Borough

A small seaport and market town situated on the Bristol Channel, and surrounded inland by valleys ‘rich in pasture and agriculture’, Minehead consisted of ‘several irregular streets, ill-built’. In the eighteenth century it had been the centre of ‘an extensive foreign trade’ with America, the West Indies and the Mediterranean, but this had dwindled to insignificance and there remained only a dozen or so vessels chiefly engaged in coastal trade. There was also a small herring fishery. Woollen manufacturing, formerly the other major source of prosperity, had virtually disappeared.

Bossiney, a former fishing port situated on the north-eastern coast of the county, had dwindled into a village of ‘the most insignificant description’, containing ‘a few straggling houses’ which were occupied mostly by farmers. Its market had ‘long been discontinued’ and the surrounding countryside was ‘so bleak and rugged as to exhibit a complete picture of devastation’. S. Drew, Hist. Cornw. (1824), i. 644; Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1830), 136-7; Parochial Hist. Cornw. iv. 231, 235-6; PP (1835), xxiii.

Newport, a small town in the east of the county, stood ‘in the suburbs of Launceston’, from which it was separated by a ‘narrow rivulet’, with an ‘ancient bridge’ connecting the streets on either side. S. Drew, Hist. Cornw. (1824), i. 646-7; Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1830), 147; Parochial Hist. Cornw. iv. 168-9; PP (1831-2), xxxviii. 69. The borough was contained within but comprised only part of the parish of St.

The city of Kilkenny, which with Irishtown was a county of itself, had a declining woollen industry and rising unemployment. For many years the representation had been dominated by the Cuffes of Desart Court, earls of Desart, and the Butlers of Kilkenny Castle, earls of Ormonde, who were joint patrons of the self-elected corporation of 18 aldermen (one of whom was annually elected mayor) and 36 common councilmen.

New Ross, a port suitable for 1,000-ton vessels lying on a navigable stretch of the Barrow, carried on ‘a considerable export trade in agricultural produce’ brought in from its ‘fertile and productive interior’. The municipal corporations commissioners reported that the ‘utmost dissatisfaction and suspicion’ existed towards its self-elected Protestant corporation of two bailiffs, an unlimited number of burgesses (one of whom was annually elected sovereign) and ‘freemen admitted solely by special favour’.

As a port on the south coast Lymington had long been eclipsed by Southampton, 20 miles to the north-east. The proximity of a military depot during the Napoleonic wars boosted its harbour trade, but hampered efforts to promote the town as a resort. D. Garrow, Hist. Lymington, 24-26, 30-31; Hants Telegraph, 16 July 1827. These endeavours began to bear fruit after 1830, aided by investment in new bathing facilities and a gas works.

The Castle, in its capacity as a royal residence and centre for the Court, was central to Windsor life, and was the principal factor in the continued growth and prosperity of what was essentially a small and backward market town, with no significant industry other than brewing. Charles Knight, editor of the liberal Windsor and Eton Express until 1826, recalled that on the death of Queen Charlotte in 1818, when the Castle household was largely broken up, the Court ‘ceased to have any moral influence at Windsor. We had become as most other country towns’.

Lostwithiel, a ‘small market town’ of ‘great antiquity’, was situated in a valley at the head of the estuary of the tidal River Fowey, on the Plymouth to Truro road in the south of the county, six miles from Bodmin. It consisted of ‘three principal streets’, which were said in 1824 to be ‘narrow and roughly paved’, although many of the houses displayed ‘no contemptible degree of elegance’. The local economy was ‘thriving and ...

Ilchester, a small market town situated on ‘a flat luxuriant soil’ on the south bank of the River Ivel (or Yeo), had been an important fortified settlement in Roman and medieval times, and still laid claim to being the county town. Since the seventeenth century, however, its economy had been in decline, and by 1830 it was described as ‘an inconsiderable town ... mean in appearance’. There was a large ‘rural district in the parish beyond the town’, and the latter occupied only 35 of the 735 acres.

The ‘small town, port and ancient borough’ of Orford was an ecclesiastical chapelry of the parish of Sudbourne, situated on the River Alde, where, since 1810, its patron, Francis Ingram Seymour Conway†, 2nd marquess of Hertford, had successfully introduced oyster dredging to arrest a decline in population. W. White, Suff. Dir. (1844), 165, 166; PP (1835), xxvi.