Commons 1820-1832

Southwark was a populous business and residential district situated on the south bank of the River Thames, opposite the City of London, in the east of the county. It was notable for its large number of breweries, and other industries included glass making, pottery, printing, hat making, distilling and timber cutting. E.W. Brayley and E. Walford, Surr. iv. 387-8; VCH Surr. iv. 125. The borough encompassed the whole of the parishes of St. George the Martyr, St. John, St. Olave and St. Thomas, and part of St. Saviour, excluding the liberty of the Clink.

East Looe was a small port in the south-east of the county, romantically situated on the east side of Looe Bay and connected to West Looe by a bridge over the River Looe. It was a centre of the pilchard fishing industry and had a small trade in coal, limestone, iron and timber. The streets were said in 1824 to be ‘narrow, irregular and in general dirty’, and many of the houses exhibited ‘marks of decay and age’. Nevertheless, the town was becoming increasingly popular as ‘a bathing place, or situation for invalids, or for parties of pleasure’.

Newport, the chief market town and capital of the Isle of Wight, was located close to the centre of the island on the Medina, which was navigable for small craft. Its chief trade was the export of timber and grain, but there was also a lace factory, employing ‘600 or 700 hands’. For many years a ‘fashionable resort’, a report of 1824 described it as a ‘charming little town’ and cited the sale of land for building purposes as an illustration of its prosperity, but a reduction of the military presence at the nearby barracks the following year was ‘severely felt’.

The pocket borough of Yarmouth, an obsolete port close to the western extremity of the Isle of Wight, was described in 1823 as

a neat little market town, standing on a bank sloping to the sea, in a healthy situation, with pleasant views of the Channel ... [but] much diminished from its ancient consequence. Its many narrow streets, destitute of buildings, clearly point to its former enlarged site.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 348.

Beverley, the administrative and social centre of the East Riding, noted for its splendid minster, was a prosperous and ‘most respectable’ market town nine miles north of Hull, to which it was connected by road and a navigable canal creek. It had ‘no manufactures’ of significance, but the presence of four linen manufactories, a paint making business and an iron foundry presaged its slow development as a minor industrial town from the mid-1830s. There was also some small-scale boat and ship building.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1822-3), pp. 592, 593; PP (1831-2), xl.

New Radnor (Maesyfed), situated 30 miles north north-east of Brecon, was the old county town of Radnorshire, probably its only chartered borough, and the polling town of the contributory boroughs constituency to which it gave its name. It comprised ten scattered hamlets and extended, in a five-mile radius from the castle, over a fifth of the county’s 272,128 acres. Parl. Gazetteer of England and Wales (1844), iv.

Haverfordwest, the normal venue for Pembrokeshire assizes and county meetings and the centre of hospitality at shire elections, was an incorporated town and a county in its own right that had developed around a Norman castle overlooking the Western Cleddau, eight miles north-north-east of Milford and ten miles north-east of the old county town of Pembroke. Parl. Gazetteer of England and Wales (1844), ii. 286; Samuel Lewis’s Topographical Dict. of Wales (unpaginated); R. Lewis, ‘Towns of Pemb. 1815-74’, Pemb. Co. Hist. ed. D. Howell, iv.

Pembroke, an integral part of the earldom of Pembroke comprising the parishes of St. Mary and St. Michael, was a chartered castellated borough, trading centre and old county town situated on the south side of the Cleddau estuary (Milford Creek), ten miles south-east of Haverfordwest and 13 by road and ferry from Milford. Its decline had been arrested in 1814 by the removal of the naval dockyard from Milford to Pater (Pembroke Dock). It was the polling town and its nominally elected mayor and bailiffs were the returning officers and assessors for the constituency.