Daunton M. The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Volume 3: 1840-1950
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s, outward expansion was no longer seen as an unequivocal benefit. It was
attacked for creating a formless sprawl which threatened the countryside and led
to an urban environment without defined centres. The countryside was pre-
served and made available for urban recreation by the new national parks of
– a culmination of the aspirations of the Ramblers Association, Youth Hostels
Association and other urban groups. As Yelling points out, planners such as
Patrick Abercrombie argued for an active regional policy, with green belts to
create distinct communities and to construct new towns as ‘balanced’, self-
contained communities with a mix of social classes and industry. Abigail Beach
and Nick Tiratsoo consider the social assumptions and beliefs of the town plan-
ners. Urban Britain was contained by its green belts, which made access to land
a major consideration for house builders, and drove up prices.
107
Landownership and the appropriation of rising values were contentious issues;
and so was the tenure of housing. Many owners were drawn from the lower
middle class or even working class, investing in a few houses as a safe, local and
visible investment to provide a form of pension fund or means of support for
dependants. The relationship between landlord and tenant was an important
feature of urban society. The relative power of the parties varied over the build-
ing cycle, which was a pronounced feature of British towns and cities.
Speculative builders tended to over-build, with a spate of bankruptcies, high
levels of vacancies and a strong bargaining position for tenants. The glut was
slowly removed, and a new boom only started after a period of shortages which
gave the advantage to the landlord. The relationship was also affected by the legal
system. In England, landlords could summarily evict defaulting tenants under
the act of . However, eviction did not allow landlords to recover rent, and
most tenants simply did a ‘flit’ before landlords took action to recover possession.
In order to obtain payment of overdue rent, owners relied on the common law
of distraint to seize goods, but this was increasingly curtailed by judges who were
more sympathetic to the tenants (and particularly women who were usually
responsible for payment) than to their landlords. In Scotland, the law of land-
lord and tenants was much harsher, the courts were used much more frequently,
and housing was highly politicised to secure reform of the system of long-lets.
By the early twentieth century, the rental market in both England and Scotland
was facing a serious erosion of profitability. The burden of local taxation rose,
and it proved difficult to pass on the cost to tenants at a time of stable real wages
and a glut of housing after the boom at the turn of the century. The emergence
Martin Daunton
107
P. Hall et al., The Containment of Urban England, vols. (London, ); D. Massey and A.
Catalano, Capital and Land (London, ); F. Trentmann, ‘Civilisation and its discontents:
English neo-romanticism and the transformation of anti-modernism in twentieth-century
western culture’, Journal of Contemporary History, (), –; J. Sheail, Rural Conservation
in Inter-War Britain (Oxford, ); P. Mandler, ‘Politics and the English landscape since the First
World War’, Huntington Library Quarterly, (), –; below, pp. –, –.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
of other outlets for safe investments – such as local government bonds – without
the hassles of managing property and tenants meant that investment in rental
property was less appealing prior to the First World War. The situation was trans-
formed by the war, when housing shortages and inflation allowed landlords to
increase their rents and recoup some of their lost ground. However, tenant pro-
tests and rent strikes – especially in Glasgow where housing was so intensely pol-
iticised – threatened to disrupt the war effort, and the government imposed rent
and mortgage controls in , which meant that house owners and mortgag-
ors experienced a decline in profitability.
108
Although rent and mortgage control was intended to expire at the end of the
war, decontrol was not feasible at a time of serious unrest and housing shortages,
with the alarming prospect of soaring rents. The answer was a massive pro-
gramme of council house building by local councils with considerable financial
aid from central government in order to end the shortage and then to permit
decontrol. However, retrenchment meant that the programme was cut and some
form of rent control remained in force up to the Second World War, when it
was again extended. Council house building resumed in the s, to less gen-
erous standards with most of the cost financed by local authorities. In the s,
‘general purpose’ housing largely ceased and most council housing was for slum
clearance. The central government imposed an obligation on local authorities to
demolish insanitary housing and rehouse the inhabitants. Owners received much
less generous compensation than in earlier clearance programmes, but other
problems remained. Residents of the slums could scarcely afford the rents of
their new accommodation, and one solution was to increase the rents of ‘general
purpose’ housing – a policy which provoked considerable resentment by
‘respectable’ towards ‘unrespectable’ tenants.
109
Although the programme was
unprecedented in scale, a backlog still remained at the start of the Second World
War, and wartime destruction and low investment in maintenance led to a
further deterioration in the older stock. The problem of slum property still
remained in , and inspired even greater clearance programmes in the s
and s.
