Topic: Renaissance British Isles City Populations

[egdcltd]

Came across these and thought people might find them interesting. These are the biggest cities in the British Isles in the 16th and 17th centuries, and some major towns, yet the populations are tiny. So it's perfectly possible to have a fantasy city with only a couple of thousand or so residents.

Aberdeen - 2,900 in late 16th century

Brighton - Less than 1,000 in 1520

Bristol - 12,000 in 1600

Canterbury - 6,000 by 1650

Chester - 7,600 in 1660s

Colchester - 9,000 in 1650s

Coventry - 6,000 in 1600

Dublin - 5,500 in 1600

Edinburgh - 9,000 in late 16th century

Exeter - 9,000 in 1603

Glasgow - 4,500 in late 16th century

Gloucester - 4,000 in 1563

Ipswich - 5,000 in 1600

Leicester - 3,500 in 1603

Manchester - 2,000 in 16th century

Newcastle-upon-Tyne - 12,550 in 1660s

Norwich - 15,000 in 1603

Portsmouth - 1,000 in 1600

Shrewsbury - 4,000 in 16th century

Winchester - 3,000 in 1603

Worcester - 8,300 in 1646

York - 11,000 in 1603

And now for the outlier:

London 200-250,000 in 1600

London is possibly a bad example; there aren't many cities where such a large percentage of the country's population resides within its metropolitan area (some city-states, a few others maybe), and the situation only got more extreme - close to 25% of the UK now lives within the London metropolitan area. Back then, it was about half the population of Scotland; now, it's substantially greater.

[jdale]

http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm is pretty useful if you want to think about demographics and city/town sizes.

Note the the numbers it gives for London (25,000-40,000) are much lower. Depends on the era. According to Wikipedia, London in 1100 was 18,000, in 1300 almost 100,000 (reduced by at least a third soon after in the Black Plagues), in 1530 around 50,000, and in 1603 it was 225,000 (then another huge crash in the Great Plague during 1665–1666).

I usually think of the earlier periods as being a better match for typical fantasy worlds, but it depends what you have in mind.

[egdcltd]

The numbers I gave for London were largely for the metropolitan area I think. The actual City - the modern Square Mile I think - enclosed by the old Roman walls tended to be smaller. Some parts were also considered separate at times, such as Westminster. London was the biggest city in England for some centuries, once it started being used again, but it wasn't until later that it really kicked into truly explosive growth. Probably because cities tended to grow by people moving into them, rather than organically.

Some of the Shadow World societies are late medieval to Renaissance, which would be more comparable.