• Introduction; Part I. Religious Geographies: The Districts of England and Wales: 1. The 1851 Census of Religious Worship; 2. The Church of England; 3. Old dissent: the Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, Quakers and Unitarians; 4. The geographies of new dissent; 5. Roman Catholicism and Irish immigration; 6. Denominational co-existence, reciprocity or exclusion?; Part II. Religion and Locality: Parish-Level Explorations: 7. The prospect of fifteen counties; 8. From Henry Compton to Maurice Mann: stability or relocation in Catholicism and Nonconformity, and the growth of religious pluralism; 9. The Sunday school movement: child labour, denominational control and working-class culture; 10. Free or appropriated sittings: the Anglican church in perspective; 11. Conformity, dissent and the influence of landownership; 12. Urbanisation and regional secularisation; Technical Appendices: A. Denominational statistics; B. Correction of registration-district data; C. The religious measures; D. Computer cartographic methods; E. Landownership and the Imperial Gazetteer; F. The 1861 Census of Religious Worship?; Bibliography.

Review of the hardback: 'K. D. M. Snell and Paul S. Ell have shown the way to achieve what many despaired of, chronicling important years and signs of the growth in religious pluralism with all its social consequences.' Owen Chadwick, The Times Literary Supplement