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Towns
The evolution of towns in northern Britain
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Headlines are in brown.
Dates are in red.
Hyperlinks to other pages are in dark blue.
References and citations are in turquoise.
Context and local history are in purple.
Geographical context is in green.
1100
After the
Norman Conquest people living in towns did retain some degree of autonomy
and wealth. There was an influx of urban immigration resulting from the
Conquest, but the indigenous urban population remained influential.
There was a growth of:
·
Primitive
bankers (‘moneyers’)
·
Moneylenders
(including the Jewish communities)
·
Goldsmiths
·
Merchants
·
Administrators
and royal officers.
Life was not always straightforward.
There was congestion and poverty. There were episodes such as Henry I’s purge
on moneylenders leading to castration and hand amputations.
A new type of town, the borough, emerged
in Norman England. In contrast to agricultural towns, they did not rely
directly on agriculture, but on other means such as trade, crafts
or other services. Often land was set out around castles for borough towns, for
instance at Thirsk, Skelton and Scarborough.
Thirteenth century
Each borough developed in its own way.
The town of Whitby moved away from the old
village on the east cliff down to the waterside and absorbed the old Flora
estate into Flowergate.
None matched the scale of York as a
centre for craftsmen.
Fourteenth century
Population expansion led to new
settlements growing in the countryside. Towns were created more rapidly than at
any other time. Over 50 were established between 1200 to 1320.
London was the biggest with a population
of circa 80k. Norwich was second at 20k. The next level of towns were perhaps circa 5k. Most towns had under 2k.
Many now held annual fairs.
Towns started to be defined as boroughs
with their own charters and local systems of government evolved.
By 1377, York had 7,248 adults paying
the poll tax, and may have had a population of about 15,000. It has absorbed
many migrants from the countryside, particularly impacted by the devastation
caused by the outbreaks of plague in rural
areas.
A concentration of small crafts made York the industrial centre of Yorkshire and it
developed specialities such as 11 goldsmiths, 12 pin makers, manufacturers of
rivets, armour plate and locks as well as York pewterers.
Outside York, the largest boroughs were Scarborough (1,391 taxpayers), Whitby (641), Pickering
(435) and Northallerton (373). Towns
such a Kirkbymoorside (511) were about the same size, though included the by
then populous Farndale.
Fifteenth century
The customs and liberties of the
burgesses of Malton were recorded in writing. The burgesses had a free court
with 2 bailiffs and 2 under bailiffs, a burgess clerk and 12 sworn burge4sses
would form a jury. The court met twice a year around Mihalemas
and on the morrow of St Hilary. They levied four pence fines or could impose
prison, a pillory, a thew or the rack.
The Borough of Malton had gone a long
way to removing control by the lord.
(John Rushton, The History of Ryedale, 2003, 142 to
143).
The Victorian Age
Coal, steam and machinery reshaped
society by concentrating populations in towns around mines, factories and workshops..
In the 1851 census 54% of England’s
population lived in towns (in France, only 19%).
In the following two decades:
·
Total
production nearly doubled.
·
The
length of the railways douvbled.
·
The
number of railway pasengers
doubled.
·
Freight
tripled.
·
The
tonnage of steamships increased by 600%.
·
About
1.5M new houses were built.
·
The
rate of income tax halved from 7d in £ (2.9%) to 4d (1.6%).
·
Old
buildings were demolished en masse.
The new towns were smelly, smoky and noisy. Development was uneven. There were new
civic buildings, monuments and public utilities. This
was accompanied by slums and rows of uniform red brick houses.
Cities were also starting to develop
globally – New York, Calcutta, Shanghai, Essen, St Petersburg.
New literature from Dickens and later HG
Wells reflected the change as did art.
Charing Cross Bridge, Fog on the Thames,
1903
In 1850 a quarter of the population lived
in large towns of over 100,000, mostly industrial centres, like Bradford, Sheffield and Leeds.
The fragmentation of development was
chaotic, and as pioneers of urban growth, Britain made many mistakes.
