Urban Britain

Abstract

Although the census of 1851 had for the first time recorded over half of the population living in towns, as yet the population of the countryside had fallen only proportionately, with an absolute decline so far confined to Wiltshire and Montgomeryshire. By 1870 this had changed, and rural depopulation had started with a vengeance: between 1871 and 1881, nine rural counties in England had a falling population.¹ The formation of new towns was virtually over by 1870, and continued urban growth came not by the sudden appearance of upstarts so much as by the increasing dominance of the largest of the existing towns. Suburbs sprang up around these towns, and conurbations — a word coined by Patrick Geddes for a new phenomenon — emerged which linked together settlements in continuous built-up areas ofGreater London and ‘Midlandton’ or Tyne—Wear—Tees. Adna Weber, in his The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century which appeared in 1899, showed that London had increased its share of the population of England and Wales from 9.7 per cent in 1801 to 14.3 per cent in 1871 and 14.5 per cent in 1891; even more striking was the increase in the other ‘great cities’ with a population over 100,000, which rose from nothing in 1801 to 11.5 per cent in 1871 and 17.3 per cent in 1891. In Scotland, the same trend was apparent, and the population of Glasgow rose from 5.1 per cent of the population of Scotland in 1801 to 19.4 per cent in 1891.²