THE SOCIAL AI\JD ECONOMIC HISTORY OF BANBURY BETWEEN 1830 Ai\iD 1880 Barrie Stuart Trinder Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Leicester, 1980. UMI Number: U314466 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Disscrrlation Publishing UMI U314466 Published by ProQuest LLC 2015. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 CUNTENTS ii Acknowledgements iii Illustrations iv Abbreviations v 1. A Mature Market Town. 1 2. Civic Pride and Parochial Squalor: Banbury and Neithrop 1830-50. 20 3. The Local Economy before the Railways. 39 4. Two Distinct Camps: the Churches in Banbury 1830-51. 84 5. The Politics of Reform, 1830-50. 109 6. A Habit of Spontaneous Action. 153 7. A Market Town during the Great Victorian Boom. 181 8. Public Authority and Private Enterprise 1830-80. 219 9. Names, Sects and Parties: the Churches in Banbury 1849-80. 250 10. A Borough of Great Independence of Action, 1850-68. 269 11. A Market Town Culture. 306 12. Going Downhill: Market Town Society in the 1870s. 339 13. Reconsiderations. 346 Statistical Tables. j>60 Bibliography. 373 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii I am most grateful for the help and encouragement I have received over many years from the Banbury Historical Society, and in particular from Jeremy Gibson, who kindly loaned me a family heirloom without which it would have been much more difficult to work on the history of an Oxfordshire town while living in Shropshire. I wish also to record my thanks to my employers, the Shropshire County Council for their assistance. Like all historians I am deeply indebted to many librarians and archivists, and in particular to the staff of the Bodleian Library, the Oxfordshire and Northampton/Record Offices, the Public Record Office and the Newspaper Library at Colindale, all of whom at various times have accorded me help beyond the mere obligations of duty. Like all teachers, I owe much to my students, and would like to record my thanks to all of those varied groups with whom at different times I have discussed the characteristics of nineteenth century market towns, and in particular to the Rewley House Summer School class of 1979. My greatest debts however are to Professor Alan Everitt who has given me unstinted and stimulating assistance since I first broached this project with him, to my parents who have answered many teasing problems about Banbury's past from their own knowledge, and to my wife, without whose encouragement this thesis would never have been written. Shrewsbury, October 1980 Barrie Trinder IV ILLUSTRATIONS r-iAPS Facing page 1. The Boundary of the Borough of Banbury. 24 . 2 Building developments in Banbury 1830-50. 29 3. Banbury and its hinterland. 41 4. Turnpike Roads passing through Banbury. 48 5. Banbury’s Railheads and Railways 1838-53. 53 . 6 Building developments in Banbury 1850-80. 228 7. The Growth of Grimsbury 1850-80. 232 The Gillett family's development in Bath Road 1855-80. 235 'I'he- Parish and af bory {'n iToirer fOocKet. Tje Borough Banbury in . tTie^ co>/er ypffffA TABLES 1. A Comparison of some Midlands Market Towns. 3bO 2. The Population of Banbury and the Banbury Union in the Nineteenth Century. 36l 3. Banbury: Occupational Structure in 1851. 362 4. Migration into Banbury from the hinterland, 1851 and 1871. 363 5. Attendances at Church Services in Banbury, 30 March 1851. 365 6. Immigration into Banbury. 366 7. Dates of foundation of Voluntary Societies active in Banbury between 1830 and 1850. 367 8. Occupations of Children in Banbury in 1851 and 1871. 369 9. Banbury: Occupational Structure in 1871. 37^ 10. Numbers of Sunday School Children...1880. 371 11. Results of Parliamentary Elections in Banbury 1868-80. 372 ABBREVIATIONS BA Banbury Advertiser BCR Banbury Co-operative Record BG Banbury Guardian BH Banbury Herald BHS Banbury Historical Society Bod.Lib. Bodleian Library B of H rtLns. Minutes of Banbury Board of Health BPL Banbury Public Library BPLC Mins. Minutes of Banbury Paving and Lighting Commissioners BPP British Parliamentary Papers Bra Mins. Minutes of Banbury Reform Association C & CH Cake and Cockhorse JOJ Jackson's Oxford Journal JR/iSE Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England MI Mins. Minutes of Banbury Mechanics' Institute NH Northampton Herald ÜC & cc Oxford City and County Chronicle OH Oxford Herald ORO Oxfordshire Record Office OHS Oxfordshire Records Society PC Potts Collection Pol.Corres.(1832) Political Correspondence (1832) PRO Public Record Office RC Rusher Collection VCH Victoria County History VI '..