Although the practice of Buddhism in the United Kingdom started in the 19th century, the UK have had relations with Buddhist countries for more than a millennia.

Archaeological evidence found in Sutton Hoo suggests that Britain was part of an international culture, as the garnets discovered, dated back to the Anglo-Saxon period, came from as far away as Sri Lanka,[11] at that time a strong Buddhist civilization called 'Anuradhapura', having contact with Ancient Rome and Greece.

The start of interest in Buddhism as a path of practice had been pioneered by the original Theosophists, the Russian Madame Blavatsky and the American Colonel Olcott, who in 1880 became the first Westerners to receive the Three refuges and Five precepts, the formal conversion ceremony by which one traditionally accepted and becomes a Buddhist.

During the 19th to early 20th centuries lascar sailors (people from Asia who worked in British ships) came and settled in the UK.

[17][better source needed] There were also Chinese seamen who settled in the United Kingdom, establishing Chinatowns in Liverpool and London.

[18] In 1925, the Sri Lankan Buddhist missionary Anagarika Dharmapala brought to England the Maha Bodhi Society,[19] which he had founded with the collaboration of the British journalist and poet Edwin Arnold.

[21] A lay meditation tradition of Thai origin is represented by the Samatha Trust, with its headquarters retreat centre in Wales.

[25] The Order of Interbeing (Tiep Hien) was founded within the Linji School of Dhyana Buddhism (Zen (Rinzai)).

Samyé Ling now has established centres in more than 20 countries, including Belgium, Ireland, Poland, South Africa, Spain and Switzerland.

[35] Lama Shenpen Hookham, originally from Essex, travelled to India in the late 1960s on the instruction of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, became one of a group of early Western women to take ordination as a nun in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.

[36] The Manjushri Institute, a large Buddhist college at Conishead Priory in Cumbria, was founded in 1976 under the guidance of Thubten Yeshe, a Tibetan Gelugpa monk.

[37] Buddhist organisations in the UK from the Tibetan tradition that have been founded by Western lamas include Dechen and Aro gTér.

[39] The New Kadampa Tradition was founded by the Tibetan monk (formerly a Gelugpa) Kelsang Gyatso in 1991 when it took over the Manjushri Institute (Conishead Priory);[38] its practices have sparked much controversy, including official rebukes by the Dalai Lama.

[40] There is also a UK section of the Soka Gakkai International, a worldwide organization that promotes a disputed, modernized version of the ancient Japanese Nichiren school of Mahayana Buddhism.

Interest in secular Buddhism, stripped of supernatural elements and doctrines that are deemed insufficiently rational (including ancient, shared Indian religious beliefs in rebirth and karma), has developed from the writings of the British author and teacher Stephen Batchelor.