Daunton M. The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Volume 3: 1840-1950
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that the rich, who are his masters, are on the road.’
61
Not all viewed these changes
to Home County town life with Bourne’s gloomy reluctance, of course. Country
Life reported of Farnham in that it was at ‘the nadir of its history. But almost
immediately the coming of the motorcar began to raise the town from a decay-
ing agricultural centre to one of increasingly prosperous business and residence.’
62
One generalisation that can be made about social life in the small towns is that
it can be seen to have developed and institutionalised at this period. The late
Victorian and Edwardian eras were notable for the foundation of sporting and
social clubs and self-improvement societies. In many ways the Edwardian era was
the apogee of British small-town social life. Often dozens of local social activ-
ities were available for townsfolk. In Market Harborough there were Sunday
Schools, the Young Men’s Friendly Society, the Girls’ Friendly Society, the
Church Lads’ Brigade, the Young Men’s Debating Society of , replaced by
the Mutual Improvement Society in , itself replaced by the Literary and
Debating Society in . There was the Coffee House Reading Room of ,
the Reading Society of , refounded as the District Literary and Debating
Society in . There were carnivals, as in , and penny popular concerts.
A choral society was founded in , an operatic society in ; the local ter-
ritorial army contingent had a brass band. There were flower and produce shows,
and shows for birds – the local fanciers’ society held its first meeting in .
Market Harborough was second only to Melton Mowbray for fox-hunting and
this was particularly important from the late s. Other equine-related activ-
ities were the point to point club, the polo club of and the horse show, first
held in . There was a cricket club, a football club from ; hockey clubs
came and went. The tennis club dates from ; the local golf club opened in
, with local rules as to how to cope with the cattle that were allowed on the
fairways. A bowls club was founded in , a bicycle club around , an
angling society in ; the council built swimming baths in – galas were
held there from and the water polo club was based there in . The local
canal was used for boating and skating in hard winters. A roller skating rink
opened in .
63
All these for a local population of , in . Nor was this
unusual. Eight pages of the VCH of Staffordshire are devoted to Leek’s social
and cultural activities: sport, music, theatre, arts, friendly societies, political and
social clubs, gardening societies, the embroidery society, volunteers, civic and
historical societies, libraries, museums and galleries, many founded during the
late Victorian and Edwardian periods.
64
Similarly, Margaret Stacey’s magisterial
study of small-town life in Banbury, Oxfordshire, identifies formal associa-
tions, many of which would have been founded at that time.
65
Stephen A. Royle
61
Bourne, Change in the Village, p. .
62
Cited in Chamberlin, English Country Town, p. .
63
Davies and Brown, Market Harborough.
64
N. J. Tringham, ‘Social and cultural activities’, in VCH, Staffordshire, , pp. –.
65
M. Stacey, Tradition and Change (London, ).
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The second half of the century was characterised not just by the development
of capitalism but also by that of municipalism as local authorities reacted to the
poor environmental and social conditions of the early Victorian period. Across
Britain there were massive urban improvement programmes. Additionally, some
places invested in projects redolent of civic pride, the town halls of the north-
ern industrial cities being especially notable. Municipalism was not reserved to
the great cities such as Birmingham, where Joseph Chamberlain took the
concept to its limit, as may be seen from David Gilbert’s use of that term to
explain community development in English and Welsh mining towns.
66
In small
towns, the grandiosity of the Bradford Wool Exchange was hardly to be coun-
tenanced. Nevertheless some did erect fine town halls, and many did share in the
fashion for municipalism. Thus in Market Harborough the urban district
council, established in , within a few years had built public baths, taken over
and run the local gas company, built a fire station, a cattle market, recreation
grounds, improved the water supply and sewerage arrangements and laid out a
new street, having cleared away an old inn to make room.
67
Lerwick (Map .) provides another example of late century development.
