It is argued that both the tenacity of the neighbourhood and its adaptability were much greater than historians have tended to think, and that this was true not only during the ancien régime but also during the nineteenth century when the rate of mobility between towns and within towns reached enormous proportions. Demographic, social and cultural changes did not result in the destruction of the local community, but in its transformation, a transformation in which the growing need for reciprocity among working-class neighbours played a crucial role. The decline of more or less institutionalized forms of self-regulation went hand in hand with the construction by the lower classes of informal channels of social interaction based on local ties, which stimulated an active and participatory street life. Moreover, the tendency towards geographical segregation contributed to the development of a different collective sense of identity in working-class neighbourhoods, which added a new dimension to the concept of solidarity.

Increased demand for lead on both domestic and international markets spurred on technological and organizational innovation in Derbyshire's lead mining industry. Population expanded due to immigration into the mining areas, and problems of poverty and proletarianization were created as the traditional small producers were marginalized by new capitalized mineworkings owned by aristocrats, merchants and gentlemen. Social conflict intensified over the ownership of mining rights; in particular, this dispute revolved around popular and élite notions of property and legality. This conflict engendered new forms of popular resistance and provides evidence of a language of class in the seventeenth century. The eighteenth century saw the marginalization of the independent free miner, but memories of lost liberties conditioned the class consciousness of Derbyshire's new working class at the end of the century.