Elsewhere on this site you can read about the fact that Guildford is a town rather than a city. One of the interesting things that you’ll learn about that situation is that the size of the population is not relevant to whether somewhere is considered to be one rather than the other.
In the case of Guildford, the population has grown and grown over the years, which is why there have been calls to make it a city since the turn of the millennium. The question is, what is the town’s population now and how has it changed since its more formative years?
Guilford’s Estimated Population Now
Given the fact that people die and are born every second, it is impossible to offer any kind of accurate estimation of the population of Guildford. That being said, we can look at the runes of certain surveys and the likes to get a sense of roughly how many people live in the town at the time of writing. The website totalpopulation.co.uk, for example, offers a guide to the population of any given area at a specific time. On the 16th of January 2025, the site declared that Guildford’s population stood at 143,900, which was down on a previous population.
That figure means that the population per square mile of the town is 1,376, with the average salary in Guildford being £39,702. The fact that the average property price was £560,171 at the time suggests that some people will struggle to be able to afford there. The decrease in the population was around 6,500 on the previous year, although it is interesting to note that those that consider themselves to be female make up 50.7% of the population. Of the people that live in the town, about 11,300 are students, which is around 50.5% of the population that is economically inactive.
Guildford’s Population Over the Years
The first evidence of human activity in the Guildford area can be dated back to the Mesolithic era, or Middle Stone Age. It was mentioned in the will of Alfred the Great in around 880, with the Anglo-Saxon’s settling in the area in 11th century. It is fair to say that it isn’t easy to get any real sense of what the population of Guildford was during that period. When the Domesday Book was written in 1806, it declared ‘Gildeford’ to be a property of William I, with Stoke-by-Guildford also being included with a population of 24 villagers, ten smallholders and five slaves.
The village had become a town by the time of Henry III, who granted it its first borough charter in the January of 1257. That suggests some growth in terms of population by then, even if exact figures are unknown. By 1622, the population was large enough to require the building of Abbot’s Hospital, which was founded by the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, George Abbot. That being said, it wasn’t intended to be a place for healing the sick, but rather to offer accommodation to single people who were born in Guildford or who had lived there for 20 years.
What We Can Learn from the Census
The first ever census in the United Kingdom was taken in 1801. That gave an overall population in the UK of 9.4 million, which had increased to 10.1 million within a decade. Of course, precise details are not easy to come by in terms of how many people lived in Guildford at the time. What we can tell you is that it increased steadily each time the census was taken. In 1801 the population of the town was likely to be in the region of 13,000, which had increased to more like 14,000 ten years later.
Guildford Census Population Data
According to the website visionofbritain.org.uk, the population increases each decade of the census in Guidford were as follows:
| Year | Population |
|---|---|
| 1801 | 13,112 |
| 1811 | 14,249 |
| 1821 | 16,454 |
| 1831 | 18,687 |
| 1841 | 20,467 |
| 1851 | 22,191 |
| 1861 | 26,980 |
| 1871 | Unknown |
| 1881 | 33,338 |
| 1891 | 40,333 |
| 1901 | Unknown |
| 1911 | 51,539 |
| 1921 | 57,222 |
| 1931 | 68,194 |
| 1941 | Unknown |
| 1951 | 95,400 |
| 1961 | 109,919 |
| 1971 | 121,946 |
| 1981 | 116,844 |
| 1991 | 122,425 |
| 2001 | 129,704 |
| 2011 | 137,183 |
| 2021 | 143,600 |
As you can see, the population passed the 140,000 mark between the 2011 census and the one carried out a decade later. That meant that the 2021 population of Guildford saw around 3.8 people living in every football pitch-sized piece of land, in comparison to 3.6 ten years before. Across English Local Authorities at the time, that put Guildford within the bottom 45% in terms of population density. The population growth in the town was lower than it was across the rest of the South East of England, whilst the median age increased by a year.
2021 Guildford Population Age Groups
One of the most interesting things that the 2021 census told us in terms of the population of Guildford was in terms of the various age groups. They worked out as follows:
| Age Group | Percentage of Population |
|---|---|
| 4 Years & Under | 4.7% |
| 5 to 9 Years | 5.4% |
| 10 to 15 Years | 6.8% |
| 16 to 19 Years | 6.4% |
| 20 to 24 Years | 9.2% |
| 25 to 34 Years | 12% |
| 35 to 49 Years | 19.1% |
| 50 to 64 Years | 18.9% |
| 65 to 74 Years | 9.1% |
| 75 to 84 Years | 5.8% |
| 85 Years & Older | 2.7% |
The oldest age group, therefore, was the 35 to 49-year-olds bracket, which was actually down by 2.5% on the previous year. Quite what that means for Guildford’s population moving forward is something that remains to be seen.