The period from to was one of consolidation, with gas lighting from
and some minor sanitary improvements. However, from to ,
when the herring fishery was buoyant, the town was transformed. These were
‘years when the men at the top really broke out from their personal and narrow
attitudes which had governed so much of their thinking in the past, and turned
their minds to the broader development of their town’.
68
A town hall was
opened in , and new harbour works in which also saw the building of
the esplanades. That part of the main street, Commercial Road, to the seaward
side of Fort Charlotte was widened and properly surfaced. Further inland came
the building of the New Town, first planned in , though little development
actually took place until the s when the proposed streets received their
names and housing and other properties began to be built: ‘handsome and
imposing villas, lasting testimonials to the excellence of their builders and silent
witnesses to the obvious wealth of their owners’.
69
These wealthy people moved
away from the old town centre. As a local correspondent put it in the s:
The days had gone . . . when merchants and others were prepared to live in houses
all of the same pattern, little more than square boxes, with five small holes in the
front for windows, a larger one to serve as the door. All the rooms were small, ill-
ventilated and low; there were no baths etc., and drains were a matter of secon-
dary importance, often left out altogether.
70
The development of small towns in Britain
66
D. Gilbert, ‘Community and municipalism: collective identity in late-Victorian and Edwardian
mining towns’, Journal of Historical Geography, (), –.
67
Davies and Brown, Yesterday’s Town.
68
Irvine, Lerwick, p. .
69
Ibid., p. .
70
Ibid., p. .
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Poorer Lerwigians, of course, might be left in insanitary conditions, some in
wooden shanties, although there had been improvements in water and sewage
arrangements and from the s properties were officially inspected and white-
washing ordered where necessary. That it was the chief of police who made such
inspections might be seen as a mark of the seriousness with which the author-
ities regarded this task, except that this officer was Lerwick’s only policeman.
Despite the legislative powers available to the authorities by the Housing of the
Stephen A. Royle
GILBERTSON
PARK
Curling
Pond
BURGH ROAD
HARALD STREET
KING
UNION STREET
PRINCE ALBERT STREET
ALBANY STREET
KING EIRIK STREET
STREET
HIGH
SOUTH
HILL HEAD
HARBOUR
STREET
STREET
MARKET
MARKET
STANCE
FORT
CHARLOTTE
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O
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C
I
A
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O
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Gas
Works
Saw
Mill
Gassometer
Quay
Pier
Pier
Charlotte Place
Pier
Pier
Albert
Pier
VICTORIA
PIER
S
C
A
L
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O
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NEW
TOWN
0 1/4
miles
Selected detail from the
1878 OS six inch map
Additions and changes on
the 1900 map
NORTH ESPLANADE
SOUTH ESPLANADE
ST MAGNUS STREET
Map . Changes in Lerwick, Shetland, to
Source: based largely on information in J. W. Irvine, Lerwick (Lerwick, ).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Working Class Act of and the Small Dwellings Act of , it was not until
that ‘Workmen’s Dwellings’, Lerwick’s first new purpose-built working-
class accommodation was provided and that not by the council. It was only after
the First World War that Lerwick would be able to take advantage of national
planning legislation and begin to be able to provide decent housing for its poor
people, with major council schemes of and .
Some generalities can be garnered from the detail on this most remote of
Britain’s small towns. Typical were the civic improvements both in hidden areas
such as sanitation and for overt show, such as the town hall. Scottish burghs have
been commended for statues and monuments erected in the late nineteenth
century as well as for splendid commercial buildings and civic facilities, such as
courts, libraries, museums and galleries provided by municipalism. Kelso has
been singled out in this regard.
71
Lerwick exemplified the slow progress being
made with regard to dealing with the conditions endured by the poorer classes.
Its developments can be set within the beginnings of a planning framework. In
Scotland from to the number of burghs with an active dean of guild
court (the body responsible for burgh building, amenity and planning matters)
rose from to as the need for planning and improvements became more
urgent.
72
However, the extensive formal planning of the earlier Scottish urban
experience, from the great New Town of Edinburgh to the plethora of planned
villages, was not replicated in the late nineteenth century.
