Diocese of Clifton
diocese of the Catholic Church in the United Kingdom
The Diocese of Clifton is a Latin Church diocese of the Catholic Church centred at the Cathedral Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Clifton, England.
The diocese covers the historic counties of the West of England and includes the City and County of Bristol, the counties of Gloucestershire, Somerset, Wiltshire, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire and Bath and North East Somerset
Diocese of Clifton
Clifton Diocese covers the West of England and includes the City and County of Bristol, the counties of Gloucestershire, Somerset, Wiltshire, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire and Bath and North East Somerset Cities and towns include Bath, Wells, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Salisbury, Taunton, Shepton Mallet and Weston-super-Mare.
The Clifton Diocese makes up part of the Catholic Association Pilgrimage.
The diocese was erected in 1850; from then until 1911 it was in the ecclesiastical province of Westminster, and has been in the province of Birmingham since then.
Statistics
The Diocese has 104 Parishes, or the equivalent. Many have chapels-of-ease or other Mass centres, adding a total of 99 chapels. The parishes are run by a mixture of Diocesan priests, and priests who belong to Religious Orders such as the Benedictines, Franciscans and others.
Diocesan boundaries
In 2023, the diocese's 13 deaneries (originally six) were replaced by 9 pastoral areas, each led by a dean and named after a saint associated with the diocese. These pastoral areas comprise the following parishes:
St Edmund of Abingdon Bishopston; Bristol City Centre; Downend; Easton; Filton; Fishponds; Henbury; Kingswood; Chipping Sodbury; Lawrence Weston; Patchway; Redfield; Shirehampton; Southmead; Westbury-on-Trym; Yate.
St Alexander Briant Chew Magna; Clevedon; Keynsham; Knowle; Knowle West; Nailsea; Portishead; Whitchurch; Withywood.
“Diocese of Clifton” enters the record as diocese of the Catholic Church in the United Kingdom. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Diocese, Clifton and diocese can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Diocese of Clifton” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Diocese, Clifton and diocese provides the most credible route into that argument.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q684520. Authority coordinates are 51.456, -2.616. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1850, 1911 and 2023.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Diocese of Clifton” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.