Using case studies of English county towns, this article contributes towards the creation of a geography of scientific culture in England, 1750–1850. It argues that although emulation of the metropolis was important, provincial scientific culture had its own distinctive identity often concentrated through the lens of county town sociability and associations. The second part analyses data on literary and scientific institutions from the 1851 census in order to determine whether county towns continued to retain their importance in scientific culture by the middle of the nineteenth century.