The centrifugal movement of the merchant and wealthy class to quieter, more
spacious peripheral locations, leapfrogging the poor left in their traditional areas
of occupancy, as seen in Lerwick, was typical of the transformation in the socio-
spatial structures of urban areas in the late nineteenth century. One factor was
the growing commercialisation of the central trading areas, not unrelated to the
decline in the localism of the economy. This process served to push people away.
As before, Wright’s comments on Lincolnshire towns can serve as a general
report: ‘Towards the end of the century many commercial and professional fam-
ilies moved from such old areas [in the town centres] to new houses on the sub-
urban edges of the towns, either terraced houses with front and back gardens or
detached or semi-detached villas in their own grounds’.
73
(iii)
Table . indicates that another of the cohort of small towns reached the
, threshold between and . Map . shows their distribution and
the pattern clearly indicates the continuing suburbanisation of the Home
Counties: only one out of the fifteen Surrey towns in the original cohort
The development of small towns in Britain
71
Naismith, Scotland’s Towns.
72
R. Rodger, ‘The evolution of Scottish town planning’, in Gordon and Dicks, eds., Scottish Urban
History, pp. –.
73
Wright, Lincolnshire Towns, p. .
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reached with a population under ,. Map . identifies the location of
the surviving small towns in and should be compared to the pattern
shown in Map ..
England lost seventy-four small towns to the , threshold, yet the total
population in the towns that survive in the cohort remains little changed, indi-
cating that the mean size of the towns has increased. Map . shows that in
mainly rural counties in East Anglia, the Lake District, Herefordshire in the
Welsh borderlands and some of the West Country counties small towns remain
important.
In Scotland, the situation is similar. The Central Valley lost a large number of
small towns whilst many peripheral rural counties had little growth in small
towns. A number of them lost population generally. Ross and Cromarty lost .
per cent (, to ,) and, whilst its major mainland central place of
Dingwall experienced an increase in population of . per cent and in
Stornoway, chief town of the Western Isles, the increase was . per cent, only
Invergordon of the county’s other four towns grew (. per cent). In
Wigtownshire where the county population fell . per cent (, to ,)
only the ferry port of Stranraer increased in population by . per cent. The
county’s other three towns in the cohort fell.
In Wales, the industrial counties such as Flintshire and Glamorgan had few
small towns left by , and the smaller industrial towns of Monmouthshire
continued to grow. In the rural areas, county population declines –
Merionethshire fell . per cent (, to ,), Montgomeryshire . per
cent (, to ,) – were matched by declines in the small towns with only
the resort of Towyn (. per cent) and the regional central place of Newtown
growing at all (. per cent) in these counties.
Few English counties now had more than per cent of their population in
the surviving small towns. Only the peripheral rural counties and some of those
to the north of London were not in this lowest category. In Wales, apart from
the industrial counties of Flintshire, Glamorgan and Monmouthshire, the prin-
cipality’s considerable rurality was reflected in higher proportions continuing to
live in the small towns, though their overall relative importance was declining.
Scotland, generally less urbanised than England, had a more complex pattern
with small towns remaining significant proportionately in both some rural and
some industrial counties. In the particular circumstances of the insular counties,
island central-place burghs continued to dominate the local scene, for instance
Rothesay on Bute and Millport on Great Cumbrae. On Orkney, Kirkwall had
continued to grow (. per cent) whilst the county’s only other burgh,
Stromness, had fallen . per cent. By Kirkwall accommodated . per
cent of Orkney’s population, from only . per cent in . In Shetland,
Lerwick had increased . per cent and in it had . per cent of the
county population, up from . per cent in .
Stephen A. Royle
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The development of small towns in Britain
Map . Distribution of small towns in Great Britain
Source: based on census data.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Stephen A. Royle
Map . Proportion of county populations living in small towns in Great
Britain
Source: based on census data.