The council housing schemes created new difficulties, as Pooley’s case study
of Liverpool shows. The large suburban estates assumed a single male breadwin-
ner with a defined journey to work, which caused particular problems for
women and adolescents who were taken away from the labour market of the
inner city. Child care became problematic with the disruption of ties of kin and
neighbourhood, and access to cheap inner-city food markets was more difficult.
Local authorities lacked financial resources to provide social facilities. In London
Introduction
108
Daunton, House and Home; Englander, Landlord and Tenant.
109
Englander, Landlord and Tenant; M. Swenarton, Homes Fit for Heroes (London, ); J. A. Yelling,
Slums and Redevelopment (London, ); R. Finnegan, ‘Council housing in Leeds, –:
social policy and urban change’, in Daunton, ed., Councillors and Tenants, pp. –.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
and other large cities, the problem was compounded when estates were built
outside their own boundaries, so putting demands on neighbouring authorities.
The difficulties between the LCC and Essex County Council, for example,
resulted in a shift to inner-city flats in the s. Some commentators were con-
cerned that residents of the new estates were marginalised from society, a threat
to integration and social stability – a sentiment which led the National Council
of Social Services to set up the New Estates Committee. This was a further stage
in the debate over the form of urban communities and the desire to create social
cohesion, which ran from the settlement houses to the garden cities and new
towns programme (see Beach and Tiratsoo). The perceived problems of the
interwar council housing programme helped to shape post-war attitudes, so that
the ‘mistakes’ of Dagenham and Withenshaw should be avoided at Harlow and
Stevenage by mixing social classes and creating self-contained communities.
110
The volume of local authority housing was one of the most striking and pecu-
liar features of British towns, and only the socialist states of Eastern Europe could
rival the level of public housing found in Glasgow or Birmingham. The housing
market was highly differentiated by , falling into three main categories. The
bulk of new rented property was publicly owned for the working class, and most
new middle-class or skilled working-class property was owner-occupied – with
a fearful concern that values should not be eroded by proximity to council
tenants. Older, poorly maintained private rental property was the only option
for those unable to secure a council house because they were migrants or had
not yet acquired enough ‘points’, or were incapable of obtaining a mortgage.
Towns were divided by tenurial status, clearly demarcated between public rented
housing, private owner-occupied housing and a decaying and neglected stock of
rented property – a situation which created great problems after the Second
World War and the start of large-scale migration from the Commonwealth.
111
In addition to investment in housing, towns and cities acquired a growing
range of public or charitable buildings. Hospitals, schools, workhouses and
churches existed in the eighteenth century, but were now built in increasing
numbers and to a more lavish scale. The reform of the funding of the poor law
in the s meant that more workhouses were built to enforce the stern disci-
pline of less eligibility and indoor relief, and new institutions were provided for
the care of the sick and orphans.
112
Board schools and police stations, work-
houses and asylums and isolation hospitals, created a new architecture of power
and authority in Victorian cities, replacing a concern for circulation with a drive
for surveillance and observation, for mapping and classification. By the end of
Martin Daunton
110
K. Young and P. Garside, Metropolitan London (London, ). The best account of a large estate
is A. Olechnowicz, Working-Class Housing in England between the Wars (Oxford, ); see also the
case studies in Daunton, ed., Councillors and Tenants; and below, pp. –, –, –.
111
For example, J. Rex and R. Moore, Race, Community and Conflict:A Study of Sparkbrook (London,
).
112
See Driver, Power and Pauperism, ch. .
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the nineteenth century, most towns of any size and pretension had a public and
cultural core of buildings: a monumental town hall, public library, art gallery and
museum, a concert hall and possibly a civic university. In many cases, the initia-
tive started with middle-class voluntarism before moving into the civic sphere,
such as at Bristol where the debts of the Museum and Library Society were paid
off by Sir Charles Wathen in , on condition that the council then took over
the building. The municipality and philanthropy continued to work together,
for the new central library was paid for by a bequest, and the new art gallery by
the cigarette manufacturer, Sir W. H. Wills.
113
City centres were also transformed by commercial developments. The con-
struction of great railway stations created a new type of space for interaction and
social contamination. The surrounding streets were thronged with traffic, and
the growth of hotels.
