Beyond the metropolis: The changing image of urban Britain, 1780–1880 9781784997236

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Beyond the metropolis

Beyond the metropolis The changing image of urban Britain, 1780–1880

Katy Layton-Jones

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Katy Layton-Jones 2016 The right of Katy Layton-Jones to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN  978 0 7190 9969 4  hardback First published 2016

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Typeset by Frances Hackeson Freelance Publishing Services, Brinscall, Lancs

Contents

List of illustrations Acknowledgements List of abbreviations

page vi x xii

Introduction

1

1 The urban prospect

21

2 The town on show

57

3 Improving the urban image

89

4 Advertising the town

122

5 Crucibles of liberty and ruin

151

Conclusion

174



Bibliography

178

Index

199

Illustrations

  1 T. Kelly, Glasgow (1817).      page 23   2 ‘Liverpool Looking North’, in H. Lacey, Pictorial Liverpool: its annals; commerce; shipping &c. a new and complete handbook, 2nd edn (Liverpool, 1846). Reproduced courtesy of Liverpool Record Office.                                23   3 Richardson and Dobbie, ‘Edinburgh Old Town from Princes Street’, in Black’s Picturesque Tourist of Scotland, 2nd edn (Edinburgh, 1842). 26   4 W. H. Craig and J. Landseer, View of Manchester (1802). MLSL, m07520. Reproduced courtesy of Manchester Archives and Local Studies.                                27   5 W. F. P. W. Hole after Pen, ‘View of Liverpool in 1806’, in T. Troughton, The History of Liverpool, from the earliest authenticated period down to the present time (Liverpool, 1810). Reproduced courtesy of Liverpool Record Office.                                28   6 T. Dugdale, ‘Bristol’, in Curiosities of Great Britain: England & Wales Delineated (London, c.1850).                                29   7 Illman and Pillbrow after T. H. Shepherd, Edinburgh, from the Calton Hill (c.1847).          30   8 W. Dugdale (attr.) View of Birmingham from Bradford Street (c. 1816), BLSL, WK/B11/2602. Reproduced courtesy of the Library of Birmingham.        33   9 J. Cousen after C. Cope, View of Leeds Looking North West along the River Aire (1834). LLIS, Q LIQA Aire 1. Reproduced courtesy of Leeds Library and Information Service.               34 10 R. G. Reeve after S. Walters, View of the Port of Liverpool (1836). Liverpool Record Office, Binns Collection, box A23. Reproduced courtesy of Liverpool Record Office.                                           36 11 E. Umfreville, Birmingham South (c.1840). BLSL, WK/B11/2615. Reproduced courtesy of the Library of Birmingham.        38 12 ‘Manchester from Kersal Moor’, Illustrated London News, 4 July 1857, p. 13.           39 13 E. Finden after W. Westall, Sheffield (1828–30).        40 14 K. Johnson after S. T. Davis, ‘Nottingham’, in The Land We Live In, 3 vols (1854–56).                      41

vi

Illustrations

15 ‘Manchester, from the entrance to the London and North-Western Railway’, in The Land We Live In, 3 vols (1854–56), I, p. 227. Reproduced by permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.                   42 16 Lenz, View of Manchester (1850). MLSL, m7529. Reproduced courtesy of Manchester Archives and Local Studies.           43 17 ‘View of Bradford’, in The Land We Live In, 3 vols (1854–56), III, p. 40. Reproduced by permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.    44 18 ‘View of Birmingham from Bordsley Fields’, in W. H. Smith, Birmingham and its Vicinity as a Manufacturing and Commercial District (London and Birmingham, 1836), frontispiece. Reproduced courtesy of the Library of Birmingham.           46 19 J. Roffe after W. Westall, ‘New Bailey Bridge, Manchester’, in Great Britain Illustrated (London, 1830), plate 84.        49 20 G. Pickering and J. Sands, Liverpool from Toxteth Park (1834) LRO, general views folder. Reproduced courtesy of Liverpool Record Office.           50 21 E. Colyer after H. West, ‘Irwell Bridge’, in E. Colyer, Descriptive Catalogue of the Padorama of the Manchester and Liverpool Railroad (London, 1834), opp. p. 9.           60 22 ‘Town and Bay of Swansea’, in G. Dodd (ed.), Knight’s Cyclopædia of the Industry of All Nations (London, 1851), plate 6.           66 23 ‘Manchester’, in G. Dodd (ed.), Knight’s Cyclopædia of the Industry of All Nations (London, 1851), plate 12.        67 24 Rodgers and Sons’ Norfolk Knife. Company of Cutlers, Sheffield. Photograph by kind permission of Stephen Brooks.           68 25 ‘Birmingham Small Arms Trophy’, Illustrated London News, 14 June 1862, p. 618.                                              71 26 Advertisement for the Manchester Exhibition (c.1815). MLSL, m58956. Reproduced courtesy of Manchester Archives and Local Studies.          77 27 J. Heywood, The Exhibition of Art Treasures, Manchester, 1857 (1857). MLSL, m58871. Reproduced courtesy of Manchester Archives and Local Studies.               78 28 ‘Interior View of the Art-Treasures Palace’, in A. Heywood, Heywood’s Pictorial Guide to Manchester and Companion to the Art-Treasures Exhibition (Manchester, 1857), p. 13. Reproduced courtesy of Manchester Archives and Local Studies.           80 29 ‘The Queen’s Visit to Manchester – The Royal cortège passing through St Anne’s Square’, Illustrated Times, 11 July 1857, p. 28.        82 30 S. Bradshaw after W. H. Bartlett, ‘Bristol from Rowham Ferry’, in W. H. Bartlett, The Ports, Harbours, Watering-places, and Coast Scenery of Great Britain (London, 1844). Reproduced courtesy of Bristol Museums, Galleries, and Archives.           92 31 ‘Perspective View of Bridgewater Crescent, Manchester, Piccadilly’, in W. Fairbairn, Observations on Improvements of the Town of Manchester (Manchester, 1836). Reproduced by permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.           94 32 ‘Sketches of an Improved and Elegant Style of Steam Engine Chimneys’, in W. Fairbairn, Observations on Improvements of the Town of Manchester (Manchester, 1836), p. 12. Reproduced by permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.           96

vii

Illustrations

33 J. Swan, ‘View of Glasgow from Knox’s Monument’, Select Views of Glasgow and its Environs (Glasgow, 1828).           99 34 G.W. Wilson, Glasgow Necropolis (Aberdeen, 1870).       100 35 ‘St James’s Cemetery, Liverpool’, The Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction, 14 December 1833, p. 638.       102 36 H. Lacey, St. James’s Cemetery, Liverpool (c.1835).       103 37 E. Goodall after W. M. Craig, View of the Old City of Edinburgh from an Original Drawing by the Marchioness of Stafford (1815).              104 38 ‘The Liverpool Free Library and Museum’, Illustrated London News, 2 May 1857.                  109 39 Commemorative print of ‘St George’s Hall’, Liverpool Standard, 7 October 1851. Reproduced courtesy of Liverpool Record Office.       112 40 T. Kaye, ‘Athenaeum’ and ‘Lyceum’, Stranger in Liverpool (Liverpool, 1838), p. 42. Reproduced courtesy of Liverpool Record Office.       113 41 ‘Miscellaneous Professions’, in Bisset’s Magnificent Guide; Or Grand Copper Plate Directory for the Town of Birmingham (Birmingham, 1808). Reproduced courtesy of the Library of Birmingham.       126 42 ‘View of Matthew Boulton’s Soho Manufactory and Royal Mint Offices in Handsworth near Birmingham’, in Bisset’s Magnificent Guide; Or Grand Copper Plate Directory for the Town of Birmingham (Birmingham, 1808). Reproduced courtesy of the Library of Birmingham.       128 43 Advertisement for Henry Clay, Japanner, in Bisset’s Magnificent Guide; Or Grand Copper Plate Directory for the Town of Birmingham (Birmingham, 1808). Reproduced courtesy of the Library of Birmingham.       130 44 Bill of trade for George Davey, Printseller, Number 1 Broad Street (Bristol, 1843). BCBL, IV, 105. Reproduced courtesy of Bristol Museums, Galleries, and Archives.              132 45 Advertisement for Thomas Hunt, manufacturer of fine scissors and scissor knives, Blackwell’s Sheffield Directory (Sheffield, 1828). © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.                            134 46 Advertisement for L. G. Reed and Company, Sheffield (c.1840). SLSL, s09749. Reproduced by permission of Sheffield City Council.       136 47 Advertisement for John Traies, Boot and Shoe Manufacturer, in William Hawkes Smith, Birmingham and its Vicinity as a Manufacturing and Commercial District (London and Birmingham, 1836). Reproduced courtesy of the Library of Birmingham.                  137 48 Advertisement for Stanley, Bellamy and Co., Ironfounders, Midland Works, Savile Street, Sheffield (1858). SLSL, s09768. Reproduced by permission of Sheffield City Council.        139 49 Advertisement for Davy Brothers Ltd., Engineers, Park Iron Works, Sheffield (1879). SLSL, s09878. Reproduced by permission of Sheffield City Council.                 141 50 Advertisement for William Greaves and Sons, Sheaf Works, Cadman Street and Maltravers Street Sheaf Works, Sheffield (c.1830). SLSL, s09760. Reproduced by permission of Sheffield City Council.       142 51 Porter mug depicting the engineering works of Peel, Williams & Peel at the Phoenix Foundry on Swan Street near Shudehill and the Soho Foundry on Pollard Street in Ancoats (Derby, c. 1820). MAG 2004.21. © Manchester City Galleries.           144