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The economy of the small towns at this period could not be divorced from
the national scene: warfare, twice, and the great depression. This last had partic-
ular effects on some industrial small towns as well as on market towns and ‘a
photograph of almost any town centre in the s shows a dreary picture of
hoardings covering derelict buildings’.
74
The local basis of the towns’ economies
continued to decline as products and the outlets that sold them both became
more national in character and they faced competition from other places.
Dickinson studied the East Anglian urban hierarchy up to . Much of his
analysis dealt with either cities or villages, but he did identify a number of small
towns where economic difficulties were caused by the decay of their markets.
Swaffham, Bungay and Halstead all lost population or gained little from to
(⫺ per cent, ⫹. per cent, ⫺. per cent respectively). Their market
functions had declined in a period of improved transportation as a result of com-
petition from the region’s traditional large urban centres such as Norwich,
Ipswich and Yarmouth and also some of the more successful of the cohort,
including North Walsham (a population increase of . per cent), Fakenham
(. per cent), Saffron Walden (. per cent) and Stowmarket ( per cent), and
the Essex towns of Chelmsford, Romford and Braintree, which all exceeded
, by the early twentieth century. However, two towns singled out by
Dickinson did not grow from to . They were Diss (⫺. per cent) and
Beccles (⫺. per cent).
75
A study of small-town services in southern Shropshire postulated that by the
s, any equalising effect the development of railway connections had brought
in the earlier period had ended and the two regional centres of Bridgnorth and
Ludlow began to reassume their former dominance. Certainly Ludlow’s growth
from to , at . per cent, was one of the strongest in the county. The
small towns that were losing out in terms of services in some cases only saved
their economies by diversification, further evidence of change to the traditional
market towns’ economy.
76
A major national study of the Welsh urban hierarchy in was made by
Carter who listed urban places from the capital city of Cardiff down, divided
into a hierarchy of six steps, based on functional grounds. That these functions
were related to population can be appreciated from the fact that the cohort of
towns under , are found largely in his two lowest categories, E and F, ‘local
centres’ and ‘sub-towns’, with only a few grade D, ‘major local centres’. Some
towns originally in the cohort were grade D, even grade C, ‘regional
centres’, but their populations had risen with their functional significance and
they had left the cohort before . Examples are Aberystwyth, Bangor
and Caernarfon. Only Haverfordwest was a Grade C regional centre with a
The development of small towns in Britain
74
Chamberlin, English Country Town, p. .
75
Dickinson, ‘East Anglia’.
76
R. Jones, ‘Country town survival: some Anglo-Australian comparisons’, in M. R. Wilson, ed.,
Proceedings of the Prairie Division, Canadian Association of Geographers (Saskatoon, ), pp. –.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
population below ,. The forty-three Welsh towns that were left in the
cohort included eight ‘major local centres’. These were Brecon, in its small rural
county without a large urban place to dominate trade and Pwllheli, a long-stand-
ing central place for the Lleyn peninsula, though elsewhere in its quite densely
populated county of Caernarfonshire, as noted, Bangor and Caernarfon were
‘regional centres’. Cardigan was the ‘major local centre’ for its part of
Cardiganshire, with Aberystwyth as a ‘regional centre’; Dolgellau was the ‘major
local centre’ for rural Merionethshire; Newtown and Welshpool performed
similar roles in neighbouring Montgomeryshire; Monmouthshire with its
, population had Abergavenny and Monmouth as ‘major local centres’ as
well as Newport, one of the three biggest places in Wales. The other thirty-five
towns in the cohort were mainly still classified as marketing towns and were
‘local centres’ (sixteen); or the less important ‘sub-towns’ (seven). Others were
assigned to different functional groups, particularly nine ‘resorts’ including
Beaumaris, Anglesey and Towyn. The remaining three towns were the ‘indus-
trial/mining’ categorisation of Briton Ferry, Blaenavon and ‘residential’
Fishguard. In sum, thirty-two of forty-three small Welsh towns left in the cohort
were functioning largely as market centres which, alongside their isolation, may
explain their slow growth.
