England Free CENsus Project
England overview plus county projects in the care of TWM
576,795 England records were added to the FreeCEN database on 8th May 2013
My name is Terry Waters-Marsh and I am the FreeCEN Coordinator for England. I am also the coordinator for a number of county projects in the South and the Midlands of England. This amounts to a very high coordination load for me — if you are interested in assisting with any of these counties, please get in touch so that we can discuss your participation.
So, what is FreeCEN? — read below about this volunteer project.
Please use the graphic below or the links to the left to go to a specific county in my care. Or see the England summary table which also gives the numbers of records already online for all the England counties by census year.
England summary
| COUNTY | RECORDS ONLINE for | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name & site | Current Coord. | 1841 Pop (est.) | 1841 | 1851 | 1861 | 1871 | 1891 |
| Records online | 1,403,771 | 472,627 | 7,017,289 | 2,483,435 | 6,212,805 | ||
| England pop (est.) | 14,860,800 | 16,764,500 | 19,891,600 | 21,299,700 | 27,231,100 | ||
| Percentage online (est.) | 9.5 | 2.8 | 35.3 | 11.7 | 22.8 | ||
| Total England records online [5] | 17,916,319 | ||||||
| Bedfordshire | Terry Waters-Marsh | 107,900 | 0 | 0 | 21,348 | 0 | 165,885 |
| Berkshire | Terry Waters-Marsh | 161,147 | 0 | 17,748 | 4,726 | 7,347 | |
| Buckinghamshire | Terry Waters-Marsh | 156,000 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 82,127 | |
| Cambridgeshire | Ian Cameron | 164,500 | 18,666 | ||||
| Cambridgeshire | Bev Howlett | 37,271 | |||||
| Channel Islands | Brenda Bowers | 76,100 | 45,221 | 0 | |||
| Cheshire | Terry Waters-Marsh | 395,700 | 0 | 0 | 18,690 | 21,567 | |
| Cornwall [1] | 341,300 | 340,901 | 354,744 | 362,111 | 358,040 | 318,637 | |
| County Durham | Carol Barber | 324,300 | 531,261 | 234,584 | 47,458 | ||
| Cumberland | Jenny Anderton | 178,000 | 149,116 | 80,778 | |||
| Derbyshire | Brenda Bowers | 272,200 | 10,503 | 204,648 | |||
| Devon | Brenda Bowers | 533,500 | 160,705 | 20,211 | 575,229 | 632,473 | |
| Dorset | Terry Waters-Marsh | 175,000 | 56,489 | 0 | 30,509 | 30,050 | 38,419 |
| Essex | Mike Beck | 345,000 | 0 | ||||
| Gloucestershire | Chris Mahoney | 431,400 | 43,913 | ||||
| Gloucestershire | Terry Waters-Marsh | 53,731 | 0 | 93,125 | |||
| Hampshire | David Philpot | 355,000 | 250,007 | 298,873 | |||
| Herefordshire | Terry Waters-Marsh | 113,900 | 0 | 0 | 137,662 | 0 | |
| Hertfordshire | Terry Waters-Marsh | 157,200 | 0 | 34,223 | 0 | 29,585 | 11,511 |
| Huntingdonshire | Terry Waters-Marsh | 58,500 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 22,629 |
| Isle of Man | Brenda Bowers | 48,000 | 6,660 | ||||
| Kent | Rebekah House | 548,300 | 0 | 11,389 | |||
| Kent | Jen Sheehan | 161,661 | |||||
| Lancashire | Jenny Anderton | 1,667,000 | 0 | 294,309 | |||
| Lancashire 1861 | Neil Southern | 1,140,772 | |||||
| Leicestershire | Brenda Bowers | 215,900 | 37,312 | ||||
| Leicestershire | John Toplis | 146,094 | 156,070 | ||||
| Lincolnshire | Michael Borrill | 362,600 | 400,038 | 163,817 | 421,597 | ||
| London (part) [2] | Barbara Pearce | 3,254,300 (in 1871) |
N/A | 245,008 | |||
| London (part) [3] | Terry Waters-Marsh | N/A | [4] 3,581 | ||||
| Middlesex | Ian Cameron | 1,576,600 | 0 | 52,293 | 86,217 | ||
| Middlesex | Terry Waters-Marsh | 0 | |||||
| Norfolk | Bev Howlett | 412,700 | 423,431 | 208,402 | 270,310 | ||
| Northamptonshire | Terry Waters-Marsh | 199,200 | 0 | 0 | 12,919 | ||
| Northumberland | Carol Barber | 250,300 | 243,798 | ||||
