Sussex was broadly divided into a northern strip, an extension of the Kentish Weald, which was ‘thickly wooded’ and yielded large quantities of timber, and the South Downs, a ‘range of green open hills’ which ‘afforded excellent pasture for sheep’ and was ‘in some parts ... fertile in corn’. Manufacturing was ‘neither various nor extensive’.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 494; (1832-4), 1002; VCH Suss. ii.
Inverness, the chief town of the Highlands, situated near the mouth of the River Ness, had a population (burgh and parish) of 12,264 in 1821 and 14,304 in 1831. A ‘very thriving place’, it had woollen, hemp and leather manufactures and a commodious harbour. The completion of the Caledonian Canal in October 1822 brought considerable commercial benefits to the town, which was provided with gas and water in this period.Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1895), iv. 301, 304, 307-9; Hist. Inverness (1847), 46, 48; N.S.
Rothesay, the chief town of Buteshire, was a port at the head of Rothesay Bay on the eastern side of the island, with a population of 4,107 in 1821. A cotton-spinning factory, established in 1779, supplemented fishing and boat building as sources of employment. Its council numbered 21, of whom all but two were resident.Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1895), v. 274, 276, 277; PP (1823), xv. 714; (1830-1), x.
Buteshire was a small, sparsely cultivated county, surrounded by the Firth of Clyde and consisting of the islands of Bute, Arran, Big and Little Cumbrae, Holy Isle, Inchmarnuck and Pladda. There were cotton mills at Rothesay (Bute), the only royal burgh.Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1895), i.
Although livestock farming and transport communications improved during this period, agricultural distress was endemic in Roscommon, and in 1829 Skeffington Gibbon wrote that in ‘Roscommon, of which I have a local knowledge, there is not in Europe a more poor and wretched peasantry’. The county was mostly populated by Catholics, who exercised a strong, if usually unspectacular, influence on the county’s representation; their cause was supported by the liberal Roscommon Journal, while its rival, the Roscommon and Leitrim Gazette, was a moderate Protestant newspaper. S.
Queen’s (later Laoighis) produced mainly wheat and barley. There were several market towns, including the disfranchised boroughs of Ballinakill and Maryborough, the venue for county elections, the post towns of Abbeyleix, Mountrath, Rathdowney and Stradbally, whose combined mills were capable of producing 12,000 barrels of flour a year, and the parliamentary borough of Portarlington, which lay partly in King’s County to the north.S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), ii.
Donegal was a windswept and infertile Ulster county, heavily dependent on flax production, linen manufactures and fisheries. Largely Protestant in character, it saw little unrest in this period, apart from the disturbances over the distillery laws at its beginning and during the tithe war a decade later, but the revival of Orangeism in the late 1820s created greater sectarian tension. The usually uncontested elections took place at Lifford, which, like the boroughs of Ballyshannon, Donegal, Killybegs and St. Johnstown, had been disfranchised at the Union.S. Lewis, Top. Dict.
Sligo was ‘one of the most independent Protestant counties in Ireland’. Roscommon and Leitrim Gazette, 17 June 1826. It produced mainly potatoes and oats and had an ‘extensive’ but declining linen industry. There were several market towns, including Ballymote, Collooney, Coolaney, Dromore and the parliamentary borough of Sligo, the venue for county elections and an important fishery. S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), ii.
Wexford had a thriving fishing industry and was heavily agricultural, producing mainly barley for export. There were several market towns, including the disfranchised boroughs of Bannow, Clonmines, Enniscorthy, Fethard, Gorey, and Taghmon, the parliamentary boroughs of New Ross and Wexford, the venue for the county elections, and Newtownbarry.S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), ii.
