Dorset · England
Sherborne population
9,523people · latest estimate
Sherborne has a population of 9,523, making it the 9th largest place in Dorset. In 2005 the World Gazetteer recorded 9,558, a fall of 0.4% since.
The other populations of Sherborne
The same name covers more than one area, and each has its own figure.
| What you mean | Population | Source |
|---|---|---|
| The place itself The populated settlement, roughly the built-up core. |
9,523 | GeoNames |
| The built-up area Continuous development, where buildings sit less than 200m apart. Drawn from where the buildings are, not where the council boundary is. |
10,360 | ONS Census 2021 (2021) |
| The place in 2005 The same settlement twenty years earlier. |
9,558 | World Gazetteer (2005) |
Why these differ: which population figure is right? · compare with another place
Year-by-year official estimates for the wider area: Dorset population trends, 2001–2024.
Sherborne in context
Distances are straight-line from the settlement's recorded coordinates. The 10 km figure sums the recorded places within that radius, so it describes how built-up the surroundings are rather than people per square kilometre.
The centre of Sherborne sits in postcode district DT9.
What the data shows about Sherborne
Sherborne is among the oldest tenth of English and Welsh towns: an estimated median age of 50.2 against a typical town's 42.5, with 32.0% of residents aged 65 or over.
| Measure | Value | Among comparable towns |
|---|---|---|
| Median house price | £325,000 | higher than 70% of towns |
| Recorded offences per 1,000 | 64.2 | higher than 21% of towns |
| Gigabit availability | 90.6% | higher than 28% of towns |
| Takeaways per 10,000 | 8.7 | higher than 47% of towns |
| Median age (estimated) | 50.2 | higher than 93% of towns |
| Managerial or professional share | 44.5% | higher than 58% of towns |
| Owner-occupied households | 61.7% | higher than 31% of towns |
Against Yeovil, the nearest larger town 8 km west: house prices are 38% higher (£325,000 against £235,000); recorded crime is lower (64.2 against 123.1 per 1,000); gigabit availability is worse (91% against 98%).
Each percentile compares Sherborne with every English and Welsh town of 10,000+ residents that carries that measure, on the same built-up-area boundary. The sections below give every figure its source, its date and its caveats, and a high or low position is a starting point for questions rather than a verdict.
Age profile
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Median age (estimated) (older than 93% of towns) | 50.2 |
| Under 15 | 15.0% |
| 65 and over | 32.0% |
| 85 and over | 6.5% |
From the 2021 census age table for this built-up area (10,359 residents). The shares are exact sums of the census's five-year bands. The median is exact to its band: the middle resident of Sherborne falls in the 50 to 54 band, and the single figure is interpolated within it, which is why it is labelled estimated; single year of age is not published at this geography. A typical town's estimated median is 42.5. Compare towns →
Food and drink on the high street
| Registered premises | Count |
|---|---|
| Restaurants and cafés (26.1 per 10,000 residents) | 27 |
| Takeaways and sandwich shops (8.7 per 10,000 residents) | 9 |
| Pubs, bars and nightclubs (14.5 per 10,000 residents) | 15 |
| Hotels, B&Bs and guest houses (3.9 per 10,000 residents) | 4 |
| Supermarkets and hypermarkets (2.9 per 10,000 residents) | 3 |
Counts are registered food premises in the Sherborne built-up area (10,360 residents at the 2021 census), from the FSA food hygiene register, extracted 17 August 2026. The boundary is drawn from where the buildings are, so these figures cover the town itself rather than the wider council area, and no total is shown because the register also lists premises nobody would call a venue: school kitchens, care homes, warehouses. Compare towns →
Shops and services
| Premises | Count |
|---|---|
| Shops (all retail) (148.6 per 10,000 residents) | 154 |
| Cafés (1.0 per 10,000 residents) | 1 |
| Hairdressing salons (6.8 per 10,000 residents) | 7 |
| Banks and building societies (2.9 per 10,000 residents) | 3 |
| Post offices (1.0 per 10,000 residents) | 1 |
| Leisure and sports centres (1.0 per 10,000 residents) | 1 |
| Surgeries (GP, dental and similar) (7.7 per 10,000 residents) | 8 |
| Libraries (1.0 per 10,000 residents) | 1 |
| Community centres (1.9 per 10,000 residents) | 2 |
| Car parks (5.8 per 10,000 residents) | 6 |
Shops, cafés, salons, banks, post offices and arcades are rateable premises by use on the VOA 2023 rating list — the shops figure is all general retail, charity shops included. Gambling premises come from the Gambling Commission's licensing register, which lists 6,251 betting shops nationally against the rating list's 3,838: many betting shops are rated as ordinary shops, so the licensing register is the truer count and the one used here. Categories the rating list counts badly are deliberately absent rather than wrong: petrol stations disappear into supermarket ratings, vets and museums run far under their professional registers, and pools and nurseries mostly rate inside other premises. Same built-up-area boundary as the download table on this page.
