Commercially impoverished and reduced to ‘the ranks of a small and insignificant fishing town’ by repeated encroachments of the North Sea, Aldeburgh was the inspiration for its erstwhile Member Charles Arbuthnot’s* ‘Harmony in Uproar’ and the poetry of its freeman by birth George Crabbe.Suff. RO (Ipswich), J. Glude, ’Materials for Hist. Aldeburgh’, 165; H.P. Clodd, Aldeburgh, 69. It was becoming popular in the 1820s as a summer residence for ‘families of distinction’.
Athlone, located half in Westmeath and half in Roscommon on the Shannon, possessed ‘great advantages of water communication’, but its inland market had ‘gone into decay’ and it was ‘without any extensive manufactories’.
The unincorporated port and county town of Downpatrick, on the south bank of the River Quoil, was reckoned to be in a thriving condition and enjoyed several improvements in this period, including the provision of lighting.PP (1831-2), xliii. 41; (1835), xxviii. 353-6; S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), i.
Cardiff (Caerdydd), the county town of Glamorgan, was situated in the south- east of the county near the Monmouthshire border. It was the polling town and its annually elected bailiffs were the returning officers for Glamorgan’s second seat, an ill-defined constituency of eight boroughs, where no uniform franchise qualification applied and the residence required of electors had not been fully determined. The size of the electorate in the boroughs varied inversely according to their population and economic importance.
Downton, in the parish and hundred of the same name, near the Hampshire border, was ‘in appearance nothing more than a village’. It had a small lace factory and, according to Mrs. Arbuthnot, was ‘famous for phaetons’, but it was otherwise predominantly agricultural.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1830), 800; Arbuthnot Jnl. i. 419; VCH Wilts. iv. 180; xi. 41, 42, 44; PP (1833), xxxvii.
Bedford was a thriving and expanding market town and social centre, with a steady trade in corn, timber and coals by the River Ouse, and small manufactures of lace and straw plat.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1830), 11; PP (1831-2), xxxviii. 25; (1835), xxvi. 2123. The corporation consisted of a mayor, two bailiffs, an indefinite number of aldermen (that is, burgesses who had served as mayor, and totalling about 13 in this period) and 13 common councilmen.
The largest town in east Kent, the county borough of Canterbury, on the road from Dover to London, was a semi-urban community, in which hop farming had long since replaced silk weaving as the principal form of enterprise. As the city was the ecclesiastical centre of England, the Anglican establishment had an influence in local affairs, but the Dissenting interest was also strong, with the existence of several well- established chapels.
Kinsale, a market town at the mouth of the River Bandon, had a ‘capacious and secure harbour’ dealing ‘chiefly in the export of agricultural produce, and the import of timber ... and coal, iron and salt’.S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), ii.
Horsham, a market town in the west of the county several miles from the border with Surrey, consisted ‘principally of one long street, running east and west’. Its retail trade had declined when the army barracks were removed after the French wars and the town was described in 1831 as being ‘small and inconsiderable’, with ‘irregularly and poorly built’ houses. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 513; PP (1831-2), xl.
Exeter, a cathedral city and port, situated on the eastern bank of the Exe, about nine miles from the English Channel, had lost its position as a leading producer and exporter of serge and other coarse woollen cloths by the late eighteenth century. It continued to provide an outlet for woollen goods manufactured in Devon and served as the chief distribution centre for the general trade of the region. There was also ‘a large demand for the various articles manufactured in the city’, including iron, brass, leather, paper, beer and milled corn.
