Commons 1820-1832

East Retford, a thriving and genteel market town in the hundred of Bassetlaw, on the border with Yorkshire, boasted hat and sailcloth manufacturing, but had been superseded by Worksop in the barley trade. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1822-3), 344; S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of England (1844), iii. 632; J.S.

Carlow had a considerable trade in grain along the River Barrow to Waterford and the River Slaney to Wexford and possessed ‘habitations of the peasantry’ which were ‘of a far better description than in many other parts of the country’.S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), i.

Dunfermline, the largest of these burghs and the burial place of Robert the Bruce, was in south-west Fifeshire, five miles from the northern shore of the Firth of Forth. A thriving and busy place, it had a population (burgh and parish) of 13,681 in 1821 and 17,068 in 1831. Its staple industry was the manufacture of fine linen goods, especially table linen. This was done mostly on hand-looms, but there were six steam powered spinning mills in operation by 1831. It also contained four breweries, four tobacco factories and an iron foundry.

Tewkesbury, a ‘very handsome and improving’ market town situated in the Vale of Gloucester, on the eastern bank of the Upper Avon near its confluence with the Severn, had been a major cloth manufacturing centre in the sixteenth century. By the early nineteenth century this trade had ‘long since been lost’ and framework stocking knitting was now ‘the chief industry of the town’, employing a quarter of the population in 1830.

A small seaport and market town situated on the Bristol Channel, and surrounded inland by valleys ‘rich in pasture and agriculture’, Minehead consisted of ‘several irregular streets, ill-built’. In the eighteenth century it had been the centre of ‘an extensive foreign trade’ with America, the West Indies and the Mediterranean, but this had dwindled to insignificance and there remained only a dozen or so vessels chiefly engaged in coastal trade. There was also a small herring fishery. Woollen manufacturing, formerly the other major source of prosperity, had virtually disappeared.

In the Border county of Roxburghshire, which had last polled in 1812, the county town and only royal burgh Jedburgh, a contributory of the Haddington group, vied increasingly for local prominence with the growing textile towns of Hawick and Kelso.Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1895), v. 281, 282, 284. The leading interests were those of the largest landowners, the Whig dukes of Roxburghe of Floors Castle, near Kelso, and the Tory dukes of Buccleuch of Branxholme.

Bossiney, a former fishing port situated on the north-eastern coast of the county, had dwindled into a village of ‘the most insignificant description’, containing ‘a few straggling houses’ which were occupied mostly by farmers. Its market had ‘long been discontinued’ and the surrounding countryside was ‘so bleak and rugged as to exhibit a complete picture of devastation’. S. Drew, Hist. Cornw. (1824), i. 644; Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1830), 136-7; Parochial Hist. Cornw. iv. 231, 235-6; PP (1835), xxiii.

Newport, a small town in the east of the county, stood ‘in the suburbs of Launceston’, from which it was separated by a ‘narrow rivulet’, with an ‘ancient bridge’ connecting the streets on either side. S. Drew, Hist. Cornw. (1824), i. 646-7; Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1830), 147; Parochial Hist. Cornw. iv. 168-9; PP (1831-2), xxxviii. 69. The borough was contained within but comprised only part of the parish of St.

The city of Kilkenny, which with Irishtown was a county of itself, had a declining woollen industry and rising unemployment. For many years the representation had been dominated by the Cuffes of Desart Court, earls of Desart, and the Butlers of Kilkenny Castle, earls of Ormonde, who were joint patrons of the self-elected corporation of 18 aldermen (one of whom was annually elected mayor) and 36 common councilmen.