Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Illustrations
- Note on Dates
- Preface
- INTRODUCTION
- 1 THE LOWTHERS: LANDOWNING-ENTREPRENEURS
- 2 COAL: MONOPOLY AND COMPETITION
- 3 COAL: THE STRUCTURE OF TRADE AND INDUSTRY
- 4 THE EXPANSION OF TRADE
- 5 THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDUSTRY
- 6 COMMUNICATIONS
- 7 CREATING NEW TOWNS: URBAN GROWTH
- CONCLUSION
- Appendix 1 The Lowther Family
- Appendix 2 Sir James Lowther's Investments
- APPENDIX 3 The Lowthers' Land Transactions
- Appendix 4 Colliery Figures
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Illustrations
- Note on Dates
- Preface
- INTRODUCTION
- 1 THE LOWTHERS: LANDOWNING-ENTREPRENEURS
- 2 COAL: MONOPOLY AND COMPETITION
- 3 COAL: THE STRUCTURE OF TRADE AND INDUSTRY
- 4 THE EXPANSION OF TRADE
- 5 THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDUSTRY
- 6 COMMUNICATIONS
- 7 CREATING NEW TOWNS: URBAN GROWTH
- CONCLUSION
- Appendix 1 The Lowther Family
- Appendix 2 Sir James Lowther's Investments
- APPENDIX 3 The Lowthers' Land Transactions
- Appendix 4 Colliery Figures
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The developments in industry and trade analysed in the foregoing chapters have illustrated the vital importance of good communications. Service centres such as Liverpool and Hull could only have grown in the way that they did because communications were improved. Economic development was inevitably hampered in regions poorly served by transport. North Wales, for example, made considerable progress until about 1760, but thereafter improvement was impeded as harbours silted up, and the lie of the land made canals and railways difficult to build. Similarly, Shropshire's iron industry suffered because the area was not linked to the main canal system before the mid-1830s.
The need to ensure that Cumbria had the best possible communications network was recognized in the region. Sir James Lowther was ‘mightily glad’ when he heard in 1744 of proposed plans to turnpike several of the local roads, because of the benefits that this would bring to trade. However, the nature of development in west Cumberland brought with it particular problems. Nationally, inland routes were normally improved at roughly the same time as harbour extensions took place; indeed, the pace of such developments quickened noticeably in the later seventeenth century, and was greater between 1695 and 1725 than at any comparable earlier period. In Cumbria the situation was atypical. Harbour extensions followed the national pattern, with Whitehaven, Workington and Parton all being extended, but it was not until the 1740s and 1750s that roads were improved. The position of Whitehaven was almost unique among major British outports.
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- Information
- Coal and TobaccoThe Lowthers and the Economic Development of West Cumberland, 1660–1760, pp. 156 - 178Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1981