a larger area or population.

The optional school layer uses January 2026 whole-school census records for state-funded primary or secondary schools in England. White British pupil share is the reported White British count divided by the relevant school-census pupil population, multiplied by 100. Unknown ethnicity remains in the denominator. A missing share is unavailable, not zero. Read the school dashboards for the full population and quality notes.

The school layer retains its own education-local-authority boundaries. Worship counts appear as proportional circles at interior display points in their original local-authority areas. A circle is an area summary, not a school or place-of-worship location. Wales has no school-census layer here. The separate count and percentage legends identify the units and dates. Spatial proximity is not evidence of a causal relationship.

One published snapshot of places of religious worship in the Ordnance Survey NGD Sites Dataset, July 2024, for 318 local authority districts in England and Wales.

The 13 filters retain the published building-type categories. Place Of Worship and Religious Meeting Place do not establish a religious affiliation.

All buildings uses each authority's separately published total. Category values marked [c] are confidential and remain unavailable, never zero. No protected count is reconstructed from a total, rate or other category.

A category subtotal adds only published counts and is incomplete wherever any authority is suppressed. When every authority is suppressed, no numerical subtotal is shown. National all-building totals sum the complete published authority totals.

The per-100,000 value is retained exactly as published in the downloadable source values. It is not used to infer protected counts or a new population estimate.

The map uses ONS December 2024 generalised district boundaries with an exact match to all 318 source codes. Area markers are interior display positions, not locations of individual places of worship.

These counts describe recorded sites. They do not measure attendance, building capacity, local religious population, openings, closures or changes over time.

An optional school layer uses a separate January 2026 England census snapshot and its own education-authority boundaries. School composition does not establish the religion of pupils or the causes of changes in places of worship.

Historical maps: registered places

The register map compares April 2010 with the file published in September 2026. It counts entries in the voluntary General Register Office register, using the denomination stated in each entry. It excludes Church of England and Church in Wales premises. These classified counts are not a complete inventory of churches, mosques or temples.

Both years use the same comparison areas and classification rules. Historical records are assigned only where the source geography supports the match. Changes in recorded entries can reflect registration, cancellation or reporting; they do not alone measure buildings opening, closing or converting. The separate 2024 ONS map describes building classifications and is not a third point in this register series.

The map uses a fixed colour scale across the two register snapshots for each selected religion. The school layer always remains January 2026 and retains its own boundaries. Read the national history, classifications and original register sources ↓ · Historical area counts and provenance (JSON) ↓

Original sources and downloads

ONS: Number of places of religious worship in local areas, England and Wales ↗ · Original workbook ↓

Complete worship extract and provenance (JSON) ↓ · Complete worship area table (CSV) ↓

Secondary-school source and methods ↗ · Primary-school source and methods ↗ · DfE school pupils and their characteristics ↗

ONS and Department for Education public-sector information, reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Boundary sources and attribution are retained in the boundary metadata in the worship provenance JSON and school-overlay provenance JSON.