County

The East Fife Burghs (as they were usually called) were small fishing settlements strung over a distance of about six miles along the northern shore of the Firth of Forth at its widest point, in the East Neuk of Fife. Pittenweem, the most westerly, contained some ‘good houses’ in 1831, when its population was 1,317. It had a council of 24, who were nearly all residents. Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1895), v. 207-9; PP (1823), xv. 702; (1831-2), xlii. 75; (1836), xxiii.

‘This Wiltshire is a horrible county’, wrote William Cobbett† after passing through Cricklade in 1821: ‘fine fields and pastures all around, and yet the cultivators of those fields so miserable’.Cobbett’s Rural Rides ed. G.D.H. and M. Cole, i. 15. It was nominally divided into northern and southern districts by a line running to the south of Devizes.

Staffordshire was celebrated both for the production of earthenware (known as Staffordshireware) at its Potteries in the north-west, and for the manufacture of iron and hardware in the densely populated ‘black country’ around Walsall and Wolverhampton in the south; but the ‘greater part of it’ was ‘a highly cultivated agricultural district, abounding in wood, water and game’.PP (1833), xxxvii. 604; White’s Staffs. Dir.

Caernarvonshire was dominated by the mountains of Snowdonia (Eryri). The main industries were quarrying and mining for slate, lead and copper in the hills above the new town of Porthmadog, in the neighbourhoods of Bethesda, Dolwyddelan, Llanberis and Llanllechid, and at Llanrwst on the Denbighshire border, where the 1812 Enclosure Act had proved impossible to implement and had to be revised in 1821. For administrative purposes the county was divided into ten hundreds: Cymydmaen; Creuddyn; Dinllaen; Eifionydd; Gafflogion; Isaf; Is-Gwyrfai; Uwch-Gwyrfai; Nant Conwy and Uchaf.

Monmouthshire was a maritime county on the south-eastern edge of the South Wales iron and coalfields. Between 1821 and 1831 its population increased from 71,833 to 98,130, reflecting the continued industrialization of the Sirhowy valley and growth of the iron towns of Pontypool and Tredegar.

Hampshire retained its predominantly rural and agrarian character during this period. Between 1821 and 1831 its population rose by 14 per cent, but the proportion living in the main urban centres of Portsmouth, Southampton and Winchester, the county town and venue for the elections, remained virtually constant at just under a quarter. PP (1822), xv. 341; (1833), xxxvii. 24-25. Politically, it was notable among counties for the presence of a government interest which, according to the reformer Oldfield, was ‘so great as to supersede aristocracy itself’.

The freeholders of the marcher county of Hereford on the Welsh border had been polled three times between 1796 and 1818. Party organization was well developed and the squirearchy, who resented their exclusion from the representation of Leominster, expected their Members to be resident gentlemen of rank, committed to promoting the county’s agricultural and allied interests.

Kinross, on the western shore of Loch Leven, was the second smallest county in Scotland and united for judical purposes and as a sheriffdom with its neighbour Clackmannanshire. It had no royal burgh and Kinross and Milnathort were the only towns. It was affected between 1820 and 1832 by the enactment of the locally controversial 1827 and 1831 Leven (Fifeshire and Kinross) drainage bills and legislation for new roads and ferries linking North Queensferry with Perth and Dundee.Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1895), iv. 409, 410; LJ, lix. 431 lxi. 451; lxiii.

Devon became increasingly dependent on agriculture, pastoral farming and fishing during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as the industries for which it had previously been renowned went into terminal decline. In 1700 the manufacture of serges and other coarse woollen cloths had been widely distributed in the county and formed ‘the most important branch of England’s export trade in woollens’.

Wigtownshire was the western division of Galloway. It had several harbours, including Stranraer (on Loch Ryan in the north-west), Port Patrick (on the west coast) and Wigtown (on Wigtown Bay in the east). Stranraer and Wigtown were royal burghs, as was Whithorn; while Port Patrick was a burgh of barony, along with Glenluce and Newton Stewart.Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1895), vi.