Crime, per 1,000 residents
| Category (police-recorded, 12 months) | Rate | On the year |
|---|---|---|
| Violence and sexual offences (higher than 13% of towns) | 21.5 | -2% |
| Anti-social behaviour (higher than 82% of towns) | 21.6 | +47% |
| Shoplifting (higher than 33% of towns) | 5.1 | -32% |
| Criminal damage and arson (higher than 13% of towns) | 4.2 | – |
| Vehicle crime (higher than 10% of towns) | 1.4 | – |
| Burglary (higher than 40% of towns) | 2.4 | – |
| Other theft | 3.5 | – |
| Robbery (higher than 13% of towns) | 0.3 | – |
| All recorded offences (higher than 21% of towns) | 64.2 | +6% |
The all-offences line is a count of records, not a safety score: it weighs every category equally, which is exactly why we publish the categories. We deliberately do not combine them into a single index.
The year column compares August 2025 to July 2026 with the twelve months before it, August 2024 to July 2025, two windows that do not overlap. A dash means that category had fewer than 50 offences in one of the years, where a percentage would be arithmetic rather than information. Read these as changes in what was recorded: a force changing how it logs a category, or a local campaign encouraging people to report, moves this column without anything changing on the street. The change is withheld entirely for any town whose force did not publish all twelve months in both years.
Figures are police-recorded crime (August 2025 to July 2026) located to this built-up area, per 1,000 residents at the 2021 census. Three cautions, each of which changes how a rate should be read: recorded crime is not crime experienced, because reporting rates differ by category and by place; the denominator counts residents, so town centres and visitor towns run high per resident precisely because many people there are not residents; and a high figure can reflect more reporting as easily as more crime. Percentiles compare towns of 10,000+ residents. Greater Manchester and Gloucestershire constabularies do not publish, so their towns show a note instead of a partial figure. Compare towns →
House prices
| Property type | Median sale price |
|---|---|
| Detached (41 sales) | £585,000 |
| Semi-detached (33 sales) | £317,000 |
| Terraced (63 sales) | £275,000 |
| Flat or maisonette (20 sales) | £165,000 |
| All types (157 sales) | £325,000 |
| Change on the year before each type compared with itself, July 2024 to June 2025 | +8.1% |
Medians of actual registered sales in the Sherborne built-up area, July 2025 to June 2026, from HM Land Registry Price Paid data (standard open-market sales only; repossessions, part-value transfers and non-residential records excluded). A median is the middle sale, so it resists the mansion problem that skews averages. Recent sales take weeks to register, which is why the window ends before the current month. Types with fewer than 20 sales are not shown. The year-on-year change compares this window with the twelve months before it, July 2024 to June 2025, and compares each property type with itself before combining them on this year's mix. Doing it the obvious way instead, median against median, would have this town's prices swing on which kind of house happened to sell: one town in this data sold 29 detached houses one year and 9 the next, and its raw median halved without a single house changing price. The change is published only where the types compared cover most of the year's sales and the town saw 50+ of them. Compare towns →
Who owns the homes
| Tenure | % of households |
|---|---|
| Owned, outright or with a mortgage (higher than 31% of towns) | 61.7% |
| of which owned outright | 43.5% |
| Private rented | 19.3% |
| Social rented | 19.0% |
| Household has no car or van (higher than 48% of towns) | 18.9% |
| Household has two or more | 31.5% |
Census 2021 records for the 4,699 households in this built-up area. Every share is of households, not residents. Shared ownership is counted with mortgaged homes; households living rent free sit in none of the tenure rows, so the rows can sum a little under 100%. A typical town has 66.2% owner-occupied homes and 19.4% of households without a car; car rows record whether a household has one available, which says nothing about how often it is driven.
Schools
| Open establishments | Schools | Places | Pupils | Filled |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary schools | 2 | 750 | 640 | 85.3% |
| Secondary schools | 1 | 1,495 | 1,569 | 104.9% |
| Independent schools | 3 | — | — | — |
The 2021 census counted 441 children aged 5 to 9 in the town: one state primary school for every 221 of them.
Open schools registered in the Sherborne built-up area, from the Department for Education's Get Information about Schools register, extracted 24 August 2026. Each school counts once: an independent special school appears under special schools, and the phase rows are state schools. Places are reported capacity and pupils each school's latest census return, summed only over schools reporting both, and shown only where at least 9 in 10 of a phase's schools do; state primaries across measured towns run at 89.2% of capacity, secondaries 91.3%. The children-per-school figure pairs a 2021 census count with today's register, so growth or decline since the census is not in it. No inspection grades are shown because Ofsted stopped issuing single-word overall judgements in 2024 and the register no longer carries them; current inspection reports are on Ofsted's own site. England only: the register lists Welsh schools without phase detail.