114
Retailing was transformed with the growth of depart-
ment stores and chain stores, linked to the suburbs by omnibus, tram and rail-
ways. Specialist business premises were constructed. Joint-stock banks used
palatial premises to inspire confidence, and branch offices were soon erected in
the centre of even modest market towns. Insurance companies were amongst the
largest businesses, employing considerable numbers of clerical workers and aspir-
ing to an image of moral probity. In London, the huge offices of the Prudential
insurance company dominated Holborn, designed by Alfred Waterhouse who
was also architect of Manchester Town Hall and University. He symbolises some
of the changes in the Victorian city, with his brothers Edwin – the founder of a
leading firm of accountants and one of the creators of the modern profession –
and Theodore, a solicitor. Together, they were involved in floating office com-
panies to supply rooms or chambers to professional partnerships or commercial
concerns. Peter Scott analyses the development of these property companies, in
the provision of both offices and retailing space. By the s, specialised offices
were starting to transform the City of London, both as the headquarters of large
concerns and as chambers for a plethora of stockbrokers, merchants, accoun-
tants, lawyers, engineers and so on. The introduction of hydraulic power allowed
easier access to upper floors by means of passenger lifts – as well as providing a
source of power for stage machinery, for opening dock gates and operating
cranes and hoists. These offices often clustered around an exchange, where goods
were bought and sold, and freight and credit arranged. In Manchester and
London, large warehouses held stocks of textiles to supply the domestic and
international market. In the great import centres of London, Liverpool, Bristol
and Hull, bonded warehouses held dutiable commodities such as tobacco, wine
and tea, or bulky raw materials such as wool or cotton for sale on the exchanges.
Introduction
113
The best case study is H. E. Meller, Leisure and the Changing City, – (London, ), from
which the example comes (pp. –); also, R. J. Morris, ‘Middle-class culture, –’, in
D. Fraser, ed., A History of Modern Leeds (Manchester, ), pp. –.
114
Kellett, Impact of Railways, especially ch. .
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Grain was milled and sugar refined in large plants which were amongst the largest
users of steam power at the beginning of the period, and amongst the largest
industrial buildings.
115
By the late Victorian period, large factories were much more typical, leading
to the stereotype of the northern or Midland town dominated by steam-
powered spinning mills, weaving sheds and engineering works, surrounded by
grids of by-law housing. But even then, many industrial districts still had small-
scale units, such as cutlery in Sheffield, metals in Birmingham or hosiery in
Leicester.
116
In Victorian Britain, most industrial concerns had weak internal
managerial hierarchies, and relied on systems outside the firm at the level of the
town or regional network. Historians of Victorian industrial concerns have
pursued a comparison with competitors in America and Germany where pro-
ductivity started to outstrip Britain by the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
Many American industrial firms started to create strong internal managerial
systems, with closer control over labour discipline and remuneration, and allo-
cation of resources within multi-plant concerns. By contrast, most British indus-
trial concerns remained smaller, with weak managerial hierarchies.
117
But simply
to criticise British industrialists for failing to follow the American route to high
productivity fails to address the characteristic features of the British pattern of
production. In particular, two features stand out, and are of great importance for
the history of British towns and cities. One is the connection between the firm
and the family, which was mediated by the social networks of industrial towns
and districts; the second is the nature of the urban economy which allowed firms
with weak internal management to survive and even flourish.
(v)
A common view of British history in the nineteenth century assumes a division
between industrial capitalism in the North, and a commercial and service
economy in the South. According to this school of thought, the industrial bour-
Martin Daunton
115
E. Jones, ed., The Memoirs of Edwin Waterhouse:A Founder of Price Waterhouse (London, ); I. S.
Black, ‘Symbolic capital: the London and Westminster Bank headquarters, –’, Landscape
Research, (), –; I. S. Black, ‘Bankers, architects and the design of financial headquar-
ters in the mid-Victorian City of London’, in C. Cunningham and J. Anderson, eds., The Hidden
Ice-Berg of Architectural History: Papers from the Annual Symposium of the Society of Architectural
Historians of Great Britain, (London, ), pp. –; I. S. Black, ‘Re-building the heart of
the empire: bank headquarters in the City of London, –’, in D. Arnold, ed., The Metropolis
and Its Image (Oxford, ), pp. –; J. Summerson, ‘The Victorian rebuilding of the City
of London’, LJ, (), –; J. Summerson, The London Building World of the Eighteen-Sixties
(London, ); E. Green, Banking:An Illustrated History (Oxford, ).
116
S. Pollard, A History of Labour in Sheffield (Liverpool, ); A. Fox, ‘Industrial relations in nine-
teenth-century Birmingham’, Oxford Economic Papers, (), –.
