Church of England Saint dedications

This page began as an attempt to answer a question posed by my mother-in-law at the St Albans Pilgrimage, in which a parade of 12-foot puppets heads to the cathedral to recreate the death of St Alban. As part of the parade there were representatives from seven or eight churches dedicated to St Alban from around the country, and I was posed the question of how many churches are there dedicated to St Alban, are they all near St Albans itself? I found no easy way to give the answer, and so created this page to count church dedications and to give details on where they are.

According to The Church of England's website, achurchnearyou, as of 2016 there were 16139 Anglican churches in England, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man most of which are dedicated to one or more saints. Some churches have since closed, but I've kept them in the lists below, generally indicated by not having a link. (Their site actually claimed 16500, but contained a lot of repeats!)

To find a list of saints or dedications matching a particular prefix (eg St Al, Holy or Christ) enter it into the search box. To then list the churches with that dedication click on a saint's name. Where possible, the saints also have a link to the relevant Wikipedia article; click on the small 'W' icon.

Churches that are dedicated to more than one saint are added to the count for each of those saints. For interest, the top pairings of dedications are St Peter & St Paul (299), St Mary & All Saints (38), St Philip & St James (34), St Peter & St Mary (15), St Simon & St Jude (13).

Note that many saints are known by a number of names. In some cases I have merged these (eg St Edburg, St Eadburga and St Eadburgha are all listed in the results under St Edburga, or St Luke the Evangelist under St Luke), whereas in others I have kept them separate (eg St Mary, St Mary the Virgin, The Blessed Virgin Mary, etc, meaning 2369 churches are dedicated to St Mary in total) so that the actual wording of the dedication is clear. In other cases the name is ambiguous; the churches dedicated to "St James" will be mostly meaning "St James the Great" but some may mean "St James the Less", and all three are given separate entries in the results.

See also: Stats on multi-parish benefices.

Most common dedications:

Enter the first few characters of a dedication (eg St Al or Chri):

Printing 1-100 of 446 dedications.

St Mary1516
All Saints1425
St Peter1327
St Michael816
St Andrew801
St Mary the Virgin715
St Paul667
Holy Trinity578
St John the Baptist573
St James467
St Nicholas436
Christ Church392
St John the Evangelist351
St John288
St Lawrence245
St George243
St Luke242
St Margaret235
St Mary Magdalene226
St Mark179
St Martin179
St Bartholomew178
St Thomas178
St Leonard174
St Giles160
St Matthew145
St Stephen145
St Barnabas139
St Helen121
St Cuthbert106
St Anne103
Holy Cross94
St Philip92
Blessed Virgin Mary91
St Francis of Assisi87
St Oswald83
St Chad82
St Saviour80
St James the Great79
St Edmund78
St Catherine70
Emmanuel69
St Thomas a Becket69
Good Shepherd62
St Wilfrid60
St Botolph59
St Swithin56
St Augustine55
St Aidan53
St Alban52
Ascension51
St Clement47
All Hallows42
St Hilda40
St Christopher38
St Jude37
St Denys33
St Faith33
St Margaret of Antioch33
St Gabriel29
St Gregory29
St David26
St Columba24
St James the Less24
All Souls22
Holy Spirit22
St Hugh22
Trinity22
St Dunstan21
St Petroc21
Assumption20
Holy Rood19
St Simon19
Christ the King18
Holy Innocents18
St Richard18
Our Lady17
St Agnes17
St Augustine of Canterbury17
St Benedict17
St Edith17
St Katharine16
St Mary the Blessed Virgin16
St Matthias16
St Martin of Tours15
St Bridget14
St Ethelbert14
St Pancras14
St Patrick14
St Bede13
St Boniface13
St Edward13
Resurrection12
Saviour12
St Edward the Confessor12
St Aldhelm11
St Etheldreda11
St Olaf11
Epiphany10
St Mungo10

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