#GreatChurchVisitorCount
Join the Great Church Visitor Count - help us advocate for churches!
We need your help to build a clearer picture of how many people visit churches across the UK each year. The Great Church Visitor Count is a vital research project aiming to collect accurate visitor numbers through digital counters and visitor book data.
Unlike cathedrals, museums, and historic houses, churches lack reliable data on visitor numbers. Existing figures, often based solely on visitor books or service attendance, significantly underestimate the true number of visitors. This gap in our knowledge makes it difficult to demonstrate the importance of churches in tourism, heritage, and local communities.
Why does this matter?
Understanding visitor numbers is key to ensuring the sustainability of historic churches. The data will:
- Strengthen grant applications for church repairs and maintenance
- Provide concrete evidence to local authorities and tourism boards that churches are vital heritage attractions
- Support the promotion of churches through platforms like ours, helping to increase the number and impact visitors
- Help establish meaningful multipliers that churches can apply to their visitor book figures, leading to more realistic annual visitor estimates
How can your church help?
By participating in this project, your church will contribute to crucial research that will help us advocate for churches nationally. It can also benefit your church directly—having accurate visitor data can enhance your ability to secure funding and support.
If we gather enough data from both digital counters and visitor books, we aim to calculate a more precise multiplier for estimating total visitors. Many churches currently apply a multiplier that is too low, underestimating their true visitor numbers. Your participation will help us develop better recommendations for all churches.
We will publish the results annually, sharing insights that will benefit churches, policymakers, and tourism organisations alike.
Get involved
All churches, chapels, meeting houses, and cathedrals are invited to take part. If your church would like to be involved, please email sarah.crossland@nationalchurchestrust.org
We have created a new online form, which you can use to submit your numbers. We have tried to make the process as simple as possible and will email you three times a year and ask for cumulative numbers for the year to date. But, if you’d like to submit for a specific time period, or just once a year, that's fine too.
There are three ways you can complete the form (or any combination of the three).
- Submit figures from your digital counter.
- Submit figures from your visitors book.
- Submit hand counted figures from an event, activity or period of time.
Your contribution will help us advocate for churches, inform research, and support our campaigns. Together, we can ensure that churches receive the recognition and support they deserve!
