Harwich, a seaport on the north-eastern extremity of the Essex coast, contained a naval yard, was the base for government ships sailing to Holland and Germany and by the end of this period had become a popular bathing resort; but it was thought to be in ‘a declining state’ economically. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), app. p. 296; PP (1835), xxvi. 2276. It was a corporation borough controlled by the treasury, whose command had been restored in 1807 after a brief bid by some of the 32 electors to assert their independence.

Bodmin, a market town situated ‘along the bottom and some way up the sides of a deep valley’, almost in the centre of the county, consisted ‘principally of one street, running from east to west ... nearly a mile in length’. It was the trading centre for ‘an extensive agricultural district’, which included ‘exceedingly good grazing land’, and was for many purposes the county town. However, in 1824 there were said to be ‘many marks of desolation’ in ‘the western districts’, and the streets in the centre were ‘dangerously narrow’.

Lincoln, a Roman settlement, was a cathedral city and county of itself, centrally situated in the west of Lincolnshire on a hill rising from the River Witham. It was essentially an agricultural centre, with no ‘fixed manufacture’, but had a busy trade in corn, wool and coal.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1822-3), 253-7; Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1828-9), 538. See Sir. J. Hill, Georgian Lincoln, ch.

Gloucestershire, a mixed agricultural, pastoral and industrial county straddling the River Severn, was broadly divided into three areas running parallel from north-east to south-west. To the east lay the Cotswold hills, where sheep farming supplied the raw material for cloth manufacturing in the unfranchised town of Stroud and a cluster of smaller settlements, including Dursley, Minchinhampton, Nailsworth, Painswick, Rodborough, Stonehouse and Wotton-under-Edge.

Sligo, the ‘first trading port’ in the province of Connaught, had a thriving business in the export of grain and butter and also employed a ‘few linen and stocking weavers’, but its streets were ‘badly paved’ and of a ‘neglected appearance’.

Steyning, a ‘neat’ market town several miles north-west of Brighton, was said in 1823 to have ‘no manufactory of any description’ and trade ‘entirely of a domestic nature’. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 522. The borough covered only a small part, about 20 acres, of the parish, which extended over some 3,100 acres. The franchise was in the resident ratepayers and it was reported in 1831 that, in addition to the 118 eligible voters, there were ‘about 16 borough houses which have the right of voting, at present occupied by paupers’.

Cockermouth, the birthplace of the poet William Wordsworth and Cumberland’s election town, lay in the parish of Brigham at the confluence of the Rivers Cocker and Derwent, eight miles east of Workington and 25 south-west of Carlisle, with which it shared the quarter sessions. Dominated by its ruined castle, its boundaries were co-extensive with those of the ancient barony of Allerdale. The main employment was in weaving shops or factories and tanneries, and Quakers and Independents had been influential locally since the early eighteenth century. Parl.

St. Germans, an ‘inconsiderable town’ with ‘no claims to notice but its antiquity’, was situated on the side of a valley next to a creek, on the south-eastern coast of the county. Most of the inhabitants were fishermen, the houses were said in 1824 to be ‘continually decreasing’ in number and the weekly market was merely ‘nominal’. S. Drew, Hist. Cornw. (1824), i. 651-2; ii. 278-84; Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1830), 163; Parochial Hist. Cornw. ii.

Cirencester, a market town situated ‘on the borders of the Cotswold country’ and ‘intersected by branches of the River ... Churn’, had been a major fortified settlement in Roman times. By the early nineteenth century it had lost its prominent position as a centre of the wool trade, while wool combing and cloth making were in decline and the carpet and edge tool manufactories were soon to be supplanted by those of the West Midlands.

Dartmouth, a seaport and market town situated on a ‘steep hillside rising from the west bank of the Dart estuary’, about one mile from the English Channel, had prospered for several centuries thanks to its ‘capacious’ natural harbour. However, the damage inflicted by wars on the Newfoundland fishing fleet and the Portuguese wine trade, and the decline of the woollen textile industry in Devon, meant that Dartmouth’s economy was stagnant by the early nineteenth century and depended heavily on its coastal trade; even this had ‘lately been diminished by the rivalry of neighbouring ports’.