England and Wales look like one country on Friday, with a clear if smallish majority for leaving the EU having been counted on both sides of Offa’s Dyke. But Scotland, where very nearly two in three voters and every counting area wanted to stay in, looks like another land entirely.

This is only the first, if potentially the most consequential, of the many divisions seared into the map – and right across British society – by this referendum. A vote that purported to be about the UK’s indivisible sovereignty, has served to disunite the kingdom.

At first blush, London looks like a capital in the midst of a foreign state – an island of Euro-enthusiasm amid a south-east that was mostly resolved to quit. The majorities for remain in some inner-London boroughs werecrushing: fully 75% of the ballot in Camden and 78% in Hackney. But further out, parts of the metropolis began to merge into the countryside beyond. To the south, Sutton went 54% for leave, as did Barking and Dagenham, where 63% wanted out.

Right across the rest of the south-east, East Anglia, Wales and the Midlands, leave was the rule and remain the exception. The exceptions sometimes came in pockets of particular prosperity – Tunbridge Wells, for instance – and then also cities where universities loomed large: Norwich, Bristol and especially Oxford and Cambridge, where remain notched up 70%-plus.

Leave’s overall lead owed much to a strong performance around the coast, and particularly in the east of England. Right around the foreshore, from Rother in East Sussex through Shepway and Dover in Kent, through Southend in Essex and on to Suffolk, leave notched up to 60% or above.

Across the breadth of the Midlands, in places of every sort, remain struggled, falling just short in picturesque High Peak in Derbyshire and big city Birmingham alike. In smaller Midland towns and cities – Wolverhampton, Nuneaton and Bedworth, Kettering – the margin was greater.

Further north, the picture was less uniform, several big cities – including Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool – swinging for remain, while old socialist bastions of the second order – Wigan, St Helens, Doncaster and Barnsley – were overwhelmingly for leave.

Like the geographical divide between London and the home counties, the gulf between the northern towns on the one hand and northern cities on the other is a product of sociological schisms. The polls were – once again – materially out in predicting the final result in a close race. But every survey, irrespective of methodology, was quite clear about two cast-iron links: rising age is associated with rising support for leave, while higher social class encourages support for remain.

The pattern of the results bears out both relationships. Measured by the proportion of locals with higher education, the class mix of the area gives a particularly snug fit with its propensity to vote remain. Only in Scotland were there many deprived communities, such as West Dunbartonshire, with precious few degrees, that were nonetheless solid for remain.

The results also bear out the generation gap. The places with the very youngest average age, often at or around 30, include Oxford, Tower Hamlets and Hackney, which all proved to be remain strongholds. Conversely, at the other end of the age spectrum, East Lindsey in Lincolnshire has an average age of closer to 50, and it turned in a thumping leave win.

These social divisions have led to a scrappy electoral map on which most of the UK has gone one way while Scotland, London, the university towns and several other big cities have gone in another direction entirely. There is a big difference here with the last referendum in 1975, when there was a solid victory for staying in the EEC, but a definite echo of last year’s general election, when many of the same trends applied.

The messy map is a challenge for political analysts, who are finding predictions are much harder than they used to be. More fundamentally, it is a reflection of a divided society, in which many young people are deeply unhappy about the decision that an older cohort of voters has just imposed on their future.