Borough

A market town and seaport situated on the banks of the tidal River Parrett, in a plain of ‘very rich and productive’ agricultural land, Bridgwater was described in 1822 as ‘large, populous [and] flourishing ... a place of extensive trade [and] a great thoroughfare’. The Parrett divided the town into two, the western part being ‘larger and better built’ than the eastern, known as Eastover. Bridgwater’s role as an important distribution centre for the South West of England was boosted by the opening of the link, via Taunton, with the Grand Western Canal in 1827.

Wycombe, the ‘handsomest’ town in Buckinghamshire, was situated in the south of the county, 29 miles from London on one of the main roads to the west. It had some cotton lace manufacturing, but was notably a centre of paper making, with several mills operating in and around it. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 159-60; (1830), 95-96. Dissent was well established, and the Quaker families of Edmonds, Lucas, Wheeler and others were prominent. R.W.

The cathedral city of Waterford, a county of itself situated on the navigable River Suir about 16 miles from the sea, could accommodate ships of ‘very large burden’, enabling it to export more agricultural produce than any other Irish port, mainly to England. S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), i.

A small, impoverished town in Amesbury hundred, Ludgershall was ‘in appearance a mere village’ and had ‘nothing but its situation, which is truly delightful, to excite the attention of the stranger’.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1830), 803; Devizes Gazette, 8 Apr. 1830; PP (1833), xxxvii. 690, 691. On a visit in 1826, William Cobbett† wrote that it

Barnstaple, a seaport and market town situated at the head of the Taw estuary, had been an important distribution centre since medieval times. By the early nineteenth century it depended on a ‘steady ... perhaps not very lucrative’ coastal trade, involving corn, leather and other materials drawn from ‘an extensive and improving’ hinterland, though there was some revival of overseas trade after bonded warehouses were established in 1822. The woollen industry was in decline, but lace manufacturing had recently been introduced and many people were employed in malting and shipbuilding.

Callington, a nondescript market town in the south-east of the county, seven miles from Liskeard, consisted of ‘one broad street’ with ‘sadly neglected’ buildings. It served as a trading centre for arable and livestock farmers from ‘a wide area’, and a Pannier market was built in 1832 as the old corn market and shambles were ‘in such a dangerous state’. By 1820 yarn production had ‘almost disappeared’ from the town, but some of the inhabitants were still occupied as wool merchants and wool combers and others were employed in the nearby tin mines. Pigot’s Commercial Dir.

East Grinstead, a small market town in the east of the county close to the border with Surrey, was said in 1823 to possess ‘no considerable trade’, what there was being ‘chiefly domestic’. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 510. According to the commissioners’ report in 1831 the borough boundary was ‘entirely unknown’, but ‘certainly not coextensive with the parish or with the town division of the parish’; it was thought ‘probable’ that it did not extend beyond the town in any direction except to the north.

Leicester, the county town, was a centre of cotton and worsted stocking manufacture: in 1831 it contained about 7,000 knitting frames giving employment to some 1,200 persons, but the trade was in general decline in this period, which was marked by severe spells of distress among the framework knitters.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1822-3), 212-13; VCH Leics. iv.

After the turbulence, intrigue and corruption of the period 1784-1812 Seaford, an insignificant resort on the Sussex coast, 13 miles east of Brighton, was comparatively though not entirely tranquil.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1832-4), 1049. From 1812 at least one seat was under the control of Charles Rose Ellis, a wealthy Jamaican plantation owner and the close friend of George Canning. Ellis, who had sat for Seaford on the now defunct Pelham interest, 1796-1806, purchased assorted properties in the borough over a period of years. J.A.

Okehampton, a small market town situated in the valley of the River Oke, close to the northern edge of Dartmoor, had been a ‘great centre’ for the manufacture of serges and other coarse woollens, but this had declined by the 1790s. Many of the inhabitants were engaged in agriculture, particularly sheep farming, and the town’s economy was otherwise ‘dependent on its markets and fairs’.