77
Similarly for Scotland: ‘the small burghs which lie in a rural rather than indus-
trial milieu have, at best, been stagnating’,
78
and up to sixty-five of the
ninety-two burghs (. per cent) in the industrial Lowlands had increasing pop-
ulations whilst sixty-three of (. per cent) elsewhere recorded a decrease.
The Lowland burghs were also much bigger.
With regard to the structure and operation of the towns during this fifty-year
time span, a number of trends can be identified, though the period was not par-
ticularly active as the major thrust of industrialisation had run its course and the
poor economic circumstances of Britain for much of the time precluded major
investments. However, as everywhere else in Britain, the national planning reg-
ulations of the interwar period saw increased activity in sanitary and housing
reform. Many towns had their share of council house developments and clear-
ance of some of the worst property: the two interwar council housing develop-
ments mentioned for Lerwick can serve as an example. The social geography of
the towns changed to only a limited extent. The high class nature of their
peripheries, evident by the turn of the century, was reinforced and spread by
the development of private transportation which enabled the wealthy to travel
to work by car. However, the building of new council property, much of it more
space extensive than the housing of earlier eras it supplemented or replaced,
could lead to working-class areas also being constructed in some parts of the
towns’ peripheries.
Small-town life in Britain in mid-century had in some ways remained stable
Stephen A. Royle
77
Carter, The Towns of Wales.
78
Adams, Urban Scotland, p. .
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with many of the Victorian and Edwardian societies remaining in existence in
this era before mass television. Banbury’s formal associations have been men-
tioned already. This town, although above the , threshold, was under
, in and, given the quality of Stacey’s classic study, can serve as a useful
guide to the operation of town life at this period when the ‘key notes’ of society
were ‘conformity, stability, [and the] conservation of established institutions and
values’.
79
The society was divided on class lines: ‘Middle-class rarely meet
working-class Banburians. They go to different pubs or different parts of the
same pub; while one group plays squash, the other plays table tennis . . . there
are . . . different kinds of houses in different areas, different types of work . . .
[and] rules of behaviour.’
80
Further, outsiders were not welcomed by either
group: one woman from northern England, ‘although she took steps to join all
the organisations that her Banburian neighbours belonged to and was assiduous
in her attendance, had still not been accepted by them fifteen years later. No
reason could be found for this rejection, except her north country origin’. ‘“All
these foreigners”’ – people from outside Banbury that is – had ‘so altered the
town that “you no longer knew where you were”’.
81
If Banbury was typical of
small-town Britain around , neither towns nor townspeople were prepared
for the more major transformations in both the economies and societies of small
towns which were to come in the late twentieth century.
(iv)
In , except around London and in some of the manufacturing counties,
there was a network of small towns, many of them traditional market towns,
scattered across Great Britain. Map . clearly demonstrates that by the
towns left in the cohort from the original were associated with the more
rural counties. For example, in the industrial Welsh counties of Glamorgan and
Flintshire just two of the ten towns in the original cohort remained under ,
– Briton Ferry and Cowbridge. Further, these ten towns had mainly taken on
functions outside traditional marketing and central-place activities. Only Mold,
a ‘major local centre’, and tiny Cowbridge, a ‘sub-town’, were classified as being
principally supported by marketing. The others were industrial or mining
centres with the exception of Cardiff ’s suburb, Penarth, which was ‘residential’.
Around more substantial urban areas than Cardiff such more ‘residential’ towns
would be found, as in the metropolitan ingestion of Surrey.
Thus it seems clear that by the traditional national distribution of small
market towns had, away from the rural areas anyway, broken down in the face
of modern conditions: urban and industrial growth and transportation improve-
ments. The interwar period’s notable problems with urban sprawl was obviously
a factor here, too.
The development of small towns in Britain
79
Stacey, Tradition and Change, p. .
80
Ibid., p. .
81
Ibid., p. .
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