The rich data provided by the 1851 Census of Religious Worship make clear that very different processes were governing churchgoing rates in rural parts of England compared with the more urban parts. The clear rural-urban differences provide important clues that help to explain the rise and fall of English churchgoing rates over the modern historical period, and are relevant to a major and ongoing sociological dispute. My conclusion is that, in rural areas, the additional ‘supply’ recently introduced by the dissenting denominations had boosted attendance rates. This was largely because distance between home and worship was a key check on regular observance and new chapels tended to reduce this distance. In urban parts of England a very different pattern emerges: the greater the degree of urbanisation, the lower the churchgoing rate, despite the great choice of religious alternatives on offer. These rural-urban differences offer some important observations regarding the sociological theorisation of religion and modernity. In the economic language increasingly employed by sociologists of religion, both ‘supply-side’ and ‘demand-side’ processes were influencing English churchgoing rates. However, the former were much more limited and transient in their effect, being restricted to geographically isolated rural areas, while in the more urban places, where most people lived, and to which many more were migrating, urbanisation was eroding demand as predicted by secularisation theory.