0310B

The land was expected to feed a population that, after a period of stagnation, had been rapidly growing for over fifty years. The population of England and Wales rose from 6.2 million in 1751 to 8.61 in 1801. The average age of women at first marriage fell from the 1730s to the 1830s, a factor that helps to account for the rise in fertility. Infant mortality rates dropped in the second half of the 18th century, while death in childbirth fell throughout the century, and adult death rates had decreased particularly during the first half.
Most of this growing population lived in the towns. The most important by far was London. In 1700, it had more than half-a-million people and in 1800 more than a million, making it the most populous European city and over ten times larger than the second city in England. As a result, notions of urban life were established by the capital. Through its central role in the world of print, London shaped news, opinion and fashion. It was the centre of finance and government, law and trade. The West End of London established the �classical� style of Georgian town building. London helped promote the interaction of middle-class and aristocratic thinking and values, and also to secure the influence of commercial considerations upon national policy. Furthermore, it helped to mould a national economic space, although specialisation for the London market was accompanied by the persistence of more local economic patterns.
Other towns also expanded. In 1700, there were only five English towns with more than 10,000 inhabitants: Norwich, Bristol, Newcastle, Exeter and York. By 1800, the number (twenty-seven) included important industrial and commercial centres in the North and Midlands, such as Birmingham, Bolton, Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield, Stoke, Sunderland and Wolverhampton. Other industrial and commercial towns also grew. Thus, in south-west England, the ports of Plymouth and Falmouth became far more important.
Although there was much poverty and misery in towns, urban economics were helped by the growing commercialisation of life and by the rise of professions such as law and medicine. New covered markets and shops were opened, as were banks and insurance offices. In a world of 'things', where greater numbers could afford to purchase objects and services of utility and pleasure, towns played a central function as providers of services as much as of commercial and industrial facilities. Theatres, assembly rooms, subscription libraries and shops all provided services to townspeople and to the nearby rural populations and helped bring renewed cultural activity to provincial centres.
Towns were also the nodes of a transport system that had improved greatly with the construction of turnpike roads. By 1770, there were 15,000 miles of turnpike roads in England and most of the country was within 12.5 miles of one. The efficiency of the road system was also improved by bridge-building. In London, Westminster Bridge built in 1750 was followed by new bridges across the Thames at Blackfriars (1769), Vauxhall (1816), Waterloo (1817) and Southwark (1819). The iron Wear Bridge, built by Rowland Burdon in 1796, was the first bridge in Sunderland and was regarded as a great achievement of the age.
Travel was also made faster and more predictable by the development of stagecoach services, the replacement of leather straps by steel coach springs, and the cross-breeding of fast Arab horses. The time of a journey from Manchester to London (190 miles) fell from three days in 1760 to twenty-eight hours in 1788. By 1783, there were twenty-five coach departures a week from Norwich to London, as well as two departures of stage wagons. Road transport of freight improved due to the introduction in the 1760s of flywagons; thanks to changing teams of horses, these could travel day and night, covering forty miles every twenty-four hours.
Speed was less important for the coal moved by the new canals developed from the 1750s, which cut the cost of transporting bulk goods. By 1790, when the Forth-Clyde Canal was finished, the industrial areas of the Midlands were linked to the Trent, Mersey, Severn and Thames. This was not new technology, but the rate of canal construction reflected demand from a rapidly burgeoning economy as well as the availability of investment and a sense that change was attainable and could be profitably directed.
The British also led the way with the technology and practice of rail transport. Wagonways had existed for many years, with horses drawing wagons along rails, especially from collieries to the coal-loading staithes (a waterside coal landing facility) on the Tyne and Wear. The Surrey Iron Railway Company, the world's first railway company and public railway, operated between Wandsworth and Croydon from 1803. Self-propelled steam locomotives changed the situation, not least by making long-distance movement possible. In 1804, Roger Hopkins built a tramroad between Pen-y-darren and Abercynon in South Wales upon which Richard Trevithick tried the first steam railway locomotive engine, essentially a mobile beam engine.
Locomotive technology achieved a breakthrough in the 1820s. The development of the locomotive from the stationary steam-engine provided the technology for the rail revolution, and industrialisation supplied the necessary demand, capital and skills. George Stephenson opened the Hetton Railway in 1822, and the more famous Stockton and Darlington Railway followed in 1825.
The sense that change could be created was crucial to what is termed the Industrial Revolution: a belief in its possibility and profitability fired growth. This was a case not only of an important increase in the scale of activity, but also of changes in the nature of the economy, society and culture. The role of industry as a source of wealth and employment rose. Industrialisation contributed powerfully to a culture of improvement, a conviction that modern achievements were superior to those of former times, and an at times heroic exultation of the new world of production, seen in paintings of industrial scenes such as de Loutherbourg's 'Coalbrookdale by Night'.

Coal and steam power were increasingly important. Coal was a readily transportable and controllable fuel and was plentifully available in many areas. It replaced wood, which, with its greater bulk for calorific value and less readily controllable heat, was a poor basis for many industrial processes. Coal also freed the economy from its earlier energy constraints, reducing costs and increasing the availability of heat energy. Coal production rose from about 3 million tons in 1700 to 15 million by 1800, with the rate of growth accelerating from mid-century. Combined with the application of steam power to coal mining, blast furnaces, and the new rolling and slitting mills, this led to a new geography of economic activity. Industry was increasingly attracted to the coalfields, especially to north-cast England, south Wales, south Lancashire and south Staffordshire. James Watt's improvements to the steam engine made it more energy efficient and flexible. In the 1790s, developments in metallurgy made it easier to produce malleable iron. Henry Cort's method of puddling (a method of stirring molten iron to produce wrought iron by expelling carbon) and rolling, invented in 1784, but not adopted until the 1790s, produced malleable iron with coal more cheaply than the charcoal forge and refinery. War encouraged the development of iron production. The largest town in Wales in 1801, Merthyr Tydfil, was the leading centre of iron production in the world. Other industries such as textiles also benefited greatly from technical developments which increased productivity and created a sense of ongoing improvement.
More in Part C....