1961 summary census data for parishes and some urban wards, linked to boundary polygons.

Table ID:
PAR_WARD_1961_EW     (1252613)
Contents:
1961 summary census data for parishes and some urban wards, linked to boundary polygons.
Approx. number of rows:
13,623
Table type:
Raw Data
Documentation Author:
Humphrey Southall
Geography:
Reporting units are identified by:
   Parish- or sub-Parish-level Unit
Chronology:
The data are for the single year 1961.

Sources:

  1. The statistical data are transcribed from table 3 in the County Reports of the 1961 Census of England and Wales, 'Acreage, Population, Private Households and Dwellings', for 'Local Authority Areas, Wards, Civil Parishes in Rural Districts, Conurbation Centres, New Towns'.
  2. This table also includes, as geographical objects, the boundaries of all areas for which statistics are held. These combine our parish boundaries for 1961 as created much earlier with the results of a small EU-funded project in 2014-15 to gather in maps showing ward boundaries for as many cities as possible. This was only partially successful, and some additional bounmdaries were constructed by combining 'ward boundaries' for 1971, which were actually created from Thiessen polygons built around enumeration district centroids, and some limited use of Ordnance Survey maps at 1:2,500 and 1:1,250 scales.


Notes:

  1. These are the only data published from the 1961 census for areas smaller than local government districts.
  2. At least four usefully mappable rates can be calculated from these data, and all but the first are listed in the table as originally published:
    • Rate of population change 1951-61: (pop_1961 - pop_1951)*100/pop_1961
    • Population density, i.e. persons per acre: pop_1961 / area_acres
    • Persons per room: pop_hou / rooms_occ
    • Percent of persons at more than 1.5 per room: persons_over * 100 / pop_hou


Checking:

  1. Very extensive checking was done on the linkage between the census and boundary data, to ensure that totals for England and Wales as a whole and for each individual local government district exactly matched those given in the census table.
  2. In three cases, pairs of wards as listed in the census had to be merged to match the polygons available for (small) subdivided towns:
    • Littleham Rural and Littleham Urban, within Exmouth UD, were merged to match 'LITTLEHAM'. NB despite their names, both were definitely listed by the census as being within the UD.
    • Withycombe Rural and Withycombe Urban, again both within Exmouth UD, were merged to match 'WITHYCOMBE RALEIGH'.
    • St. Mary Central and St. Mary East, within Brecknock MB, were merged to match 'ST MARY'.


Indices:

IndexTypeColumn(s) indexed
par_ward_1961_ew_idx_g_foot_etrs_gist   g_foot_etrs
par_ward_1961_ew_lgd_unit_idx Unique lgd_unit, clean_area_name, g_seq


Columns within table:

ColumnTypeContents
lgd_unit Integer number. ID number from the AUO for local government district. In general, these were checked via a point-in-polygon querying of our 1961 LGD boundary dataset.
lgd_name Text string (max.len.=154). Name of local government district, as extracted from the AUO based on the value of lgd_name.
lgd_type Text string (max.len.=24). Type of local government district, as extracted from the AUO based on the value of lgd_name.
area_name Text string (max.len.=104). Name of parish, within Rural Districts, or ward, within urban areas. Where an urban local government district has no component wards, this column may contain the name of the local authority.
clean_area_name Text string (max.len.=104). Cleaned version of area name. In general, this was done to improve matching to the census transcription.
par_unit Integer number. ID number from the AUO corresponding to area_name, where the row is for a Civil Parish in an rural area.
g_seq Integer number. Sequence number keeping the data in order, derived from polygons rather than census data.
area_acres Integer number. Area of the unit as reported by the census, in acres.
pop_1951 Integer number. Number of persons enumerated in the area in 1951.
pop_1961 Integer number. Number of persons enumerated in the area in 1961.
ma_1961 Integer number. Number of males enumerated in the area in 1961.
fe_1961 Integer number. Number of females enumerated in the area in 1961.
h_hold Integer number. Number of private households.
pop_hou Integer number. Population in private households.
dwelling Integer number. Structurally separate dwellings occupied.
rooms_occ Integer number. Rooms occupied.
persons_over Floating point number. Approximate number of persons at more than 1.5 per room. The census report lists the 'Percentage of persons at more than 1 1/2 per room', including one decimal place. To enable the data to be aggregated, we re-stated this as a number of persons by multiplying it by the population in private households.
g_foot_etrs geometry Boundary polygon.