Bere Alston, a small village covering an area of some ten acres in the south-west of the county, relied for employment mainly on the neighbouring tin and silver-lead mines, but it was reported in 1831 that the male population had fallen from about 400 to 200 in the past decade as a result of mine closures. Ibid. (1831-2), xxxvi. 37; White’s Devon Dir.
Plympton Erle, a small stannery and market town situated in a valley close to the River Plym, about five miles north-east of Plymouth, consisted of ‘four small streets, with a few respectable dwellings in the suburbs’. Its trades, such as tanning, brewing, wool combing and hat making, had all died out by 1800 and the weekly market was in decline, leaving nothing to distinguish the town economically. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1830), 255; White’s Devon Dir. (1850), 552-4; J.B. Rowe, Hist. Plympton, 383-8; W.
Wendover, an ‘inconsiderable place’ with only a remnant of its lace-making industry in this period, was an unincorporated borough picturesquely situated at the entrance of the Vale of Aylesbury. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 158; (1830), 93; VCH Bucks. iii. 22-23. It was the largely docile pocket borough of Robert Smith†,1st Baron Carrington, head of the Nottingham and London banking family, whose Buckinghamshire seat at Wycombe Abbey lay ten miles to the south. Oldfield, Key (1820), 43; Key to Both Houses (1832), 414; R.W.
Arundel, a small market town situated on the River Arun in the south-west of the county, about four miles from the English Channel coast, was said in 1833 to be in an ‘average state of prosperity’. Its principal trade was in coal which, assisted by the recent canal link with Chichester, was ‘sent up the river to Guildford, Horsham and Petworth’. The corn and cattle markets were ‘tolerably well attended’, but there was ‘no manufacture of any kind’. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 494; PP (1835), xxiv.
Hythe, a decayed port, was ‘pleasantly situated’ on the Kent coast. It did ‘considerable business’ in corn and hops.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 397. After the turbulence of seven contested elections in 17 years the borough enjoyed a tranquil interlude until 1830. Once the preserve of local country gentlemen, it had fallen prey by 1812 to wealthy strangers from the London commercial world.
Lichfield, a cathedral city and county of itself, possessed ‘a large manufactory of carpets’, but was otherwise ‘not remarkable for its variety of manufactures’, although it carried on ‘an excellent local trade’ in agricultural produce. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1828-9), 714. The representation, which had not been contested since 1799, was jointly controlled by the Trentham interest of George Granville Leveson Gower†, 2nd marquess of Stafford, and the Shugborough interest, headed since 1818 by Thomas William, 2nd Viscount Anson.
Beaumaris, Anglesey’s county and assize town, was a seaport, resort and castellated borough situated at the northern entrance to the Menai Straits almost five miles east of Porthaethwy (later Menai Bridge) and three miles north across the Straits from Bangor in Caernarvonshire. Parl. Gazetteer of England and Wales (1844), i. 139. Its decaying port had lost trade to Amlwch and Holyhead, but neither could equal its 190 entries in Pigot’s National and Commercial Directory for 1828-9.
The coastal borough of Flint (Y Fflint) was increasingly overshadowed by its unfranchised industrial neighbour Holywell (Treffynnon, population c. 9,000) and shared its assizes and functions as a county town with Mold (Yr Wyddgrug), six-and-a-half miles to the south. Flint was the polling town and its annually elected bailiffs were the returning officers for a contributory boroughs constituency where the franchise was confined to the inhabitant ratepayers and no single interest prevailed. P.D.G. Thomas, Politics in 18th Cent.
Successive waves of industrial and commercial expansion, associated with West Indian slavery and the development of the corporation-owned docks, which sustained international, Irish and coastal trades, had made Liverpool, on the eastern shore of the Mersey, the premier entrepôt and canal terminus of the North-West, the second largest town and port in the country and an important cultural centre. S. Marriner, Economic and Social Development of Merseyside, 31-34; PP (1835), xxvi. 615; Liverpool Shipping, Trade and Industry ed. V. Burton, passim; C.W.
Poole, a county of itself, was a vibrant seaport on a narrow isthmus of land to the north of a large harbour. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1830), 288; Oldfield, Rep. Hist. (1816), iii. 352-3; PP (1831), xvi. 91; (1831-2), xxxviii. 143; J. Hutchins, Dorset, i (1861), 1-2. The naturalist Philip Henry Gosse, who grew up there, later recollected the typical scene on ‘the quay, with its shipping and sailors; their songs, and cries of "Heave with a will, yo ho!", the busy merchants bustling to and fro’. E.