117
Gospel, Markets, Firms and the Management of Labour; Lazonick, Competitive Advantage on the Shop
Floor.
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geoisie in the factory towns of the North and Midlands had a brief moment of
cultural and social self-confidence in the mid-Victorian period, as the heroes of
Samuel Smiles’ Self Help and the critics of the landed aristocracy. But in the late
nineteenth century – so the argument runs – they were culturally and politically
marginalised by a new social elite, created by a fusion between the prestige of
land and the wealth of finance based in London and the South-East. The result,
in the opinion of Michael Thompson, was the absence of a confident urban
elite: the social structure of towns lacked an ‘upper storey’, and the civic splen-
dour of the mid-Victorian period was a mere hint of what might have been.
118
How far should this account be accepted?
A regional divide between an industrial North and a service economy in the
South is clear from Gilbert and Southall’s chapter. The service and commercial
economy was highly successful. Although Britain dominated world trade in
manufactures between and , over half the new jobs created over the
period were in the service sector.
119
And the productivity of the service sector
was impressive, compared with the experience in Germany. In the case of man-
ufacturing and construction, German labour productivity caught up with the
level of the United Kingdom by the early twentieth century; in utilities and
transport, Germany pulled far ahead. But Britain retained, and even widened,
its advantage in distribution and finance, and professional and personal services.
These trends had a significant urban dimension, which cannot be understood by
a simple division of towns between industry and finance or services. There were
also important interconnections, with considerable significance for the urban
economy.
Utilities were overwhelmingly urban, and their comparative performance may
be understood in terms of different patterns of political control. British towns
were more successful than their German counterparts in the mid-nineteenth
century in resolving the problems of investment in the urban infrastructure, but
this advantage was eroded at the end of the century. British cities encountered
problems in raising finance for large-scale investments from about , as a
result of competition with overseas loans and the failure to reform urban
Introduction
118
For example, W. D. Rubinstein, ‘Wealth, elites and the class structure of modern Britain’, P&P,
(), –; P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, ‘Gentlemanly capitalism and British overseas
expansion, : new imperialism, –’, Ec.HR, nd series, (), ‒; Y. Cassis,
‘Bankers in English society in the late nineteenth century’, Ec.HR, nd series, () ‒;
F. M. L. Thompson has made the case in a number of places, including ‘Introduction’, Rise of
Suburbia, p. ; The Rise of Respectable Society (London, ), pp. , , ; ‘The landed aris-
tocracy and business elites in Victorian Britain’, in G. Delille, ed., Les noblesses européenes au XIXe
siècle (Rome and Milan, ), pp. –, , –; ‘Town and city’, in Thompson, ed., The
Cambridge Social History of Britain, –, vol. : Regions and Communities (Cambridge, ),
pp. –, ,
119
Below, p. ; C. H. Lee, ‘Regional growth and structural change in Victorian Britain’, Ec.HR,
nd series, (), .
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taxation. In Germany, cities were able to draw on the state income tax, and fiscal
problems were more at the level of the Reich.
120
We have already noted that the
small scale of urban authorities hampered economies of scale: institutional or
political factors contributed to the relative inefficiency of British utilities by the
First World War.
Differences in the productivity of distribution may also be explained by the
political and social structures of towns. In Britain, guild regulation had disap-
peared by the nineteenth century; in Germany, corporate forms survived until
the onset of rapid economic change in the later nineteenth century, which led
to considerable opposition to large-scale stores and a greater degree of politic-
isation. In France, guilds were abolished with the Revolution, but the system of
patentes – a tax based on particular trades and the scale of the firm – gave traders
a political identity.
121
In Britain, chains of specialist stores developed in the
second half of the nineteenth century, often with long and complex systems of
supply. Although British manufacturers were slow to develop multi-plant firms
with tight internal managerial controls, the pattern in retailing and financial ser-
vices was different. W. H. Smith, for example, obtained a monopoly of book
and newspaper stalls at railway stations, and developed a national system of dis-
tribution. Thomas Lipton, the Glaswegian grocer, set up stores in many British
cities to supply cheap tea, bacon, sugar, butter from around the world.
122
Lipton’s
success was predicated upon the reduction of duties on imports, and a loss of
Martin Daunton
120
N. Ferguson, ‘Public finance and national security: the domestic origins of the First World War
re-visited’, P&P, (), –, and J. von Kruedner, ‘The Franckenstein paradox in the
intergovernmental fiscal relations of imperial Germany’, in P.-C. Witt, ed., Wealth and Taxation
in Central Europe: The History and Sociology of Public Finance (Leamington Spa, ), pp. –.
