The extensive and populous county of Galway was one of the poorest and most agriculturally backward in the country. East of Lough Corrib, which divided it into two contrasting halves, the mainly productive ground provided reasonable returns on the small estates of the gentry, but its western half formed the inaccessible and lawless region of mountain and bog known as Connemara, which was largely dependent on its maritime resources.
Ayrshire was divided by rivers into three districts, the ‘bleak and moorish’ Carrick in the south, and the ‘predominantly lowland’ Kyle and Cunninghame in the centre and north. Agriculture in Kyle and Cunninghame had undergone ‘vast improvement’ since the 1780s and dairy farming was widespread; sheep were raised in Carrick. There were extensive coal deposits in the lowland areas, and Ayrshire became second in importance only to Lanarkshire for mining in Scotland.
North Berwick was a small castellated town and port on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth, 22 miles north-east of Edinburgh. It had no guildry or incorporated crafts and was dominated by the largest proprietors, the Hamilton Dalrymples, who in the 1820s spent over £700 on improving the harbour. Its population was 1,694 in 1821 and 1,824 in 1831 and it had a council of 12.PP (1831-2), xlii. 211; (1836), xxiii.
Kirkcudbright Stewartry was the eastern portion of Galloway. In its improving agriculture the raising of cattle was a speciality. It contained the royal burghs of Kirkcudbright, on the Dee estuary, and New Galloway, inland on the Water of Ken. The other principal settlements were Castle Douglas, Creetown, Dalbeattie, Gatehouse and Maxwelltown, which was separated from the burgh of Dumfries by the River Nith, the Stewartry’s eastern border.Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1895), iv.
Sutherland exhibited a mainly ‘desolate’ landscape of mountain, moorland, lochs and peat bogs. Sheep rearing was the ‘staple business’, having been reinforced by the notorious policy pursued in the early nineteenth century by the principal landowner, Elizabeth, countess of Sutherland, and her husband, George Leveson Gower†, 2nd marquess of Stafford, of removing the crofters to the coasts. It was stated in 1831 that 180,000 fleeces and 40,000 animals for meat were being exported annually.
Dornoch, the county town of Sutherland, situated on the south-east coast near the Dornoch Firth, was ‘extremely insignificant in every particular’, being ‘literally a village, consisting of a church, a gaol and a very few houses, without trade or manufactures of any kind’. There was no harbour, as the estuary was too shallow. Its population declined from 630 in 1821 to 504 in 1831, and its council numbered 15, of whom eight had no property in the burgh.Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1895), ii. 362, 363; PP (1823), xv. 690; (1831-2), xlii. 48, 49; (1835), xxix.
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.
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.
Somerset was a predominantly agricultural and pastoral county, with a maritime border on the Bristol Channel. In addition to corn growing and the fattening of livestock it was noted for cider production, which was concentrated mainly in the vale of Taunton Deane. There was a considerable number of small market towns, and the southern and eastern parts of the county contained several of the more important centres of textile manufacturing, including the unfranchised towns of Chard, Crewkerne, Frome, Glastonbury, Shepton Mallet and Wivesliscombe.Robson’s Som. Dir.
