1. Nearly three-quarters of Britain’s Grade I-listed buildings are churches.

2. Edwin Smith’s English Parish Churches (1952) inspired the establishment of the Historic Churches Preservation Trust.

3. For many centuries, parish churches had no heating or seating.

4. Holy Trinity Church in Kingston-upon-Hull, Yorkshire, is said to be Britain’s largest parish church.

5. The phrase "to go to the wall" originates from the ledge which ran along church walls, which weak parishioners could lean against in the absence of seats.

6. Approximately half of England’s parish churches were built after 1815 - in 1818, it was estimated that a shortage of churches in industrialised areas meant more than 2.5 million people had no place of worship.

7. The smallest parish church in England is believed to be in Culbone, near the Exmoor coast - it's just 35ft long and 12ft wide - although others, including Lullington’s The Good Shepherd in East Sussex (16sq ft) also make this claim.

8. A 1994 report by Lord Templeman, commissioned by the Bishop of London, recommended that 24 of the City of London’s 36 churches be "mothballed".

9. After an edict by Thomas Cromwell in 1538, church records were stored in the "parish chest", a wooden coffer secured with several large locks. Good examples of these can be found at Bradford Abbas church in Dorset and Little Gaddesden, Herts.

10. In 1694, a tax was imposed on parish registers (church records of baptisms, marriages and burials) to finance England’s war with France