121
G. Crossick, ‘Shopkeepers and the state in Britain, –’, in G. Crossick and H.-G. Haupt,
eds., Shopkeepers and Master Artisans in Nineteenth-Century Europe (London, ), pp. –.
122
C. Wilson, First with the News (London, ); P. Mathias, Retailing Revolution (London, ).
Table . German and UK labour productivity levels – (UK⫽ )
Manufacturing . . . . .
Construction . . . . .
Utilities . . . . .
Transport and communications . . . . .
Distribution and finance . . . . .
Professional and personal services . . . . .
Agriculture . . . . .
Source: S. N. Broadberry, ‘Anglo-German productivity differences, –: a
sectoral analysis’, European Review of Economic History, (), table , p. .
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
protection for British farmers; by contrast, German agriculture was still large,
protected and inefficient. In Britain, the efficiency of agriculture allowed the
release of large numbers of people from the land in the eighteenth century to
live in towns; the countryside was emptied and became the subject of nostalgia,
rather than remaining politically significant as in Germany or France. This
affected how the countryside was used by town dwellers. Rather than a simple
flight from urban and industrial modernity into the embrace of rural nostalgia,
urban residents consumed the country in a new way which was reflected in the
growth of urban-based clubs and societies such as the Youth Hostels Association,
Cyclists’ Touring Club and Ramblers Association, or motorists with their Shell
guides. By the interwar period, the land campaign had lost its political edge and
Conservative politicians could now turn to the country for different political
purposes. Stanley Baldwin’s portrayal of Englishmen as country dwellers helped
to resolve tensions, by suggesting that they were not fundamentally divided
between capital and labour, and were not essentially imperialists.
123
Commerce and finance were not rigidly separated from industry, for each
major industrial area had a full complement of commercial and financial services
catering for its needs. Scotland had its own distinctive banking and financial
system; English industrial regions had a degree of financial autonomy at least
until the end of the nineteenth century when bank mergers led to a greater
degree of centralisation. As Morris has shown, the commercial and professional
middle class provided the leadership for local voluntary associations. Far from
turning their backs on industry, they realised that their own prosperity depended
on the success of production.
124
In his chapter on the middle class, Trainor sug-
gests that any simple divide between an industrial and financial middle class
obscures the differences and similarities of their roles in various towns. He sug-
gests that the commercial and financial middle class was often linked with indus-
try in provincial cities; the middle-class elites of provinces had influence in their
own town and could deal with the wealthy elite of London.
125
Of course, the
City of London was heavily involved with international finance, but the rela-
tionship with the provinces was more complicated than simple ignorance and
neglect. The financial system of the City of London formed the hub around
which the localities revolved, directing funds from one area to another. And too
much should not be made of the failure of the City to invest in provincial indus-
try on the lines of German or American financiers. The involvement of
financiers or bankers with industry in Germany and the United States might
Introduction
123
Mandler, ‘Against “Englishness”’; Trentmann, ‘Civilisation and its discontents’; D. Cannadine,
G. M.Trevelyan:A Life in History (London, ), ch. .
124
R. J. Morris, Class, Sect and Party (Manchester, ).
125
R. H. Trainor, ‘The gentrification of Victorian and Edwardian industrialists’, in A. L. Beier, D.
Cannadine and J. M. Rosenheim, eds., The First Modern Society (Cambridge, ), pp. –;
and below, pp. –, –.
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provide an opportunity for rent seeking rather than efficiency, and might distort
industrial decisions. British firms were able to rely on retained profits and local
networks, and were able to draw on the City of London for trade finance which
provided a different linkage between finance and industry.
126
The existence of service or professional occupations might well be vital to the
growth of cities. As C. J. Simon and Clark Nardinelli argue, cities can be under-
stood as ‘information based human capital’ embodied in business professionals
such as bankers, accountants and lawyers. They found that the most rapidly
growing English cities between and had the highest proportions of
business professionals, which they characterise as the ‘talk of the bourgeoisie’.
‘Cities where the “talk is good”, meaning that it carries useful information, grow
more rapidly than cities where the talk is mostly noise.’