viii

Illustrations

52 T. Slack after J. Parry, Phoenix Foundry, Manchester and Soho Foundry, Manchester (c.1818). MLSL, m61383–4. Reproduced courtesy of Manchester Archives and Local Studies.              145 53 After R. Carlile, ‘Peterloo Massacre’, All the Year Round, 8 June 1867, pp. 559–65.        155 54 Atkins, ‘Recent Events at Manchester’, in Disturbances at Manchester (London, 1819). Reproduced by permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.        156 55 J. Wroe, A View of St Peter’s Place (Manchester, 1819).           157 56 T. George, Town Hall, Brighton (1841).       158 57 Decorative panel after J. Sudlow and T. Whaite, A View of St. Peter’s Plain Manchester on the Memorable 16th of August 1819. Longcase clock produced by W. Stancliffe of Barkisland near Halifax (c.1840–50). MOSI, 1988.60. Science & Society Picture Library, London.       160 58 L. Hague after T. L. Rowbotham and W. J. Muller, Charge of the 3rd Dragoon Guards upon the Rioters in Queen Square, Bristol, at 6 o’clock on the morning of Monday, October 31st, 1831 (Bristol and London, 1831). BCMAG, M559. Reproduced courtesy of Bristol Museums, Galleries, and Archives.       161 59 W. J. Müller, Queen’s Square on the Night of October 30th, 1831 (c.1832). BCMAG, M269. Reproduced courtesy of Bristol Museums, Galleries, and Archives.        162 60 L. Hague after T. L. Rowbotham, View of the City of Bristol from Pile Hill, During the Riots of October 30, 1831 (c.1831). BCMAG, Mb 6892. Reproduced courtesy of Bristol Museums, Galleries, and Archives.       164 61 S. Jackson, View of Bristol from Clifton Wood (1832). BCMAG, M719. Reproduced courtesy of Bristol Museums, Galleries, and Archives.       165 62 After C. H. Walters, The City of Bristol as it Appeared Generally on Sunday Night (c.1831). BCMAG, Mb3964. Reproduced courtesy of Bristol Museums, Galleries, and Archives.        166 63 S. Jackson, Views of the Fires in Bristol (c.1832). BCMAG, M145. Reproduced courtesy of Bristol Museums, Galleries, and Archives.       168

ix

Acknowledgements

This book represents over a decade of research, much of which was spent in local archives and museums. It would have been impossible to identify, let alone collate, the images discussed here without the assistance of hundreds of archivists, curators, and librarians. The support that I have received is all the more astonishing in this age of budget cuts, as these knowledgeable and undervalued professionals are struggling to protect and promote our historical collections. Throughout my research, I have been helped by too many individuals to list. However, I would like to extend particular thanks to Trevor Coombs and Julia Carver at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, Sallyann Browning at Manchester Museum of Science and Industry, Jane Parr at Manchester Central Library, Mark Small at Bristol Record Office, Roger Hull at Liverpool Record Office, Joan Unwin at the Company of Cutlers, Sheffield, and Julie-Anne Lambert of the John Johnson Collection, Oxford. I would also like to thank staff at the Hawley Collection in Sheffield, the Library of Birmingham, the National Maritime Museum, Manchester Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool, Cambridge University Library, and Sheffield Local Studies Library. While writing this book I have benefited from the encouragement and expert guidance of a number of people. My PhD supervisor, Larry Klein, suffered my interest in the nineteenth century with good humour, while my examiner Boyd Hilton provided valuable post-viva advice. Special thanks go to my second examiner, Roey Sweet, whose interest in my work and wellbeing extended beyond my PhD and I continue to benefit from her guidance (and occasional correction of potentially humiliating errors) today. My time since completing my PhD has been both busy and fruitful, due in no small part to the support of Robert Lee MBE of the University of Liverpool, who along with Colum Giles and Jenifer White of English Heritage, Nigel Sharp of Liverpool City Council, and Joseph Sharples, encouraged me to develop my work on parks and urban green spaces. The names of all who have helped me on my way are again too numerous to list. However, particular thanks go to John Shaw and Jane Desmarais of Goldsmiths,

x

Acknowledgements

Paul Elliot at the University of Derby, Simon Gunn at the University of Leicester, Erika Hanna at the University of Edinburgh, Carole O’Reilly at the University of Salford, Robert Poole at the University of Central Lancashire, Rebecca Madgin at the University of Glasgow, and last but certainly not least, Steve Poole at the University of the West of England. Personal thanks go to Martin Layton, my former colleagues at Cambridge University Press bookshop, and my current colleagues at the Open University, British Studies at Oxford, Colgate University, Grinnell College, Oberlin College, and the University of Maryland. I’d like to be able to thank the cats in my life, but to be honest, they are more a hindrance than a help. A project of this scale would not be possible without significant financial support. I would like to thank the AHRC for funding my PhD research, upon which much of this book is based, as well as the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, whose grant kept me going when that money ran out. Also, the ESRC and English Heritage, for co-funding my Research Associate post at the University of Liverpool. Finally, I would like to thank the Marc Fitch Fund. A book of this kind demands a significant number of illustrations. Sadly, for many scholars the cost of reproducing such material is prohibitively expensive. I am therefore immensely grateful to the charity’s trustees for the grant which has enabled me to include such a diverse range of imagery.

xi

Abbreviations

Archives and libraries BCBL BCMAG BLSL BM BMAG JJC LLIS LRO MAG MLSL MOSI NML SLSL SMAG

Braikenridge Collection, Bristol Local Studies Library Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery Birmingham Local Studies Library British Museum Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery John Johnson Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford Leeds Library and Information Service Liverpool Record Office Manchester Art Gallery Manchester Local Studies Library Manchester Museum of Science and Industry National Museums Liverpool Sheffield Local Studies Library Salford Museum and Art Gallery Publications

ILN IE

Illustrated London News Illustrated Exhibitor

xii

Introduction

In 1839, the author of the guidebook Manchester As It Is observed that ‘wherever a country becomes populous, nature is always compelled to give way to the convenience or the caprice of man … the whole forms a scene rich and magnificent, rarely equalled, perhaps nowhere excelled’.1 Over the past two centuries this ‘scene’ of provincial urban Britain has proved a compelling subject for social commentators, politicians, and artists alike. From the time when urbanisation was first recognised as a radical and permanent phenomenon, debates and questions surrounding the physical, political, and social consequences of urban and industrial development accompanied every topographical modification; urbanisation, urban migration, and the industrialisation of the landscape became the object of popular scrutiny. Throughout the nineteenth century, commentators continued to compile both historic and prophetic accounts of rapidly evolving conurbations in an attempt to comprehend their future and that of the British nation and empire. Some, like Benjamin Love, celebrated its visual magnificence, while others including Charles Dickens and Benjamin Disraeli, presented a darker vision of manufacturing towns.2 In 1839, the same year that Benjamin Love published his guide to Manchester, Thomas Carlyle was formulating his own response to provincial urbanisation and urban manufacturing. The resultant tract consolidated a number of disparate anxieties regarding urbanisation into a broadly anti-urban, anti-industrial polemic under the heading the ‘Condition of England Question’.3 Carlyle’s criticisms related mainly to the human impact of industrialisation, rather than the physical transformation of the landscape. Even so, the analogies he made between physical and moral disease sat well with pre-existing notions of Britain’s largest city, London, as a ‘great wen’ upon the body of the nation.4 In Chartism Carlyle argued for the moral re-examination of society, reasoning that ‘Boils on the surface are curable or incurable, – small matter which, while the virulent humour festers deep within; poisoning the sources of life.’5 This characterisation of modern society as diseased was swiftly taken up by other critics and applied to the urban provinces as well as London.

1

Beyond the metropolis

In 1842 the Mancunian Joseph Adshead argued that the state of the labouring classes in the Ancoats and Newton area of his home town was proof that ‘mere local or temporary remedies are by no means commensurate with the disease. The derangement is organic, and the remedial agency must likewise be organic’.6 Three years later, in his seminal treatise on the English industrial town, The Condition of the Working-Class in England (1845), Frederick Engels censured the urban environment, as much as the implicit economic inequities it harboured, for the poor standard of living experienced by the working population; he presented the town not merely as a symptom, but as a chief cause of the ‘malady’ of social degeneration. This perceived correspondence between implicit social tensions and the explicit physical form of towns led to these and other authors invoking rich, highly visual descriptions of the urban realm. These are epitomised in Engels’s portrait of the Lancashire factory towns as ‘irregularly built with foul courts, lanes, and back alleys, reeking of coal smoke, and especially dingy from the originally red brick turned black with time’.7 For Engels, the physicality and appearance of the urban environment provided a means of visualising the Condition of England question. Dirt, smoke, and dark bodies of water helped to characterise deeper problems that manifested themselves visually in the urban fabric. Still, his condemnation of the physical environment did not equate to an acquittal of human responsibility for the condition of the working classes. On the contrary, he considered the squalor that afflicted manufacturing towns to be the result of conscious neglect on the part of the influential middle classes as he demonstrated in relation to his favourite model, Manchester: I have never seen so systematic a shutting out of the working-class from the thoroughfares, so tender a concealment of everything which might affront the eye and the nerves of the bourgeoisie, as in Manchester.8

Of the weaving town of Bradford, Engels observed: ‘on a fine Sunday it offers a superb picture, when viewed from the surrounding heights. Yet, within reigns the same filth and discomfort as in Leeds’.9 As these brief descriptions illustrate, while the urban environment could exacerbate social degeneration, the exterior appearance of a town could also serve to conceal its internal condition. Clearly, the visual appearance of towns, both internally and as viewed from afar, presented complex and often conflicting accounts of urbanisation. Understanding the nature of this debate and analysing the motives of those who represented the two main oppositional standpoints of ‘celebration’ and ‘despair’ has claimed the attention of historians and dictated the shape of historical argument surrounding urbanisation.10 When addressing this period of rapid urban change, historians and historical geographers alike have tended to interpret literary and visual accounts of urbanisation as expressing either euphoric endorsement or unadulterated condemnation.11 This dichotomy of celebration and condemnation was applied explicitly by Asa Briggs in his definitive study of the Victorian city, wherein he argued that, to some observers urbanisation was ‘a matter of pride – cities were symbols of growth and progress’ and that to others ‘the spread of the cities and the 2

