Borough

<p>A small inland town pleasantly situated in ‘good wheat country’ on the fertile northern bank of the river Blackwater, Mallow, by the late eighteenth century, was ‘probably the most famous spa town in Ireland.’ Once much resorted to for its clear spring, it had since become unfashionable, having lost out to domestic and English competition.<fn>E. Johnston-Liik, <em>History of the Irish Parliament 1692-1800</em>, ii (2002), 211; H. Heany, <em>A Scottish Whig in Ireland 1835-1838. The Irish Journals of Robert Graham of Redgorton</em> (1999), 129-30.

<p><strong>Economic and social profile</strong>:</p><p>Stafford was ‘pleasantly situated near the centre of the county’, on the north bank of the river Sow.<fn>W.

<p><strong>Economic and social profile:</strong></p><p>The ‘unrivalled capital of the newly industrialised Black Country’, the economic region of Worcestershire and Staffordshire rich in iron and coal, Wolverhampton contained a ‘great variety of sooty manufactories’, but as an observer noted in 1834, nevertheless remained ‘very salutary and picturesque’.<fn>J. Lawrence, ‘Party politics and the people: continuity and change in the political history of Wolverhampton, 1815-1914’, Univ. of Cambridge Ph. D. thesis (1989), p.