127
On this view, the
important factor leading to the growth of towns was not simply the availability
of raw material or factories, but face-to-face meetings between people with high
human capital. The point was made by Alexis De Tocqueville in his journeys to
England. He asked the French consul at Liverpool whether the success of British
industrial towns depended on the natural resources of coal and iron. The consul
replied that ‘intellectual qualities and, in general, practical knowledge and
acquired advantages play a much greater part still’. De Tocqueville was struck by
two features in comparison with France, which at first glance seemed contradic-
tory. One was the extent to which people joined associations to further science,
politics, pleasure and business. The other was a well-developed individuality and
competitiveness. De Tocqueville tried to bring the two characteristics together.
Association is a means suggested by sense and necessity for getting things unattain-
able by isolated effort. But the spirit of individuality comes in on every side; it
recurs in every aspect of things. Perhaps one might suggest that it has indirectly
helped the development of the other spirit by inspiring every man with greater
ambitions and desires than one finds elsewhere. That being so, the need to club
together is more generally felt, because the urge to get things is more general and
stronger.
128
Although these comments tell us much about De Tocqueville’s political philos-
ophy, they also provide some insight into the social and economic structures of
British cities in the nineteenth century.
As we have noted, ‘talk’in the early nineteenth-century city could lead to dis-
ruption and to a failure to agree. We have analysed how the circumstances for
‘good talk’ were recreated in the mid-Victorian period in order to allow invest-
ment in the urban infrastructure. This collective action was based on private con-
versations within chapels and churches, charities and trade associations, creating
Martin Daunton
126
Cottrell, Industrial Finance.
127
C. J. Simon and C. Nardinelli, ‘The talk of the town: human capital, information and the growth
of English cities, –’, Explorations in Economic History, (), , .
128
A. De Tocqueville, Journeys to England and Ireland, trans. G. Lawrence and K. P. Mayer, ed. J.
Mayer (London, ), pp. , –.
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what may be called ‘social capital’ or a sense of interconnectedness.
129
The
Victorian city was highly innovative in forging new forms of sociability, by both
the middle class and the working class, helping to create a sense of stability and
trust, which is obscured by emphasising the loss of a confident urban elite and
its flight into the embrace of the countryside. In reality, British towns and cities
were remarkably successful in constructing a wide range of institutions and social
practices. Trainor’s analysis of the elite of Glasgow shows how the public life of
the city was knit together by interlocking positions within leading public and
philanthropic bodies – the council, Infirmary, Merchants’ House and Chamber
of Commerce. In Glasgow, the overlapping membership had a structural basis,
for the head of the Merchants’ House was ex officio a member of the city council,
which in turn appointed representatives to leading institutions. But even in the
absence of formal institutional structures, it was common for members of the
elite to cross the boundaries between local government, philanthropy and busi-
ness or professional associations. They could also mingle in the neutral world of
choral societies, music festivals, the Volunteers, the court of the university, golf
club or Masons.
130
Reid provides many examples of the growth of ‘social capital’
through religion and recreation and sociability. Women played a major role,
mediating relationships through the domestic sphere by invitations to dine, or
through the world of charity and religion. Men acquired a reputation as con-
noiseurs or collectors, as members of literary and scientific societies. Men and
women took part in philharmonic societies and music festivals.
The middle class of British cities turned to history, not as a flight from present
realities and industrial capitalism, but as a means of establishing the pedigree and
pride of their city. As Charles Dellheim has pointed out, ‘Victorians recon-
structed the past to create a cultural tradition that balanced progress and continu-
ity. Reshaping traditions allowed them to forge connections with their history as
they liberated themselves from its social, economic and theological restraints...
These links to the past were bridges to the future more than detours from the
present.’ Thus Manchester Town Hall was decorated by paintings of the medi-
eval past, linked in one continuous history to the Industrial Revolution and the
emergence of political confidence. Similarly, the wool exchange in Bradford –
where John Ruskin denounced the money grubbing philistinism of the mer-
chants – combined images of Bishop Blaise and the medieval wool trade with rep-
resentations of modern industrialists as elements in the proud story of England.
It was a claim to provincial identity and to national significance.
131
History could
provide legitimacy, by suggesting cohesion with the past rather than rupture.
Introduction
129
The phrase is associated with R. D. Putnam: see Bowling Alone:The Collapse and Revival of American
Community Life (New York, )
130
R. H. Trainor, Black Country Elites (Oxford, ); Meller, Leisure and the Changing City, ch. ;
R. H. Trainor, ‘The elite’, in Fraser and Maver, eds., Glasgow, , pp. , , .
131
C. Dellheim, The Face of the Past (Cambridge, ); see also M. Hardman, Ruskin and Bradford
(Manchester, ).
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