Introduction

increase in their numbers were matters of concern, even of alarm’.12 It is certainly possible to locate evidence of that ‘alarm’ in the most familiar contemporary representation of the nineteenth-century town, the social-problem novel.13 This literary genre, epitomised by Charles Dickens’s Hard Times (1854) and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (1848), found popularity among a midnineteenth-century reading public by emphasising and often sensationalising the urban environment. Comprising a relatively new literary format, formulated to represent new urban tableaux, these novels and their subject matter belonged peculiarly to the 1840s and 1850s and Joseph W. Childers has accordingly compared the production of novels to that of industrially manufactured consumables produced during the early Victorian period.14 Twentieth-century popular interpretations of the period were heavily informed by these literary melodramas, and more recently, their dramatisation on the large and small screen.15 However, too much emphasis continues to be placed upon the ‘historical’ nature of fictional narratives. Scholars have rejected H. J. Dyos’s advice that when ‘evaluating what the Victorian novel has to say about the city we have to keep reminding ourselves of its underlying predisposition to treat its subject as a hostile environment’ because such literature reflects ‘an aspect of the tendency of the high culture of Victorian Britain to express a pre-urban system of values’.16 So too have many failed to recognise that a similarly sceptical attitude should be adopted when analysing visual imagery. Resistance to such an approach has resulted in the emergence of a highly sensationalised and inaccurate image of the nineteenth-century city. The demonic city described so vividly in Lynda Nead’s Victorian Babylon has become a popular, almost inescapable idiom among urban, social, and cultural historians.17 Yet, although the visual and environmental impact of urbanisation and industry would be widely condemned in later years, during the first half of the nineteenth century (and often later) it was still possible to perceive urban and industrial expansion as complementary to aesthetic beautification and civic prestige. In order to identify and understand the values that informed contemporary interpretations of early nineteenthcentury urbanisation, it is necessary to consider these representations from the perspective of continuity with the past, rather than searching for precursors of the Victorian Babylon model. Some historians have critiqued and challenged the strict periodisation of urban history, with contributors to the second volume of the Cambridge Urban History of Britain as well as art historian Elizabeth McKellar adopting the ‘the railway age’ as a more significant moment of qualitative change than 1800 or the conclusion of the Georgian era in 1830.18 Yet, despite their efforts, the binarism of ‘Georgian’ and ‘Victorian’ continues to dominate urban history and the related disciplines of art history and literature. Literary descriptions made a powerful and lasting contribution to the identities and popular perceptions of towns such as Manchester, Birmingham, and Glasgow. However, they are matched in number by a mass of visual images, each of which charted the evolving urban scene in a distinct and often innovative way. Throughout the period covered by this book, the provincial urban 3

Beyond the metropolis

environment was a recurring feature of prints and pictorial souvenirs as well as gazetteers, urban histories, and tour guides that contained an increasing quantity of visual material. The resulting array of literature and imagery presents the historian with a chaotic and often contradictory picture of nineteenth-century attitudes towards urbanisation. Nevertheless, it is a telling picture that reveals much about the expectations and values of those who viewed and represented the urban scene. Visual representations often challenge a number of previously well-established historical assumptions, both about the period in question, and the means with which historians can best approach its study. Ergo, this book has three central objectives. The first is to redress the dominance of the late nineteenth century in narratives of urban development, and to reposition the early decades of that century as a distinct and important period in the definition and visualisation of urban Britain. This includes demonstrating a degree of continuity with the prosperous Georgian town model that characterises many accounts of eighteenth-century urbanisation, while also tracing the steady and significant changes that distinguish early nineteenth-century provincial towns from those that preceded them.19 To this end, the chapters that follow demonstrate that the fears and anxieties expressed in the Dickensian novel were not the only influence upon a generation of observers who had not yet witnessed mass cooperation, municipalisation, the impact of railways, and the long-term political consequences of the 1832 Reform Act. They highlight the centrality of excitement, incredulity, anticipation, and reverence in nineteenth-century polemics about the urban environment. As Charles Dibdin’s 1801 description of Manchester exemplifies: ‘I am compelled, therefore, to pass over the buildings, which are magnificent; the manufactures, which are immense and almost incredible, and extend their influence to the surrounding villages in all directions … for the very word MANCHESTER implies industry and ingenuity’.20 In addition to conveying the sheer scale of transformation that was taking place in the towns he visited, Dibdin’s observations also demonstrate that the aesthetic quality of a town was not necessarily enough to guarantee an enthusiastic response, as he stated that ‘STAFFORD is a clean, handsome and dull town. It resembles in those particulars DONCASTER’.21 In failing to reflect the subtlety and ambivalence of such descriptions, the continuing over-emphasis placed upon negative accounts of urbanisation has perpetuated a failure among scholars to acknowledge the enduring legacy of the eighteenth-century town, its form and social structure. The long-term impact of the social and political changes instigated within British towns during the Victorian period has served to obscure accounts dating from the preceding decades. There is now an urgent need to challenge the supremacy of the late nineteenth century in the narrative of provincial urbanisation. The second objective is to challenge the all too pervasive dependence of historians upon a polarity of celebration and despair when characterising nineteenth-century attitudes to provincial towns.22 A range of negative opinions regarding towns and cities were certainly expressed during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and comprised a substantial section of popular 4

Introduction

opinion. However, they should be understood as only one facet of public feeling. As Asa Briggs realised in the 1960s, ‘the debate about the Victorian city … was a debate with different voices making themselves heard inside the city itself, and with the struggle between the defenders of the city, those who in various ways were proud of it, and its critics, particularly those who were afraid of it, ranging widely and probing deep’.23 As we will see, the views of private individuals also changed according to the urban feature under discussion. Yet, the premise that the nineteenth-century city was, and was seen to be, a place where social and physical flux resulted invariably in extreme experiences and extreme perceptions has remained, for the most part, uncontested. Furthermore, while the dichotomy of celebration and despair remains a common analytical model, in recent years the anxious voice of despair has come to dominate historical commentary. Urbanisation, particularly when fuelled by industry, has been represented as a moral contrast to the innocence of rural living, or as Raymond Williams frames it, ‘worldliness’ as opposed to nature.24 The social doctrines that informed the opinions of Carlyle and his sympathisers in the 1830s have come to be understood by some as the model of popular opinion towards urbanisation throughout the nineteenth century. Tristram Hunt’s account of the Victorian city has reiterated this familiar interpretation of the early nineteenth-century town as a demonic environment, the ‘New Hades’ of an industrial nation. In Building Jerusalem (2004), Hunt casts the early nineteenth century as a period of crisis for the British provincial town. Locations such as Manchester and Birmingham are presented as chaotic, a malady resolved only later in the century by urban investment and redevelopment initiated by the inhabitants of new ‘municipal palaces’.25 Despite acknowledging the accomplishments of the late Victorian generation, Hunt’s perspective replicates the well-rehearsed position of much recent scholarship, including Boyd Hilton’s A Mad, Bad and Dangerous People. In a section titled ‘social crisis’, Hilton argues that quality of life often deteriorated for those who moved from rural areas into the newly expanding towns.26 It would, of course, be wrong to question the existence of deprived and unsanitary areas in any large conurbation. Indeed a number of regions such as Manchester’s ‘Little Ireland’ were already identifiable as ‘slum’ areas by the late 1830s. There were a number of high-profile condemnations of the urban realm and particularly its ‘slums’, perhaps most famously Frederick Engels’s damning verdict on Manchester in 1844.27 Still, the unequivocal focus upon these unfavourable accounts justifies a questioning of the dominant position they hold in historical understandings of nineteenth-century perceptions of towns and cities. While it is clear that the urban environment was increasingly a place in which crises occurred, observers did not necessarily consider the towns and cities themselves to be wholly damaging or toxic. Ambivalence rather than vehement condemnation or celebration characterises many contemporary accounts of provincial towns. Responses to urbanisation resulted from wide-ranging motives and articulate equally diverse opinions. Their formation was dependent upon the age, occupation, and social rank of the author or artist, and their intended 5

Beyond the metropolis

audience. Even more importantly, although often ignored, both literary and visual representations were informed by the peculiarities of different towns, their specific problems and triumphs. There was no single and definitive nineteenthcentury attitude to urban expansion. As the following chapters demonstrate, early nineteenth-century responses to these sites were organised around a much more diverse range of polarities, which included a town’s historical status or modernity; the contrary or complementary roles of commerce and culture; the extent to which towns were perceived to integrate disparate communities and environments or fragment pre-existing populations and townscapes; and the ongoing process of exchange and symbiosis between a central district and its hinterland. The third objective here, and arguably the one with the widest implications for the discipline, is to award visual evidence a more prominent position. If visual material is to be truly useful to the urban historian, it must be recognised and employed critically as a central tool in identifying the themes of historical enquiry, rather than merely illustrating existing historiography. While it is not the object of this research to contest reasonable reservations about the limitations of visual material, the following chapters will interrogate the range of fluctuating and sometimes contradictory values on display within images of specific sites as well as urban imagery in general. The role of the visual One of the most fundamental causes of twentieth-century condemnation of the nineteenth-century city is the sheer scale of urban expansion that took place. Rapid immigration to the cities was certainly one of the main reasons for the emergence of new slum areas, but such problem sites did not blight entire towns. Nevertheless, as H. J. Dyos observed, statistics on the growth of conurbations during this period have come to dominate our perceptions of the city.28 There exists a vast literature of investigations into the experience of the urban environment from the perspectives of public health, social structure, urban planning, and political enfranchisement, but few address the way in which such issues affected the visualisation of provincial towns in printed and ephemeral imagery.29 This type of analysis demands the employment of an additional, alternative range of sources, what J. H. Johnson and C. G. Pooley identify in their overview of historiography of the nineteenth-century city as: ‘sporadic … subjective but descriptive material’.30 As perhaps the strongest indication of the changing status of provincial manufacturing and commercial towns was their increasing presence in printed imagery and illustrated publications, it is this category of sources which is addressed in most detail in this book. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the reorganisation of the nation’s political, economic, and social structure became increasingly understood as being synonymous with topographical transformation, in

6

Introduction

particular, the evolution of the urban townscape. As Penelope Corfield has said, the physical form of towns was ‘studied as visible proxy for other changes’.31 Consequently, provincial urbanisation was experienced by the majority of onlookers as a primarily visual phenomenon. In his introductory chapter to The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes, D. W. Meinig observes that ‘landscape is defined by our vision’ and so, similarly, was the early nineteenth-century townscape.32 Meinig’s assertion is supported by Tristram Hunt who also notes that ‘the physical grime and soot, if not the philosophical pollution, of Coketown still configures our imagination of the Victorian city’.33 Thus, it was the visual impact of structures like chimneys, warehouses, manufactories, and athenaeums that most widely and consistently informed common perceptions of provincial urban Britain. This enthusiasm for visual description did not necessarily result in dark and negative imagery. As William Hutton demonstrated in his description of Birmingham in 1783, the visual drama of the urban environment could be positively received and endorsed: ‘When the word Birmingham occurs, a superb picture instantly expands in the mind’.34 Whether in colourful literary prose or a relatively opaque parliamentary report, early nineteenth-century accounts of the urban environment demonstrate a universal dependence upon visual description. The physical, and therefore visual characteristics of a townscape, its streets, structures, and atmospheric conditions, were employed repeatedly as the most immediate and universal means of representing a particular town, its failings, and its triumphs. Over the course of a few decades the role of visual material evolved to the point that it not only reflected urban qualities, but also came to define public expectations towards the urban environment. Each type of image was produced with its own cultural, political, or most commonly, economic motivation, but all contributed to a kind of index of ‘the town’. Topographical beauty was represented in impressive panoramic townscapes, and cultural institutions were illustrated in small wood-engraved vignettes in guidebooks and directories. A town’s commercial or ‘industrial’ character could be represented in each of these forms, as well as the additional arena of advertising and promotional imagery. Thus, visual representations constitute not merely an additional perspective for historians, but arguably the most valuable resource for understanding past attitudes to urbanisation. Nevertheless, excepting the work of a few historians such as Simon Gunn and Lynda Nead, the vast majority of studies of nineteenth-century urbanisation rely exclusively upon verbal, statistical, and cartographic evidence.35 Such resources are crucial in establishing a chronology of sanitary improvement or when seeking an overview of the social structure. Yet, if, as Simon Gunn has suggested, the transformation of the urban environment at this time resulted in a ‘re-imagining’ of the urban sphere, then such resources are, by their nature, limited in their insights.36 Unfortunately, Roy Porter’s long-standing challenge that ‘we still have a long way to go in “seeing” what people saw, and in interpreting the significance of visual signs’ remains unmet.37 Where mortality statistics and town plans are the staple content of

