This dissertation attempts to show how the study of the variations in demographic experience between different types of communities can advance the understanding of the processes of English population growth in the past, particularly during the period of rapid economic change in the eighteenth century. Attention is concentrated on an area of fifty-two parishes, centered around the border of North East Somerset and West Wiltshire, which contained communities involved in a variety of economic activities. The principal objective is to demonstrate the relationships between economic developments and demographic change and more especially to emphasize the inter-relatedness of events in different communities, each of which fits into a complex regional system. The process of investigation is in three stages: first, aggregated annual totals of baptisms, burials and marriages (taken from parish registers and related documents) are used to analyse the general chronology of population change in the area as a whole and explanations for the acceleration and timing of growth are discussed. Secondly, similarities in the experiences of the constituent communities are studied and these provide the basis for the definition ~f groups of parishes with common sets of attributes. Movements of people between these groups are found to be an important element of regional population change. And thirdly, more detailed analytical techniques are used to investigate the processes of population change within individual communities. This indicates significant spatial differences in the fertility of populations and a study of the persistency of families identifies to what extent these differences arose because of spatial variations in environmental and economic conditions or because of the redistribution of population. The overall conclusion is that population change in a particular place, at a particular time cannot be fully explained without an understanding of changes that took place in other parts of the region in earlier generations.