Nottingham, the county town, was a notable centre of the expanding hosiery industry, especially in silk, cotton, bobbin-net and lace manufacturing, and benefited from several municipal improvements in the early nineteenth century. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1822-3), 330-1; S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of England (1844), iii.
The port of Wexford carried on a ‘considerable export trade in cattle and agricultural produce’, but its harbour, which vessels of over 200 tons could not enter without unloading part of their cargo, was in need of ‘much improvement’. Before 1830 the predominantly Catholic population was excluded from the self-elected corporation of two bailiffs, 22 burgesses (one of whom was annually elected mayor) and an unlimited number of freemen, the majority of whom were honorary and ‘unconnected with the town by property or commercial relations’.
The county town of Lancaster on the River Lune had been polled four times between 1790 and 1818. Its politics were influenced by attempts to restore its eighteenth-century prosperity and civic pride by reversing the decline of its port and staple industries of shipbuilding, cabinet making and sailcloth manufacture, following the loss to Liverpool in 1799 of its West India trade; and by the campaign to prevent the transfer of its assizes to Liverpool, Manchester or Preston.Hist. Lancaster ed. A.
Hull, ‘one of the principal seaports of the United Kingdom’, had a thriving fishing industry, was an important banking centre and boasted ‘some of the finest [wind]mills in the kingdom for grinding corn’.E. Baines, Yorks. Dir. (1823), ii. 227, 251. Its electoral corruption, the subject of a royal commission investigation in 1854, was described as ‘universal’ before the Reform Act by a contemporary historian, who recorded how
Through the acquiescence of the Bagge, Blencowe, Bowker, Everard and Hogge families - the interrelated merchant oligarchy of ship owners, shipbuilders, chandlers, coal dealers, bankers and brewers who dominated the corporation of 12 aldermen and 18 common councillors - the commercial town of King’s Lynn or Lynn Regis had been represented since 1790 by its long-established patrons, the Walpoles, earls of Orford, now anti-Catholic ministerialists, and the Foxite Whig Sir Martin Browne Ffolkes, who, in the right of his wife, represented the interest of the Turners of Warham.
Bletchingley, a former market town overlooking the South Downs, 11 miles from Croydon, in the east of the county, owed ‘almost its entire consequence’ by this period to the fact that it returned Members to Parliament. The borough covered only a small area (about 50 acres) of the parish. It was reported in 1831 that there had been no contested election in living memory and that no records survived, but it was thought there were ‘about 70’ burgage properties, conferring the right to vote.
New Romney was ‘an interesting, clean, and highly respectable ... town’, a mile inland from the west Kent coast, about ten miles east of Rye.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 410. Its harbour had long ago been swallowed by the encroaching sea, and it had no maritime trade. PP (1835), xxiii. 361. The borough remained, as it had been since 1761, under the control of the Dering family of Surrenden Dering, who owned estates at nearby Waldershare.
Hastings, the premier Cinque Port, was situated in the Bourne valley on the east Sussex coast. A thriving and expanding town with a mild climate, it had ‘long been in high repute as a watering place’ and was frequented by ‘numerous and fashionable visitors’. Neighbouring St. Leonards, to the west, was founded in 1828 but not developed until after 1832. Fishing and shipbuilding were the staple industries, but the most lucrative activity was smuggling.Pigot’s Commercial Dir (1823-4), 511; VCH Suss. ix.
Newark was a thriving market town on the Trent, 18 miles north-east of Nottingham and close to the border with Lincolnshire. Its staple industries of brewing and malting were supplemented in this period by recently introduced cotton manufacturing.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1822-3), 327; R. Vernon, Newark before Victoria, 42-45. The corporation consisted of a mayor (the returning officer) and 12 other aldermen, chosen by themselves from the inhabitants; there were no freemen.
A rare example of an open burgage borough, Chippenham finally lost its struggle for independence in this period and, on the eve of the Reform Act, fell under the control of a single proprietor. Sited on the Avon, in the parish and hundred of Chippenham, the town had a ‘neat and clean’ appearance, except for the shambles. There remained a few woollen, as well as small silk and cotton, manufactures, but the traditional cloth industry was greatly depressed.