7

Beyond the metropolis

urban history, extensive studies of the ‘visual signs’ of the urban realm have, for the most part, been restricted to art historical and literary enquiries, most of which focus upon London. London: an unrepresentative case study Caroline Arscott’s essay, ‘The representation of the city in the visual arts’ is typical of the few recent attempts to produce a more visually aware analysis of the nineteenth-century urban environment. Taking London as a case study, Arscott addresses how the various features of the capital city were articulated in oil paintings and watercolours. ‘Urban folk’ as well as ‘leisure and consumption’ and the ‘urban fabric’ shape her account of nineteenth-century London.38 However, although a justified subject for study, the physical reality and the image of London were far from representative of most nineteenth-century British towns. Covering a large geographical area, with an extensive history of commercial and political influence, architectural redevelopment, and cosmopolitan society, the metropolis exhibited a peculiarly rich picture of social variety, material degradation, and regeneration. The contrast between the capital and provincial towns and cities did not only become apparent with the benefit of hindsight as contemporary observers too were aware of the disparity. As the growing volume of prints and guidebooks acquainted readers and print viewers with the visual features of provincial towns and cities, the exceptional character of the capital became all the more appreciable. As Elizabeth McKellar notes, ‘with the realities of the variety of landscapes across the country now far better known, it was much harder to maintain the notion of the London landscape as representative of the entire nation’.39 Yet, despite the peculiarity of London’s status and history, the majority of attempts to interpret visual images of provincial towns rely upon the characteristics and priorities of the metropolis.40 This is problematic as the perceived ‘character’ of a place could be hugely affected by its association with a particular skyline, style of architecture, trades, politics, and cultural activities. Although again focusing upon the capital, Donald J. Gray’s essay on nineteenth-century views and sketches of London provides some useful analytical models for urban imagery as it divides such material into two categories: the Canaletto-inspired ‘view’ and the Hogarthianinspired ‘sketch’.41 Employing these categories, Gray traces the developing representation of the capital throughout the century, identifying a duality in representations which convey both the density of the commercially active city alongside its physical monumentality. Nineteenth-century London is consequently conceptualised by Gray as an environment in which commerce and architectural grandeur were presented as compatible, even complementary characteristics: ‘the city is populous, busy and commercial. But what finally matters is the grandeur and space amid which its orderly traffic moves’.42 In relation to Thomas Hosmer Shepherd’s lithographs he observes that ‘the great

8

Introduction

buildings and historic places exist in the city, whose life moves past and over them on its own manifold business and urgencies’.43 In this way, Gray presents a convincing image of the integration of history and modernity within the metropolis. The attitudes towards London that Gray identifies should not be taken as representative of those towards all British towns, but his observations do suggest that traditional aesthetic judgements of the urban environment and judgements associated with commerce and manufacturing operated in a more complex and integrated fashion than has hitherto been appreciated. As Gray’s taxonomy illustrates, previous research into urban imagery has also privileged the work of widely recognised figures from the art-historical canon. Certainly, in the majority of studies, authors’ attention is restricted to ‘high’ art and oil paintings rather than printed images, ephemeral objects or other forms of visual display.44 In addition to supplying an exclusively luxury market, painted views of towns represented a very particular and often unrepresentative vision of the urban scene. Unlike engravings, woodcuts, and the transfer prints that decorate ceramics, the malleability of oil paint and watercolour enabled artists to replicate atmospheric effects and subtle tonal distinctions with great accuracy. Consequently, painted views of townscapes tend to emphasise Romantic and evocative visual components rather than the fine details, text, and characters that are found in many printed views, advertisements, and ceramics. In challenging the bias towards high art images of the capital city, this book addresses visual representations of a number of provincial towns that were undergoing expansion and industrialisation throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and, more specifically, printed, ephemeral material. The towns which will provide the main case studies include Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, and Sheffield. Although these towns should not be considered entirely ‘representative’ of the urban scene, they belong to a group of conurbations that underwent significant political, economic, social, and cultural transformations that were well documented visually.45 Each of these sites relied upon different industries and trades and experienced differing rates of expansion and recession that defined their shape and form. As a result, they provide a rich and varied basis for illustrating both continuities and changes in the visualisation of provincial towns throughout the period. Inherited values and changing perspectives In the early decades of the nineteenth century, pessimism did not universally dominate the public sentiment towards urbanisation and an altogether different set of urban expectations and values are articulated in urban guides and topographical views. The impression of urbanisation held by contemporary observers and chroniclers differed greatly from those of a society which, by the year of Queen Victoria’s silver jubilee in 1862, had witnessed a further fifty years of topographical, social, and political change. The year 1800 signified anything

9

Beyond the metropolis

but a watershed in popular responses to the urban environment and the social, economic, and political values against which urban centres were evaluated. The early nineteenth century was a period of change as well as continuity in the shape, perception, and representation of the urban scene, but the implications of these changes were not yet fully known. By the late 1830s urban and industrial expansion was advanced enough to prompt some critical reflection rather than mere speculation and prophecy. As Barrie Trinder has rightly observed, ‘[a]fter the 1840s it was never again possible to regard the industrial landscape with the same confidence and optimism of earlier generations’.46 But, as Trinder’s statement implies, prior to this pivotal decade, confidence and optimism had to some extent characterised popular responses to urbanisation. The fundamental values of prosperity, power, and picturesque beauty, which had informed popular appraisals of the urban environment during the late eighteenth century, continued to dominate urban representations, both literary and pictorial, even as the relative importance of each shifted over the decades. The cultural and social character of the eighteenth-century urban system continued to define provincial towns and the urban hierarchy throughout the early decades of the nineteenth century. In his comprehensive study of the culture and society in English provincial towns between 1660 and 1770, Peter Borsay identifies a list of changes, which, he argues convincingly, were indicative of a positive change in the ‘quality of urban life’.47 These include the replacement of vernacular architecture, which had dominated the urban scene for centuries, with buildings designed on the classical model; investment in the physical environment of the more prosperous areas of towns to make them more ‘convenient and comfortable’ for the wealthier inhabitants; and the progressive integration of town buildings and infrastructure into a complete ‘urban scene’.48 Borsay’s assertion that the eighteenth century was a period of increasing investment in private residences, institutions, civic centres, and commercial premises is supported by Michael Reed who has more recently proposed that the pace of these changes actually increased after the 1780s.49 Clearly, the process of change that accelerated in the late seventeenth century was ongoing and consequently the British provincial town and its representation continued to evolve throughout the period covered here. Notwithstanding the caveat that the relative importance and extent of urban developments shifted over the decades, what Peter Borsay has dubbed the post-Reformation ‘English urban renaissance’ continued well into the nineteenth century. Rather than being succeeded by an era of lower aspirations for provincial towns, the English urban renaissance evolved to accommodate a rise in expectations towards the cultural, economic, and social life of towns. The fundamental values of employment, prosperity, local governance, and aesthetic beauty, still dominated the ambitions, representation, and reputation of provincial towns and cities.50 Thus, to reduce nineteenth-century popular attitudes to the urban realm to the mutually exclusive responses of ‘for’ or ‘against’ is to unfoundedly presume a naivity, if not ignorance, on the part of nineteenth-century observers. 10

Introduction

It is essential to understand the manner in which multifarious attitudes to cities and towns evolved and transformed throughout the period and, in turn, how numerous and sometimes conflicting attempts were made to establish specific identities for different locations. Visual sources provide a valuable, arguably unique, opportunity to access and interrogate the wide spectrum of attitudes to, and perceptions of, the urban environment. Prints, their production and manufacture Townscapes and prospects constituted a common and popular subject among artists and their market throughout the early modern period, gaining increasing popularity during the English urban renaissance. Peter Borsay identifies three main elements operating within this ‘new tradition’ of urban imagery throughout the eighteenth century: images that focus upon individual buildings, those that represent large-scale forms such as streets and large vistas, and the ‘genuine prospect’ in which the artist delineated large swathes of the townscape.51 Notwithstanding the availability of urban imagery throughout the eighteenth century, the nineteenth century witnessed further expansion of the British print market and the number and variety of urban images and illustrated ‘tours’, ‘guides’ and ‘histories’ on offer to the general public.52 The development of manufacturing centres led to a broad diversification in the way in which locations were conceptualised and represented.53 Literary accounts provided readers with itineraries, descriptive passages, and historical notes, creating what one poet referred to comically as ‘a kind of topographical refectory’ for the reader.54 Similarly, a mass of visual imagery acquainted those same readers, as well as print consumers, with the changing iconography of the provincial town. The audience for urban imagery was as diverse as the material produced and ranged from the gentleman print connoisseur to readers of bawdy broadsheets and, by the late 1830s, the railway tourist. Following the advent of the new tradition of topographical imagery in the eighteenth century, illustrations of varying quality and subject were published in increasing numbers, reaching such a pitch that by 1876 just one small advertisement at the back of a Stranger’s Guide to London listed one hundred and twenty different foreign and domestic views published by a single London publisher, William Cole, and each of these views was available in various sizes to suit a range of pockets.55 The wide range of consumers has led Ann Pullan to assert that the diversification of the audience for landscape imagery resulted in the emergence of different ‘publics’ defined by their social class, gender, or a specific interest.56 All these ‘publics’ were served by an array of producers. The number of provincial printers, engravers, and printsellers, as well as those engaged in the related trades of bookbinding, stationery, and picture-frame making, rose dramatically in all provincial towns towards the end of the eighteenth century. Taking the number of print-related trades listed in commercial directories as a crude gauge, it is possible to acquire some sense of the scale of this expansion. 11

