THE DIVERSITY OF PORTS

ports were among the most dynamic towns during the commercial and Industrial Revolutions in Britain. They were also exceedingly diverse. By definition they were all boroughs or burghs with members of parliament, and councils controlling their domestic affairs. They enjoyed monopoly rights over foreign and most coastal trade. An English law of 1558 restricted trade to specified places and designated Legal Quays within them where all customable goods must be handled. There were approximately seventy-two English ports from 1696, when the customs service was reformed. In Scotland only designated royal and certain baronial burghs could trade overseas, and these were organised in thirteen precincts before the Union and approximately thirty ports thereafter. Although ports were separate entities, to some extent they competed with each other as part of the general or regional transportation system, but they shared characteristics that can be dealt with across the spectrum of places and activities.

By definition ports grew round a waterfront, preferably the mouth of a river linking them to a hinterland, or, less successfully, a stretch of seashore enclosed by a pier or piers and dependent on land carriage. Almost universally throughout northern Europe this waterfront was lined originally with private warehouses backing on to merchants’ houses facing the main street, maximising ground area while minimising expensive water frontage. There was usually a secondary centre round a market serving the local distribution network. In the eighteenth century the ground plan was elaborated in busy ports, with further streets for warehouses. However, the high cost of cartage and government failure to extend Legal Quays encouraged concentration round the waterside, raising land values and confirming the economic domination of those who owned it, with unfortunate effects for later developments.