| Nottinghamshire | Brenda Bowers | 249,900 | 136,365 | 341,630 | |||
| Oxfordshire | Terry Waters-Marsh | 161,600 | 0 | 0 | 2,669 | 147,400 | |
| Rutland | Michael Borrill | 21,300 | 23,142 | 0 | 7,881 | ||
| Shipping (England & Wales) | [7] 99,200 | 2,930 | |||||
| Shropshire | Terry Waters-Marsh | 239,000 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6,469 | |
| Somerset | Geoff Jarvis | 436,000 | 156,327 | 34,338 | 461,835 | 104,367 | |
| Somerset | Terry Waters-Marsh | 129,819 | |||||
| Staffordshire (North) | Ian Cameron | 510,500 | 0 | 382,840 | 100,563 | ||
| Staffordshire (South) | Dave Dudley | ||||||
| Suffolk | William Butcher | 315,100 | 80,342 | 162,445 | |||
| Surrey | Bev Howlett | 582,700 | 35,034 | 23,306 | |||
| Sussex | Simon & Chris Brickell | 299,800 | 14,203 | 358,160 | 400,063 | 553,971 | |
| Warwickshire | Terry Waters-Marsh | 401,700 | 397,684 | 80,238 | 0 | 798,758 | |
| Westmorland | Jenny Anderton | 56,500 | 60,816 | ||||
| Westmorland | Carol Barber | 58,510 | 0 | ||||
| Wiltshire | Terry Waters-Marsh | 258,700 | 247,752 | 14,908 | 84,588 | 197,358 | 56,403 |
| Worcestershire | Terry Waters-Marsh | 233,300 | 0 | 24,648 | 0 | 39,250 | |
| Yorkshire (East Riding) | Carol Barber | 1,591,500 | 73,902 | 69,271 | 0 | ||
| Yorkshire (North Riding) | Carol Barber | 57,023 | 42,743 | 3,734 | |||
| Yorkshire (West Riding) | Carol Barber | 627,281 | 147,871 | 399,795 | |||
Footnotes
- The FreeCEN Cornwall team have also transcribed the 1881 census, putting a further 326,187 records online.
- Only 1891 and only the districts of Bethnal Green, Mile End, Pancras, Stepney, and Whitechapel.
- For 1871, only the Middlesex RDs; all of 1891 except the districts of Bethnal Green, Mile End, Pancras, Stepney, and Whitechapel.
- Figure for the Middlesex districts only.
- Includes the Cornwall 1881 records.
- All population estimates are taken from, or calculated from, the digitised Census Reports as seen on online historical population reports.
- This figure for Shipping (Navy plus Merchant Seamen) is for the whole of Great Britain and also includes prisoners aboard the convict hulks stationed in the River Medway, Chatham. A further 89,000 Army personnel were enumerated abroad or in Ireland.
What is FreeCEN?
The FreeCEN project was commenced in 1999 with the aim to make high quality transcriptions of the 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881 and 1891 England, Wales and Scotland censuses. The transcriptions are freely available online in an easy to access and search database.
The project is under the trusteeship of the FreeUKGEN group which also operates the FreeBMD and FreeREG projects — all these run on a 100% volunteer basis. Many thousands of volunteers from all over the world have contributed their time and efforts to make the census records freely available.
I first got involved in 1999 when I saw the call for volunteers for Wiltshire which is where my ancestors originated from. I started transcribing and knew I was hooked when I saw my first transcription online for the whole world to access.
Since then I have stepped up and taken on being the coordinator for Wiltshire (in 2000) and many other counties while we seek out coordinators for those counties. In 2004 the then FreeCEN President asked me to become the coordinator for England as well, a task I have enjoyed every moment since. The saddest day in the future (but eagerly anticipated) is when we can say, “The job is done!!”.
However, there is still much work to be done to complete the venture. If you would like to be part of this wonderful and very worthwhile project, please contact me, Terry Waters-Marsh.