Beyond the metropolis

Table 1:  Print services listed in a selection of provincial trade directories 1781–1855. PS

P

CPP

LPP

EN

S

BS

PFM

total*

Birmingham 1781

3

2

3

2

10

1801

2

7

4

1

11

9

1855

5

37

7

61

87

47

1

244

35

15

1

4

8

4

32

Manchester 1788 1800

1

4

7

8

7

11

16

1

55

1811

2

55

1

11

11

12

17

109

1798

4

2

9

17

1817

10

13

13

50

Leeds 2 10

4

4

11

13

46

78

38

132

89

378

Liverpool 1805

2

1849

7

14

2 34

* Where one tradesman is listed as providing more than one service, each service has been counted. PS = Printseller, P = Printer, CPP = Copper-plate printer, LPP = Letter-press printer, EN = Engraver, S = Stationer, BS = Book seller, PFM = Picture-frame maker. Sources: Pearson and Rollason, The Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Walsall, Dudley, Bilston and Willenhall Directory (Birmingham, 1781); Chapman’s Birmingham Directory; or, alphabetical list of merchants, tradesmen and principal inhabitants of the town of Birmingham and its vicinity (Birmingham, 1801); F. White, General and Commercial Directory and Topography of the Borough of Birmingham (Sheffield, 1855); S. Lewis, Lewis’s Directory for Manchester and Salford for 1788 (Manchester, 1880); Bancks, Bancks’s Manchester and Salford Directory; or, Alphabetical List of the Merchants, Manufacturers and Princial Inhabitants (Manchester, 1800); J. Pigot, Pigot’s Manchester and Salford Directory for 1811 (Manchester, 1811); Leeds Directory (Leeds, 1798); E. Baines, Directory, General and Commercial of the Town and Borough of Leeds for 1817 (Leeds, 1817); J. Gore, Gore’s Liverpool Directory; or, Alphabetical List of Merchants, Tradesmen and Principal Inhabitants of the Town of Liverpool (Liverpool, 1805); J. Gore, Gore’s Directory of Liverpool and its Environs (Liverpool, 1849).

The expansion of the print market was enabled, in part, by the swiftly evolving technology of print manufacture at this time. Throughout the eighteenth century, print manufacture continued to operate on two distinct levels. At the cheaper end of the market were low-quality woodcuts and wood engravings. Although in some instances woodcuts became highly desirable, as in the case of the work of Thomas Bewick, many were relatively crude, often comic in their subject, and used frequently as decorative devices in notices, verses, and news sheets.57 By their nature woodcuts were limited in size and did not permit the rendering of 12

Introduction

depth and form through tone. The subjects of such prints tended to be simplistic and graphic and the sheets themselves often cheap to purchase.58 Poor quality woodcuts could be purchased from street hawkers or ‘pinners up’ who showed their wares pinned against a wall.59 In contrast, stand-alone cabinet prints and those bound in expensive volumes destined for connoisseurs at the high end of the market were most usually produced by the copper-etching process. This ensured a high-quality image and allowed the engraver to develop a degree of tonal variation and fine detail. Images produced by this technique included portraits, landscapes, and ‘fancy’ designs used as frontispieces.60 Although capable of producing high-quality imagery with the potential for mass appeal, this process was not suitable for large edition numbers as the soft copper plate degraded with each edition. The arrival of steel engraving in 1824, stereotypes in 1829, and steam-powered printing presses over the following decade, enabled printsellers and publishers to combine clarity and detail with high edition numbers to produce large quantities of quality imagery.61 This meant that books with ever-increasing print runs could now be illustrated with numerous images and maps. The democratisation of imagery was continued with the arrival of lithography, in use for book illustration by the end of the 1830s. Although initially restricted to monochrome illustrations, lithography would eventually enable the mass production of colour imagery for both individual prints and book plates. Andrew Hemingway has argued that different techniques were generally used for different functions, with line engraving being used predominantly for picturesque topography and lithography for ‘modern’ subjects.62 However, this distinction is not always apparent. Rather, the nature of the publication and the audience dictated the quality and cost, and therefore the technique used. It was as likely that a trade card for a prestigious firm would be produced by the process of copper-plate engraving as it was for a picturesque scene or folio plate. In addition, the trades of letter-press printing and print selling were interrelated throughout the eighteenth century, but with the arrival of steel engraving and lithography, the two became even more integrated, even as the subject and format of images and texts became increasingly diverse. Outlets emerged to supply all levels of demand and taste.63 Those who could not afford, or had no inclination, to buy prints could hire them for an evening’s entertainment, and printsellers found means of attracting customers from all sectors of society, including targeting very specific groups. On the back of his companion to the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the Liverpool printseller, Henry Lacey advertised a special range of prints, cut to a convenient size to fit a seaman’s cabin.64 Although Eirwen Nicholson may be correct in her assertion that political prints continued to be consumed by a predominantly middle and upper-class audience throughout the late eighteenth century, topographical views and urban subjects were increasingly marketed to every strata of society.65 Whereas connoisseurs, antiquarians, and specialist collectors had previously provided the majority of print-sellers’ custom, printed views of towns became accessible to a broadening spectrum of consumers via a wide range of retailers. 13

Beyond the metropolis

Urban histories and travel guides that included engraved or lithographed imagery were published across Britain for a range of audiences. As domestic, particularly urban, travel increased, provincial publishers like John and Abel Heywood of Manchester supplied tourists and commercial travellers alike. Guidebooks and images were published to accompany specific journeys and sights of interest, as well as traditional histories and souvenirs of the towns themselves.66 A representative example can be seen in Thomas Roscoe’s Summer Tour to the Isle of Wight (1843), which, in addition to the descriptions and illustrations of traditional ‘sights’, includes a series of plates depicting the region’s main railway termini and a map of railway routes.67 For some provincial firms like Drakes of Birmingham, the railways were an opportunity to publish accounts and views of towns other than their own, and so reach an expanding audience of domestic tourists and foreigners.68 A rare advertisement for the small provincial publisher G. Furby of Bridlington, dating from 1836, illustrates the apparent demand for topographical imagery among both local inhabitants and visitors. On the back cover of the paperback guidebook, Picturesque Excursions from Bridlington Quay, Furby lists a wide range of his ‘lithographic and copperplate views’ available from his own premises and those of another retailer, Mr. Gardner, in the same town.69 The list includes two large views of Bridlington Quay and Danes-Dyke, Flamborough, each fourteen inches by seven inches, and available coloured for four shillings, printed on India paper for three shillings and as plain prints for two shillings. In addition, there are listed a further fifteen views of the surrounding area, towns, halls and churches, printed on ‘super royal paper’ for a shilling and plain for six pence, with the promise of ‘a great variety of others’ to be seen at his premises including a ‘series of gold views of Bridlington, Scarborough, York, etc.’ printed on enamel cards. Clearly, by 1836, a ready market existed for printed images of provincial towns in a range of sizes and of varying quality and it was a demand that reached beyond seaside resort towns to inland centres such as York and Leeds. Some companies attained success at a truly national level. The famous eighteenth-century London ‘merchant printseller’, John Boydell, and W. F. Rock, whose company reached the height of its success in the middle of the nineteenth century, became well-known throughout the country.70 Companies like these utilised new printing technologies to reach national and even international markets and so represented the first in a new generation of printers and printsellers who benefited from the increasing demand for topographical, and often specifically urban, views. While it would be an exaggeration to claim that a single image could constitute a comprehensive visual matrix of a city’s commercial, industrial, and historical characteristics comparable to those presented by many statisticians and authors, different types of images, produced for different audiences reflect diverse attitudes. The chapters in this book draw upon research into over one thousand images produced between c.1780 and 1880, a large proportion of extant printed imagery depicting British provincial towns from the period. In addition to ‘traditional’ two-dimensional visual material, such as prints and 14

Introduction

printed book illustrations, the chapters also address more diverse modes of visual representation. Ceramic souvenirs which incorporate topographical imagery, as well as panoramas, exhibition stands, and displays that were produced to promote a town’s trades and wares are discussed alongside prints and advertisements. In her study of Victorian exhibitions, Barbara J. Black draws a direct analogy between the appeal and function of views and exhibitions, arguing that the aerial view ‘itself a kind of fantasy of supremacy – grants us perspective on how museums, these earthly paradises, enchanted Victorian culture’.71 Exhibition spaces, articles of manufacture, and views of towns and individual buildings were all produced to inform, instruct, and publicise the character of individual towns and of the urban realm in general. Exhibition objects and arenas of display therefore provide an opportunity to explore the role of visualisation in general in the creation and circulation of provincial urban identities. The intention here is to reach a richer understanding of the entire process of ‘visualisation’ and the manner in which it contributed to the formation and circulation of popular notions of provincial urbanisation. A heavy dependence upon printed and ephemeral imagery brings with it a number of dilemmas and one of the most challenging is the identification of the audience. Whereas it is possible to glean some knowledge of reading audiences from the records of circulating libraries, diaries, and other primary sources, few such records exist in relation to printed imagery.72 Of course, it is possible to make reasonable surmises about the high end of the market, as the price of prints published by firms such as Ackermann and Boydell tended to exclude the labouring classes from accessing such imagery. However, the technological advancements already outlined made even elaborate engravings increasingly obtainable. With this burgeoning market for printed imagery it becomes more and more difficult to identify particular consumer groups. Yet, as imagery became more widely accessible, so it becomes proportionally less important to locate and specify particular consumers. As, by the middle of the nineteenth century, engravings, advertisements, and even ceramic souvenirs were manufactured for every taste and budget, it is perhaps more useful to consider how visual genres differed in their form and function, both from each other, and from those that had dominated the market a few decades earlier. Another substantial challenge faces historians in the identification of agency behind the production of individual images. Of course, printed views and even pictorial ceramics were almost universally produced for a commercial market, but it can be difficult to interrogate the more complex motives that inform their design. Civic promotion, private commercial interest, conformity to established aesthetic models, and a personal preference for either urban or rural landscapes all contributed to the choice of subject and composition. Despite the extensive body of imagery available, it is rarely possible to establish the precise reasons why an artist chose to represent particular scenes in a specific manner. The problem is exacerbated further by the difficulty in attributing prints to a single artist or even publisher. Although most prints were originally labelled with the names of the 15