GP provision
Sherborne has 2 GP practices with 18,251 registered patients between them: 9,126 per practice (more stretched than 32% of measured towns; a typical town runs at 10,859).
From NHS England's registered-patients publication, August 2026: both numbers from one file at one date, which is what makes the ratio honest. Registered patients are not residents (lists lag moves in both directions), and practices just outside the built-up boundary serve towns too. England only; the separate surgeries line in the services table counts rateable premises of every kind, dental included, and the two must not be compared.
Broadband
| Availability | % of homes |
|---|---|
| Gigabit-capable (1,000 Mbit/s+) (higher than 28% of towns) | 90.6% |
| Superfast (30 Mbit/s+) | 99.8% |
Share of the 5,106 residential premises in this built-up area that the fixed network can serve at each speed, from Ofcom's Connected Nations coverage data (network state July 2025). Availability is what the line to a home can deliver if ordered, not what households actually subscribe to, and a full-fibre street where everyone bought the cheapest package shows 100% here. Percentile compares towns of 10,000+ residents. Compare towns →
Air quality
| Pollutant (modelled annual mean, 2024) | µg/m³ | Reference points |
|---|---|---|
| Fine particles (PM2.5) (higher than 21% of towns) | 5.8 | WHO guideline 5 · UK legal limit 20 |
| Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) | 5.1 | WHO guideline 10 · UK legal limit 40 |
Modelled background concentrations from DEFRA's Pollution Climate Mapping, averaged over this built-up area's 1 km grid cells weighted by where its postcodes actually are, so the fringe fields do not dilute the air people breathe. Modelled means modelled: kerbside spots run higher than any background figure. The reference points are stated for scale, and sitting between them is normal for a British town; a typical measured town's PM2.5 is 6.8.
Listed buildings
| Designation | Count |
|---|---|
| Grade I (exceptional interest) | 13 |
| Grade II* (particularly important) | 16 |
| Grade II | 350 |
| All listed buildings | 379 |
| Conservation areas centred here | at least 1 |
Its Grade I entries include Sherborne House , the Conduit (the Parade), School House Studies At Sherborne School.
Entries on Historic England's National Heritage List for England whose recorded point falls inside this built-up area, snapped through the nearest postcode, the same join the stations use. Conservation areas count by their centre, and the phrasing is “at least” because Historic England's dataset only holds what each council has supplied. A count like this mostly reflects how much of the town stood before 1840, which is why no league table ranks it.
Work and occupations
| Measure (census day, 21 March 2021) | Share |
|---|---|
| Economically active (of residents 16+) | 47.4% |
| Retired (of residents 16+) | 36.9% |
| Unemployed on census day (of the economically active) | 5.3% |
| Managerial or professional occupations (of those in employment; higher than 58% of towns) | 44.5% |
Census 2021 records for the 8,540 residents aged 16 and over in this built-up area. Census day fell mid-pandemic and furloughed workers were counted as employed, so these shares describe that day rather than today; the current official unemployment rate exists only at local-authority level, on ONS labour-market pages. Each row names its own denominator because they differ, and mixing them is how work statistics mislead. No earnings figure is shown: the official earnings survey stops at district level, and no honest town-level number exists.
Getting to work and getting around
Railway station inside the built-up area: Sherborne (207,354 entries and exits, April 2024 to March 2025, ORR estimate).
42 marked bus stops sit inside the built-up area (40.5 per 10,000 residents).
| How working residents travelled (census day) | Share |
|---|---|
| Worked mainly from home (higher than 32% of towns) | 22.1% |
| Car or van | 55.6% |
| Train, metro, tram or bus | 1.3% |
| Walked or cycled | 19.3% |
Travel shares are the 2021 census (3,823 working residents 16+): collected on 21 March 2021 under pandemic restrictions, when home-working was at its peak and commuting suppressed, so they describe that day and overstate today's home-working everywhere. They remain the only commuting record that exists at town level. Stations and bus stops are the Department for Transport's NaPTAN register as at 25 August 2026, located to this built-up area by coordinates; tram and metro are shown as presence only, because the register records their stops differently per system and an honest count does not exist. Passenger figures are the Office of Rail and Road's estimates of station usage, modelled from ticket sales and labelled estimates for that reason; a station shown without one did not match the ORR table by name, and no figure beats a guessed one.
Common questions
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Go deeper
Nearby in Dorset
| # | Place | Population |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bridport | 12,295 |
| 2 | Blandford Forum | 11,694 |
| 3 | Swanage | 10,454 |
| 4 | Gillingham | 8,822 |
| 5 | Easton | 7,800 |
| 6 | Wareham | 7,592 |