However
death rates and infant mortality were low on the global scale, below Sweden,
but above France, Germany, Spain, Russia and US. Inevitably infant mortality
was higher in poorer areas.
The greater representation of government
and the network of local authorities coped relatively well with the new growth.
By the 1880s:
·
Britain
strove to a better minimum health standard than other countries.
·
Cities
had invested in sewers and water facilities.
·
Sanitary
inspectors reduced over crowding and adopted measures
to control pollution.
By the 1840s, the average number per
house in the East End was 6.4 and 30% of homes were well furnished (ie including a piano!).
The
growth in non agricultural production meant the
population had to be fed by imports. Since 1822 Britain’s balance of trade has
remained permanently in deficit. It had to be balanced by invisible earnings
from banking, insurance and shipping, and returns from
foreign investments.
This
brought new kinds of wealth (commerce, manufacturing, food and drink, tobacco)
and new wealthy families, like the Rothschilds and the Guinness’s. Someone of
the very richest, like the Duke of Westminster, continued to derive their
wealth from their land holdings, but now because they benefitted from mineral
rights.
There
were very significant disparities of wealth:
By
1914, 92% of wealth was owned by 10% of the population.
In
the 1860s:
·
The
population was around 20M.
·
4,000
people had incomes over £5,000 per year.
·
1.4M
had around £100.
·
A
farm labourer might earn £20.
·
Women
workers earned about half of men’s wages.
There
was a rise in wages from mid century, with a significant
rise in 1873.
However in rural areas, wages lagged behind.
Living
standard improved with a fall in the birth rate. The sharpest increase in
spending was tobacco – the mechanically produced Wills Woodbines at 1d for five were popular from the
1880s to the 1960s. The consumption of alcohol fell sharply.
The
Industrial Towns, depicted in Disraeli’s Sybil, established their own traditions and institutions.
·
In
textile towns such as in Lancashire and elsewhere, people played together, sang
in choral societies together, voted together and holidayed together.
·
Mining
industries formed brass bands.
·
New
sports grounds and works teams emerged.
·
Neighbourhood
clubs provided some security for unemployment, burial costs, clothes, medicine and Christmas.
·
Charities
expanded.
·
There
was a multiplication of cooperative societies, savings banks
and friendly societies (like the Independent Order of Oddfellows, and the Ancient Order of Foresters). By
1901 there were 5.47M members of friendly societies.
·
There
was a growth in trade unions.
o
“Combination”
by workers became legal in the 1820s.
o However
the Master and Servants Acts 1823 and 1867 continued to punish workers for
breaking contracts.
o The Employers and
Workmen Act 1875
recognised a right to collective bargaining and soon led to unionisation being
seen as a right.
o This was a contrast to the position in
France, Germany and US. The British workforce became
more unionised.
o Unions tended to be peaceful but adversarial
with employers.
o The Victorian Working Class had a
recognised and independent place in the social order.
·
Medical
insurance developed.
·
Voluntary
hospitals were funded by donations.
There
were increasing attempts to improve the quality of life in towns.
·
A
growth of parks, gardens and allotments.
·
New
suburban districts with villas with gardens.
·
Gardeining became a popular hobby.
·
The
planned urban estates of Regency London, Bath and
Edinburgh.
·
Communities
of workers were created by such people as Titus Salt.
There
was a new sentiment for rural England from the towns. In many cases, these new
organisations were largely driven by the provision of amenity for town
dwellers.
·
The
Commons Preservation Society 1865
·
The
English Dialect Society 1873
·
The
Society for the Preservation of Ancient
Buildings 1877
·
The
Folklore Society 1878
·
The
Lake District Defence Society 1883
·
The
Society for the Protection of Birds 1889
·
The
National Trust for Places of Historic
Interest or Natural Beauty 1895
·
The
Folk Song Society 1898
·
The
English Folk Dance Society 1911
·
The
National Trust Act 1907 allowed the Trust to declare land
inalienable.
·
Thomas
Hardy novels
·
A E
Housman’s A
Shropshire Lad
1896
(Robert Tombs, The English and
their History, 2023, 477 to 492).