Beyond the metropolis

artist, the engraver, and the date of publication, in many cases this information has been trimmed from the print. In other examples, this information may be present but the view itself was copied or adapted from an earlier edition, sometimes with substantial additions.73 In such instances it is often impossible to identify all the parties involved in the processes of creation and publication. The dating of ephemeral imagery also poses a significant challenge. Although images published within guidebooks and folios are relatively easy to date, collections in scrapbooks or single items that have been trimmed can occasionally prove impossible to date accurately. Still, in most cases, a combination of clues including the dates of the artist’s active career, the depiction of certain buildings, and the printing technique employed, help to establish an approximate date of execution. Despite the inherent problems that accompany the use of prints, these sources provide a valuable body of evidence to the urban and cultural historian. It can be challenging to chart the cultural and social context of individual images, but taken collectively the large number of images consulted here reveal recurring subjects, approaches, and aesthetic treatments of the urban scene, and therefore make a new and important contribution to the historical understanding of this period in British urban development. Perhaps the most striking potential contribution of visual images to existing historical narratives of provincial urbanisation is the range of perspectives displayed. Themes such as antiquity and modernity, commerce and culture, and art and nature recur in various forms, mirroring how their prominence in the minds of the public and the artist shifted throughout the period. These polarities are articulated to differing extents and with varying emphasis in different genres. The first genre to be addressed, the distant topographical view, was produced in various forms throughout the period. Although initially the preserve of the wealthy, who could afford the high price of the necessarily low edition numbers of copper-plate engravings, by the mid-nineteenth century this type of view could also be found in newspapers, pocket miscellanies, and penny guides.74 As a result, this genre provides a useful introduction to the development of urban imagery. In Chapter 2 attention turns to the myriad ways in which shows and exhibitions contributed to the evolving reputations of British provincial towns. From panoramas to ‘courts’ and ‘trophies’ at industrial expositions and the ambitious Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857, artists, publishers, and graphic journalists exploited these attractions to promulgate positive or pejorative, and sometimes ambivalent, attitudes towards the towns concerned and urbanisation in general. From the diversions and entertainments of shows and exhibitions, in Chapter 3 we turn to the more practical subject of urban improvement and its depiction in printed imagery. Although often considered the product of necessity and pragmatism, improvements such as floating harbours, street widening, and public walks could be visionary and spectacular. Even unrealised schemes reveal much about the pretentions and civic zeal of local worthies, and engineers often presented their proposals to the public via sketches, engravings, and illustrated pamphlets. Contained within this material is an abundance of observations 16

Introduction

and ambitions of individual towns and cities, as well as wider urban networks. Chapter 4 considers a wholly different genre of urban imagery as it traces the form and development of pictorial commercial advertising and its contribution to the changing values and images associated with provincial manufacturing towns. Beginning with the small wood-block vignettes that decorated early newspapers and directories, it goes on to address the impact of increasingly elaborate and sophisticated visual advertisements as well as promotional objects. In so doing, it accounts for the gradual dominance of industry and commerce over the shape and representation of urban Britain. The final chapter, titled ‘Crucibles of liberty and ruin’, explores the characterisation of provincial British towns as radical and potentially destructive political fireboxes. Taking the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 and the Bristol Riots of 1831 as principal case studies, it interrogates the extent to which the metaphors of the industrial furnace and the ancient ruin became conflated in the narrative of urban reinvention. Together, these chapters present a picture of urban Britain that is not only complex, but also contradictory. As such, they reflect a society in which critics of urbanisation were often its primary beneficiaries, and its champions were all too aware of its flaws. Notes  1 B. Love, Manchester As It Is: or, notices of the institutions, manufactures, commerce, railways etc. (Manchester, 1839), p. 10.  2 S. Dentith, Society and Cultural Forms in Nineteenth-Century England (Basingstoke, 1998), p. 108; C. Dickens, ‘Hard Times’, Household Words (1854); B. Disraeli, Sybil, or The Two Nations (London, 1845).  3 T. Carlyle, Chartism (London, 1840), pp. 1–8.  4 W. Cobbett, Rural Rides [1830] (Harmondsworth, 2001); P. Ackroyd, London: the biography (London, 2000), pp. 1 and 202–3; and R. Porter, London: a social history (Harmondsworth, 1994), p. 312.  5 T. Carlyle, Chartism, p. 3.  6 J. Adshead, Distress in Manchester: evidence of the state of the labouring classes 1840–42 (London, 1842), p. 53.  7 F. Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England [1845] (Oxford, 1993), pp. 81–2.  8 F. Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England, p. 86.  9 F. Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England, p. 78. 10 B. I. Coleman, The Idea of the City in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London, 1973), pp. 5–7. 11 T. Hunt, Building Jerusalem: the rise and fall of the Victorian city (London, 2004); C. Arscott, G. Pollock, and J. Wolff, ‘The partial view: the visual representation of the early nineteenth-century city’, in J. Seed and J. Wolff (eds), The Culture of Capital: art, power and the nineteenth-century middle class (Manchester, 1988), pp. 191–233; A. Briggs, Victorian Cities (Los Angeles, CA, 1963), p. 67; and C. Arscott, ‘The representation of the city in the visual arts’, in M. Daunton (ed.), Cambridge Urban History of Britain Volume 3 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 811–32 (p. 811). 12 A. Briggs, Victorian Cities, p. 59. 17

Beyond the metropolis

13 A. Kettle, ‘The early Victorian social-problem novel’, in B. Ford (ed.), New Pelican Guide to English Literature, 6 vols (Harmondsworth, 1982), VI, pp. 169–87. 14 J. W. Childers, ‘Industrial culture and the Victorian novel’, in D. David (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 77–96 (p. 77). 15 R. Samuel, Theatres of Memory (London, 1994), pp. 401–25; and J. Glavin (ed.), Dickens on Screen (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 2–3. 16 H. J. Dyos, ‘The Victorian city in historical perspective’, in D. Cannadine and D. Reeder (eds), Exploring the Urban Past: essays in urban history by H. J. Dyos (Cambridge, 1982), p. 13. 17 L. Nead, Victorian Babylon: people, streets and images in nineteenth-century London (New Haven, CT, 2000). 18 P. Clarke (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain Volume 2 (Cambridge, 2000); and E. McKellar, Landscapes of London: the city, the country and the suburbs 1660–1840 (New Haven, CT and London, 2013). 19 J. Stobart, A. Hann, and V. Morgan, Spaces of Consumption: leisure and shopping in the English town, c.1680–1830 (Abingdon, 2007); and R. Sweet, The English Town 1680– 1840: government, society and culture (Harlow, 1999). 20 C. Dibdin, Observations on a Tour Through Almost the Whole of England, and a Considerable Part of Scotland (London, 1801), p. 280. 21 C. Dibdin, Observations on a Tour, p. 263. 22 C. Arscott, ‘The representation of the city in the visual arts’, p. 811. 23 A. Briggs, Victorian Cities, p. 71. 24 R. Williams, The Country and the City (London, 1973), p. 1. See also H. J. Dyos, ‘The Victorian city in historical perspective’, p. 13. 25 T. Hunt, Building Jerusalem, p. 29. 26 B. Hilton, A Mad, Bad and Dangerous People? England 1783–1846 (Oxford, 2006), p. 573. 27 F. Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England; and H. J. Dyos, ‘The slums of Victorian London’, in D. Cannadine and D. Reeder (eds), Exploring the Urban Past, pp. 129–57. 28 H. J. Dyos, ‘The Victorian city in historical perspective’, in D. Cannadine and D. Reeder (eds), Exploring the Urban Past, p. 4. See also Peter Borsay on his preference for a qualitative analysis of the eighteenth-century town, rather than a merely quantitative approach in P. Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: culture and society in the provincial town 1660–1770 (Oxford, 1989), p. 3. 29 R. Rodger, ‘Rents and ground rents: housing and the land market in nineteenthcentury Britain’, in J. H. Johnson and C. G. Pooley (eds), The Structure of NineteenthCentury Cities (New York, 1982), pp. 39–68; R. J. Morris (ed.), Class, Power and Social Structure in British Nineteenth-Century Towns (Leicester, 1986); C. Chalklin, The Provincial Towns of Georgian England: a study of the building process 1740–1820 (London, 1974); E. Baigent, ‘Economy and society in eighteenth-century English towns: Bristol in the 1770s’, in D. Denecke and G. Shaw, Urban Historical Geography: recent progress in Britain and Germany (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 109–24. 30 J. H. Johnson and C. G. Pooley (eds), The Structure of Nineteenth-Century Cities, p. 8. 31 P. J. Corfield, The Impact of English Towns 1700–1800 (Oxford, 1982), p. 168. 32 D. W. Meinig (ed.), The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: geographical essays (Oxford, 1979), p. 3. 33 T. Hunt, Building Jerusalem, p. 56. 18

