Whitchurch, ‘a small irregularly built town’ in ‘a low but pleasant situation’ under the chalk hills of north Hampshire, was located at a crossroads on the London to Salisbury road. For many years it served as the market town for the surrounding agricultural district, though by 1823 ‘scarcely anything’ was brought in on the appointed day. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 344; R.
In 1832 the boundary commissioners reported that Petersfield had ‘but little trade, and any consequence which it possesses arises entirely from its lying on the high road from London to Portsmouth, and from its returning at present two Members of Parliament’. Ibid. (1831-2), xl. 211-3. This privilege had for many years been monopolized by the family of Hylton Jolliffe of Merstham, Surrey, the borough’s patron since 1802.
Winchester, a ‘venerable and interesting’ cathedral city in the centre of Hampshire, stood ‘on the east declivity of a hill, gradually sloping to the River Itchen, navigable for barges’. Although it was the county town, it had been eclipsed by Southampton and Portsmouth in economic importance by the 1820s, when it was said to have ‘very little trade’. An attempt to establish a small silk manufacturing industry had apparently foundered by 1831. T.W. Wilks, Hist. Hants, i. 9; Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 345; (1830), 477; PP (1831-2), xxxviii.
I’ll sing you a song of a comical town
Though its boundary’s small yet great its renown.
For eating and drinking and voting well fam’d
And the place from its bridges has Stockbridge been named. Bodl. Clarendon dep. c.369, bdle. 5.
Christchurch, a market town close to the Dorset border, lay at the confluence of the Rivers Avon and Stour, but by the nineteenth century its natural harbour was too shallow to accommodate any but the smallest craft. In 1832 the boundary commissioners recorded that ‘the town presents no symptoms of activity or industry. The houses are of a middling description. The appearance of the inhabitants, who are thinly scattered, gives few indications of prosperity’. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 311; (1830), 412-7; PP (1831-2), xxxviii.
As a port on the south coast Lymington had long been eclipsed by Southampton, 20 miles to the north-east. The proximity of a military depot during the Napoleonic wars boosted its harbour trade, but hampered efforts to promote the town as a resort. D. Garrow, Hist. Lymington, 24-26, 30-31; Hants Telegraph, 16 July 1827. These endeavours began to bear fruit after 1830, aided by investment in new bathing facilities and a gas works.
Newtown, a pocket borough abolished by the 1832 Reform Act, lay at the head of a fine natural harbour on the north-west coast of the Isle of Wight, but by the mid-sixteenth century had fallen into decay as a port and settlement. A salt manufactory and oyster fishery operated nearby, but an 1830 directory noted that the place itself ‘scarcely deserves the name of a village’. VCH Hants, v. 265; Pigot’s Commercial Dir.
Portsmouth was styled the ‘key of England’ in a contemporary gazetteer, while Henry Alford, the future dean of Canterbury, referred to the port in 1829 as ‘the rendezvous of British naval preparation and strength’. He added:
Addressing the electors in 1826, Abel Rous Dottin recalled his first visit to Southampton some 30 years earlier, when
it was, compared with its present appearance, little better than a village. Now, it was one of the most elegant towns in England; its commerce had improved; it was brilliantly lit with gas ... Majestic steam vessels were seen floating on their beautiful river, magnificent baths were erecting [and] rows of elegant buildings were rising round the town and its vicinity. Southampton Herald, 12 June 1826.