••those less marked vicissitudes which are constantly shifting the boundaries of social intercourse and begetting nev/ consciousness of interdependence. Some slipped a little downward, some got higher footing: people denied aspirates, gained wealth, and fastidious gentlemen stood for boroughs; some were caught in political currents, some in ecclesiastical, and perhaps found themselves surprisingly grouped in consequence; while a fev; personages or families that stood with rock firmness amid all this fluctuation were slowly presenting new aspects in spite of solidity, and altering with the double change of self and beholder. Municipal town and rural parish gradually made fresh threads of connection - gradually, as the old stocking gave way to the savings-bank,....Settlers, too came from distant counties, some with an alarming novelty of skill, others with an offensive advantage in cunning'. George Eliot, Middlemarch. 1 Chapter One. A tiature Market Town. 'The old market place ... is ... all alive with the busy hum of traffic, the agricultural wealth and the agricultural pop­ ulation of the district. Prom the poor farmer with his load of corn, up to the rich mealman and the great proprietor, all the "landed interest" is there, mixed with jobbers and chapmen of every description, cattle dealers, millers, brewers, maltsters, justices going to the Bench, constables and shopmen, apprentices, gentlemen's servants, and gentlemen in their own persons, mixed with all the riff-raff of the town, and all the sturdy beggars of the country, and all the noisy urchins of both'.^^^ The nineteenth century market town was a place of rendez­ vous and exchange, the venue for the circuit meeting, the synod or the camp meeting, for an aristocratic assembly or bourgeois soirée, a gathering-place for ardent Protestants or Protectionists, a point of convergence for carriers' carts, a place of muster for volunteer riflemen or dissident radicals. By the cattle pens in the market place or at the linen draper's counter, the amorphous abstractions of Victorian society took the form of real individuals. The 'landed interest' was a group of red-faced farmers sipping spirits at the principal inn, or a baronet passing in his carriage from the railway station to his country seat. Manufacturing interests were embodied by the representatives of Manchester textile houses, or local foundry- masters. The dark forces of Democracy were symbolised by Baptist shoemakers or free-thinking coal-heavers. At the (l) Mary Russell Mitford, 'Belford Regis, or Sketches of a Country Town', Chambers's Edinburgh Review, IV, 1836, p. 170. 2 wharves and warehouses of the market town calicoes and fustians from the Miltons and the Coketowns were unloaded, to pass through the hands of drapers, tailors and dressmakers, to "become the apparel of townspeople and agriculturalists. Pigs of iron and wrought-iron rods from Shutt End, Blaenavon or Old Park passed to foundrymen and millwrights who transformed them into chaff-cutters or threshing machines for the innovating agriculturalists of the district and for a wider world. In the market town rural labourers being shepherded by a hard- headed incumbent towards an emigrant ship, might pass the ascending spiralists of Victorian society, the representatives of firms making bottled stout or artificial manure, the itin­ erant lecturer making his living from discoursing on Slavery, teetotallism or Andrew Marvell, or the prosperous retailer, respected as a deacon, churchwarden or treasurer of a society for clothing the poor. It was in the market town that most of the consumer goods of mid-Victorian England were manufactured. As parliamentary constituencies such towns decided the composition of governments. In most market towns it was possible to observe every shade of the complex spectrum of English religion. In the majority a profusion of voluntary associations provided enlightenment, sustenance or amusement. The Victorian market town has not received from historians the attention that has been given to the urban metropolis, the manufacturing town or the countryside, yet a study of such a town is capable of illuminating the whole range of English society, both urban and rural, both Liberal and Conservative, both Dissenting and Anglican, both puritan and libertarian. For some English market towns the mid-nineteenth century was a period of unusual prosperity and communal self-confidence. During the previous century the larger market towns, particularly