Introduction

34 W. Hutton, A History of Birmingham to the End of the Year 1780 (Birmingham, 1783), p. 23. 35 S. Gunn, The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class: ritual and authority and the English industrial city 1840–1914 (Manchester, 2000); S. Gunn, ‘Ritual and civic culture in the English industrial city, c.1835–1914’, in R. J. Morris and R. H. Trainor (eds), Urban Governance: Britain and beyond since 1750 (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 226–41; L. Nead, Victorian Babylon. 36 S. Gunn, The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class, p. 37. 37 R. Porter, ‘Seeing the past’, Past and Present, 118 (1988), 186–205. 38 C. Arscott, ‘The representation of the city in the visual arts’, pp. 811–32. 39 E. McKellar, Landscapes of London, p. 98. 40 A. Humpherys, ‘Knowing the Victorian city: writing and representation’, Victorian Literature and Culture, 30 (2002), 601–12; D. Arnold (ed.), The Metropolis and its Image: constructing identities for London, c.1750–1950 (Oxford, 1999); D. Arnold, RePresenting the Metropolis: architecture, urban experience and social life in London 1800–1840 (Aldershot, 2000); P. Gilbert, Imagined Londons (New York, 2002); G. Maclean, The Country and the City Revisited: England and the politics of culture 1550–1850 (Cambridge, 1999); D. Mancoff, Victorian Urban Settings: essays on the nineteenth-century city and its contexts (New York, 1996); A. Hemingway, Landscape Imagery and Urban Culture in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge, 1992); W. Vaughan, ‘London topographers and urban change’, in I. B. Nadel and F. S. Schwarzbach (eds), Victorian Artists and the City: a collection of critical essays (New York and Oxford, 1980), pp. 59–76; J. Stabler, ‘Cities’, in J. Todd (ed.), Jane Austen in Context (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 204–14; P. Ackroyd, London Illustrated (London, 2003); and B. Adams, London Illustrated 1604– 1851: a survey and index of topographical books and their plates (London, 1983). 41 D. J. Gray, ‘Views and sketches of London in the nineteenth century’, in I. B. Nadel and F. S. Schwarzbach (eds), Victorian Artists and the City, pp. 43–5. See also S. Daniels, ‘The implications of industry: Turner and Leeds’, Turner Studies, 6 (1986), 10–17 (10). 42 D. J. Gray, ‘Views and sketches of London in the nineteenth century’, p. 44. 43 D. J. Gray, ‘Views and sketches of London in the nineteenth century’, p. 44. See also J. Elmes and T. H. Shepherd, Metropolitan Improvements: London in the nineteenth century (London, 1827); and J. Elmes and T. H. Shepherd, London and its Environs in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1831). 44 J. G. Links, Townscape Painting and Drawings (London, 1972), pp. 194–201; E. D. H. Johnson, ‘Victorian artists and the urban milieu’, in J. Dyos and M. Wolff (eds), The Victorian City, 2 vols (London, 1973), II, pp. 449–74; and D. Piper, Artists’ London (London, 1982). 45 J. Ellis, ‘Regional and county centres 1700–1840’, in P. Clark (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain Volume 2 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 673–704 (p. 674). 46 B. Trinder, The Making of the Industrial Landscape (London, 1982), p. 170. 47 P. Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance, p. 37. (Original emphasis.) 48 P. Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance, pp. 42–5. 49 M. Reed, ‘The transformation of urban space 1700–1840’, in P. Clark (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain Volume 2, pp. 615–71 (p. 615). 50 R. Sweet, The English Town 1680–1840: government, society and culture, pp. 219–26. 51 P. Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance, p. 83. 52 See the publication figures for urban histories between 1701 and 1820 in R. Sweet, The Writing of Urban Histories in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford, 1997), p. 9. 19

Beyond the metropolis

53 D. E. Nord, Walking the Victorian Streets: women, representation, and the city (New York, 1995), p. 21. 54 Francis Foster Barham, The New Bristol Guide, a comic poem (London, 1847), p. 4. 55 William Cole’s advertisement for ‘Superior lithographic prints’, Stranger’s Guide to London Etc.; or new ambulator for the tour of the metropolis and its vicinity (London, 1876). 56 A. Pullan, ‘For publicity and profit’, in M. Rosenthal, C. Payne, and S. Wilcox (eds), Prospects for the Nation: recent essays in British Landscape, 1750–1880 (New Haven, CT, 1997), pp. 261–84 (p. 263). 57 J. Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English culture in the eighteenth century (Chicago, 1997), pp. 433–8; and C. McCreery, The Satirical Gaze: prints of women in late eighteenth-century England (Oxford, 2004), pp. 13–38. 58 W. St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge, 2004), p. 343. 59 S. O’Connell, The Popular Print in England 1550–1850 (London, 1999), pp. 167–74. 60 J. Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination, pp. 452–3. 61 G. Wakeman, Victorian Book Illustration: the technical revolution (Newton Abbot, 1973), p. 23. 62 A. Hemingway, Landscape Imagery and Urban Culture in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain, pp. 163–4 and 219–20. 63 S. Zablotney, ‘Production and reproduction: commerce in images in late eighteenthcentury London’, History of Political Economy, supplement (1999), 413–22 (415). 64 Advertisement, in A. Freeling, Lacey’s Railway Companion and Liverpool and Manchester Guide to Business and Pleasure (Liverpool, 1836), back cover. 65 E. E. C. Nicholson, ‘Consumers and spectators: the public of the political print in eighteenth-century England’, History, 81 (1996), 5–21 (9). 66 See J. Heywood, Sam Sondnokkur’s Ryde from Ratchda to Manchistur te vist to Manchistur Mekaniks Hinstitution Sho (Manchester, 1857); G. Holt, A Sketch of the Principal and Most Interesting Objects Observed in a Tour along the Railway from Birmingham to Derby (Birmingham, 1841); G. Furby, Picturesque Excursions from Bridlington Quay; being a descriptive guide to the most interesting scenery in that neighbourhood (Bridlington, 1836). See also Rosemary Sweet’s account of illustrations for urban histories, R. Sweet, The Writing of Urban Histories in Eighteenth-Century England, pp. 23–7. 67 T. Roscoe, Summer Tour to the Isle of Wight; including Portsmouth, Southampton, Winchester, the South Western Railway &c. (London, 1843). 68 J. Drake, Drake’s Road Book of the Grand Junction Railway, from Birmingham to Liverpool and Manchester (Birmingham, 1837). 69 G. Furby, Advertisement, in Picturesque Excursions from Bridlington Quay, rear cover. 70 T. Balston, ‘Alderman Boydell, printseller’, History Today, 2 (1952), 544–50; R. Hyde, ‘A year for celebrating W. F. Rock’, Print Quarterly, 19 (2002), 341–52. 71 B. J. Black, On Exhibit: Victorians and their museums (Charlottesville, VA and London, 2000), p. 3. 72 S. Eliot, ‘Some trends in British book production, 1800–1919’, in J. O. Jordan and R. L. Patten (eds), Literature in the Marketplace: nineteenth-century British publishing and reading practices (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 19–43. 73 See J. Redaway after W. H. Bartlett, View of the City of Bristol from S.W. 74 For an example of the kind of topographical imagery to be found in small miscellanies see the view of Tunbridge Wells published in The Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction, 19 September 1829, p. 177.

20

B1B The urban prospect

There is a castle-keep, not far from the centre of the kingdom, from whence can be obtained one of the most remarkable views anywhere presented to the artist or the tourist. It is not a view of hill or dale, of mountain and water-fall, of craggy rock and dizzy precipice; it is not a sweep of country, spotted with ruins of cathedrals, abbeys, castles, baronial mansions, and other erections that tell of past days; it is not a commingling of lake scenery with land scenery, nor any of those picturesque groupings which distinguish a sea-coast … it is the coal and iron district of South Staffordshire … Wolverhampton … West Bromwich, and … Birmingham.1

Distant prospects of provincial towns and their hinterlands produced in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries entered a corpus of topographical imagery that dates back as far as John Speed’s first atlas of the British Isles, the Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine (1612).2 This chapter charts the evolution of the urban view in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, its various incarnations, and the aesthetic models and values that informed the genre as a whole. Starting with relatively traditional prospect-style views, it traces how this conservative model transformed and was supplanted by more ‘modern’ representations as townscapes and visual technologies evolved. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, urban views, sold separately or incorporated into antiquarian studies, grew into a popular genre of visual representation. The growing public appetite for urban imagery, combined with advancements in printing technologies and the transport networks necessary to circulate material between towns, led to a burgeoning market for printed townscapes. From the 1720s onwards, the now famous urban prospects produced by Samuel and Nathaniel Buck helped to popularise the genre and provided the compositional model for much of the topographical imagery that was to follow.3 Common to every variation of the distant urban prospect was visual inclusivity. Whereas gazetteers segregated different aspects of a town, requiring paragraphs, chapters, and subheadings, such as ‘situation and scenery’ and ‘influence of

21

Beyond the metropolis

manufactories’, panoramic prospects enabled viewers to appreciate the urban scene as a whole.4 The fascination with taking in the entire city complemented contemporary guidance on the appreciation of art. In his Essay Upon Prints (1768), William Gilpin explained the ‘necessity of unity or a whole in painting’ explaining that: The eye, upon a complex view, must be able to comprehend the picture as one object, or it cannot be satisfied. It may be pleased indeed by feeding on the parts separately: but a picture, which can please no [sic] otherwise; is as poor a production as a machine, the springs and wheels of which are finished with nicety, but are unable to act in concert, and effect the intended movement.  Now disposition, or the art of grouping and combining figures, and several parts of a picture, is an essential, which contributes greatly to produce a whole in painting. When the parts are scattered, they have no dependence on each other; they are still only parts: but, by an agreeable grouping, they are massed together, and become a whole.5

Before it was even committed to paper by the artist or engraver, an urban prospect might already be appreciated as a pleasing picture, combining ‘several parts’ within a whole. As Elizabeth McKellar notes in her recent study of similar images of London, ‘it was the totality and specificity of the topography that was to be admired, this allowed for a figuring of the everyday as well as the grand, the modern and the historic’.6 This combination of ‘totality and specificity’, borne out in images like Thomas Kelly’s Glasgow (1817) and Henry Lacey’s Liverpool, Looking North (1846), accurately represent commercial premises and residential housing, churches, and civic buildings in close proximity (see Figures 1 and 2). Far from presenting an exceptional or exaggerated vision of the provincial townscape, Lacey and Kelly’s views are typical. In 1836 Augustus Pugin’s Contrasts: or, a parallel between the noble edifices of the middle ages, and similar buildings of the present day, included a ‘typical’ view of a British town that demonstrates a similarly diverse range of buildings with a variety of commercial, civic, and religious functions.7 However, with such a range of features on offer, opportunities for variation and manipulation were countless. Topographical accuracy was certainly greatly prized in town views, with illustrated gazetteers and folios of prints often serving as visual encyclopaedias. Nevertheless, just as the function of topographical imagery complemented that of cartography, so too was it vulnerable to the same tension between the real features it represented and the rhetoric with which it delivered that truth. As Pamela K. Gilbert observes of Victorian cartography, ‘the earth seems the very stuff of materiality, the privileged referent of truth and experience’ but, contrary to this perceived truth, ‘all maps are rhetorical’.8 This same paradox exists in images of the urban environment that were affected by prevalent social, political, and aesthetic values. An inclusive vista like that selected by Lacey offered artists and commentators a huge range of visual motifs that could be excluded or privileged within the scene. As a result, distant views can reveal consistencies, disparities, and contradictions in the reality and reputation of a town. 22

The urban prospect

1  T. Kelly, Glasgow (1817).

2  ‘Liverpool Looking North’, in Pictorial Liverpool (1846).

