Tunbridge Wells, the spiritual capital of middle England, loses some of the moral high ground today with the revelation that its proportion of unwed mothers outstrips the rate in inner city areas.

Almost one in three babies (32.6 per cent) born in the genteel spa town in 2002 arrived out of wedlock. By comparison, in crowded Tower Hamlets in London's East End only about one baby in five (20.5 per cent) was born to an unmarried mother.

It is a pattern repeated all over the country, according to the survey in today's Economist magazine, with the highest rates of illegitimate babies being born in the shires while, in cosmopolitan London, more conservative values seem to pertain.

One reason appears to be that immigrant groups from Africa and Asia – Tower Hamlets, for example, has the country's biggest Bangladeshi community – have much more traditional attitudes to marriage. White and black English take a much more laissez-faire approach.

Marco Francesconi, of Essex University, said another reason could be that single parents, who make up a third of the total of unwed mothers, have been forced out of London because the rents there are so high.

Whatever the reason, the high proportion of unmarried mothers caused surprise, but not much disgust, yesterday in the town that still likes to be called Royal Tunbridge Wells because of the affinity Charles II and Queen Victoria had for its healing waters.

"Funny," mused a taxi driver, "but I never really saw the Wells as a hotbed of illicit sex and illegitimate children. Mind you, I wouldn't know that – I've been married nearly 30 years."

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