This web site is designed to collect and disseminate parish register data for English parishes covering the period 1538 to the end of the nineteenth century.

In its current incarnation, it houses the data on counts of baptisms, marriages and burials assembled by local population historians for 404 English parishes and used by E.A. Wrigley and R.S. Schofield in The Population History of England, 1541-1871: a Reconstruction (Cambridge, 1989). These data, together with some information about the characteristics of the 404 parishes, can be downloaded and used freely by population historians and other interested parties.

This website forms a key element of a project set in train in 2019 by the Local Population Studies Society with three objectives in mind:

(1) to make the original Population History of England database available through a dedicated website to both LPSS members and the general public;

(2) to prepare a second edition of the guide which accompanied the original data, Parish Register Aggregate Analyses, and to make this available electronically;

(3) gradually to augment the database with data for additional parishes but in the same format as for the parishes the original Population History of England database, provided that the quality of the data for the additional parishes could be assured.

At this stage, this website marks the realization of the first and second of these objectives.