23

Beyond the metropolis

An inherited visual language During the first half of the period covered by this book, values that had determined the relative prestige of provincial towns for centuries still dominated their literary and pictorial representation. In order to fully understand early nineteenthcentury interpretations of topographical views it is therefore important to consider these representations as the articulation of inherited values rather than as precursors of later, Victorian attitudes to urbanisation. These ‘values’ might broadly, although not exhaustively, be categorised as the historical or antiquarian status of a city, its commercial success and national contribution, its social and economic harmony with the surrounding hinterland, its role as a site of specific activities or events, and finally its association with particular landmarks, both ancient and modern. The relative importance of each of these qualities altered throughout the nineteenth century. However, there is no reason to think that the ‘urban renaissance’ that characterised eighteenth-century towns entered sudden decline in the early years of the nineteenth century.9 Instead, early nineteenthcentury observers inherited some notion of the power structures, benefits, and failures traditionally associated with urban centres.10 As Robert Morris and Richard Rodger have noted, throughout the nineteenth century ‘it was rare that locations and distributions could be explained without reference to previous generations’.11 Asa Briggs goes even further, suggesting that it was the very speed at which towns were changing that impelled many sedulous studies of their past: The antiquarians have produced many useful studies of particular facets of cities, and they were well entrenched in Victorian England when it was considered to be as praiseworthy to give cities long pedigrees as it was to trace family trees. The faster things grew, the more necessary it seemed that they should be rooted in the past.12

An ‘urban pedigree’ was retold to the reading public in short guidebooks as well as multi-volume works like J. Whitaker’s History of Manchester in Four Books (1773), which began its account of the town with the period of Roman occupation.13 Just as authors inherited an understanding of how antiquarian, economic, and political qualities recommended a town to visitors and residents, artists and engravers inherited a pictorial language with which to articulate such sites visually. These inherited systems of representation informed the interpretation of evolving townscapes until urban development itself altered the very nature of viewing the environment. In 1830, William West’s Picturesque Views and Descriptions of Cities, Towns, Castles, Mansions and other objects of Interesting Features in Staffordshire and Shropshire included a view of ‘Wolverhampton from the Penn Road’, which while incorporating a number of chimneys and domestic buildings, was otherwise dominated by the town’s historic St Peter’s church and St John’s church.14 Similarly, nearly thirty years later, the Illustrated London News (ILN) commemorated the Queen’s visit to Leeds with a double-page engraving of the city and its belching chimneys, surrounded by a montage of

24

The urban prospect

wood engravings depicting local historic buildings, including Kirkstall Abbey and the church of St Peter.15 The surge in the popularity of topographical imagery was due, in part, to the writings of figures like Gilpin and Richard Payne-Knight in the latter decades of the eighteenth century.16 As Rosemary Sweet notes in her study of British antiquaries, the rise in interest in domestic antiquities was due partly ‘to the aesthetic preference for the picturesque and the sublime which dominated the second half of the century. This … created demand for a new type of publication, which illustrated scenes of picturesque antiquities’.17 John Aikin’s England Delineated; or, a geographical description of every county in England and Wales (1788), and J. Britton’s Picturesque Antiquities of the English Cities; from drawings by G. F. Robson (1830) were typical of this type of publication and supplied the marketplace with extensive series of urban prospects that were decorative as well as informative.18 At its most basic level ‘picturesque’, derived from the Italian term for a painter, ‘pittore’, refers to any view or scene that conforms to the conventions of the ‘picture’. As such, all townscapes could be interpreted as essentially picturesque subjects. However, the extent to which a view appeared to be a ready-made ‘picture’ could be enhanced by artists and engravers through devices such as ‘frames’ of trees, a balance of land and sky, and human, animal or atmospheric action. The picturesque qualities of roughness, irregularity, variety, and chiaroscuro, recommended by William Gilpin in his influential Three Essays on Picturesque Beauty, recur throughout many urban views produced during the first half of the nineteenth century.19 Artists including J. M. W. Turner and Joseph Farington, the Royal Academician now famed for his diaries as well as his picturesque watercolours, produced numerous urban views.20 Many of the towns that enjoyed admiration and prestige possessed architecture that singly, or when grouped, conformed to the irregular ideal of Gilpin’s picturesque formula.21 In Richardson and Dobbie’s ‘Edinburgh Old Town from Princes Street’ (1841), published in numerous editions of Black’s Picturesque Tourist of Scotland, the irregular skyline of the Old Town conformed to many of Gilpin’s principles by bringing to mind a series of broken ruins (see Figure 3). There are few distinctive buildings and only the crown steeple of the High Kirk renders it recognisable as that specific city. The scene is extolled in its accompanying description, which claimed that the ‘general architecture of the city is very imposing, whether we regard the picturesque confusion of the buildings in the Old Town, or the symmetrical proportions of the streets and squares in the New’.22 The late date of this image and its description suggests that the aesthetic appeal of such ‘picturesque confusion’ survived well into the nineteenth century. Ancient structures or aesthetically conscious urban remodelling were certainly central to the establishment of many urban reputations. In Prospects and Observations on a Tour in England and Scotland (1791), published under the pseudonym of Thomas Newte esq., William Thomson eulogised the combination of ‘nature and art’ that he believed raised the town of Birmingham to a state of ‘opulence’.23 In a similar manner, a 1793 annotated plan of Manchester and 25

Beyond the metropolis

3  Richardson and Dobbie, ‘Edinburgh Old Town from Princes Street’ (1842).

Salford omitted to mention local industry at all and instead recommended the area for its healthy climate and the surrounding country, which it described as ‘variegated in the most picturesque manner’.24 The visual equivalent of these accounts is evident in a view of Manchester from Mount Pleasant by William Craig and engraved by John Landseer in 1802 (see Figure 4). Craig and Landseer’s view incorporates a number of traditional artistic conventions, inherited from earlier modes of topographical representation. Italianate trees frame the left of the picture in the manner of Claude, and the undulating foreground combined with the motifs of the rural shepherd and broken branches conform to the guidelines for a picturesque composition as recommended by Gilpin in his Essay on Sketching Landscape: ‘In adorning your sketch, a figure, or two may be introduced with propriety. By figures I mean moving objects, as wagons, and boats, as well as cattle and men’.25 The inclusion of human figures also enabled artists to refer implicitly to their audience and endorse the act of viewing both the real scene and its representation in art. Although in some instances these characters were entirely imaginative, with no basis in the artist’s personal observations, the topography of some districts ensured that those working or walking in a town’s immediate hinterland enjoyed a panoramic view. In 1794, The New History, Survey and Description of the City and Suburbs of Bristol explained to its readers: 26

The urban prospect

4  W. H. Craig and J. Landseer, View of Manchester (1802).

Strangers, who are spectators from the opposite hills, and from some parts of the city and suburbs, are struck with agreeable surprise, at the sight of a large Town … From these, and many other hills about Bristol, particularly Montpellier to the North, the City, its two greatest Churches, the Cathedral and Redcliff, and its other lofty curious and elegant Towers and Steeples, make an august and venerable object.26

As urban tourism increased in popularity throughout the early nineteenth century, the act of viewing the townscape was depicted explicitly in engravings. Prints such as View of Manchester from Strawberry Hill (on the Bolton Canal) published in 1818, demonstrate the perceived correspondence between the act of appraising a town in reality and viewing it in representations, and suggest that a visual engagement with the town was appreciated as a necessary and worthy pursuit.27 In that image a fashionable middle-class couple reflect both the activity and the assumed social class of the viewer, while in other instances, such as view of Leeds from Beeston Hall (1858), the artist himself is depicted (see the cover image for this volume).28 Pictorial convention dictated that human figures such as these be assimilated into an overall picturesque model, for the purposes of expressing distance and providing pictorial interest in the foreground.29 As Samuel Prout instructed his readers in his Microcosm (1841), ‘Figures always give

27

Beyond the metropolis

5  W. F. P. W. Hole after Pen, ‘View of Liverpool in 1806’, in The History of Liverpool (1810).

cheerfulness, and in a degree according to their number’.30 However, rather than incorporating figures as mere passive, decorative devices, in these examples they are protagonists, depicted actively engaged in viewing, evaluating, appreciating, and even recording the townscape. Even the peasant figure in Craig and Landseer’s illustration directs the viewer’s attention towards the central feature of the townscape, and the fence provides a distinct boundary between the vantage point of the foreground and the scene to be viewed. Unlike the passive, rural characters that ‘staff’ traditional topographical imagery, these new figures more frequently represented a conspicuously urban section of society from beyond the rural vicinity of the foreground.31 In a ‘View of Liverpool in 1806’ that appeared in the 1810 edition of Troughton’s History of Liverpool the ‘viewing model’ is a small, silhouetted figure in a rowing boat who directs the attention of his fellow passengers and the print viewer towards the urban skyline (see Figure 5). The use of such viewing models was not restricted to cabinet prints or fine folio engravings. Even journalistic images and cheap ephemera employed comparable visual devices. In a view of Manchester that accompanied an article in the ILN in 1842, a small family group were depicted in a similar fashion to those that appear on fine-quality stand-alone prints.32 A letterhead view of Bristol by William Willis also exhibited a variation on this device.33 Willis’s prospect dispensed with much of the rural foreground that characterises many earlier views and, in doing so, confined the viewer’s attention to the town itself. The artist also limited his characters to the urban, middling classes that made up the bulk of his customers. The figures faced the town, replicating and endorsing the activity of the audience; a comparison accentuated by a central male character who, gesturing with his arm, directed the attention of both his companions and the external viewer towards the city. The perceived necessity of incorporating

28

The urban prospect

such ‘model’ figures is demonstrated by three versions of another view of Bristol, taken by William Henry Bartlett. In the earlier of the two versions, published in John Britton’s Picturesque Antiquities of English Cities (1830), the foreground was populated by two rural labourers and a small group from the middling classes who face out towards the viewer.34 In a later version, from c.1830, the engraver James Redaway made the addition of ‘viewing models’ in the very centre of the composition. Again, conspicuously well-dressed, this couple reiterated the value and social currency of ‘taking in’ the townscape. The third version appeared in Thomas Dugdale’s part work, Curiosities of Great Britain: England & Wales Delineated (c.1850) and is more modest in scale and artistic accomplishment than those produced by Bartlett and Redaway (see Figure 6). Here, there is just one small but central family group. Yet, despite its humble size and quality, the print provides the same visual clues as to the impression that the print viewer should gain from the prospect. Such ‘models’, their conspicuous urbanity, and appreciation of the urban environment, suggest a popular consensus regarding the visual significance of the town and their inclusion in imagery became ubiquitous. An engraving from another of Britton’s publications reveals the extent to which the role of such figures as ‘viewing models’ could also be combined with other functions. In Thomas H. Shepherd’s Edinburgh, from the Calton Hill (c.1847) the figures again flattered the social status of print viewers (see Figure 7).35 However, in addition, the tartan kilts and skirts worn by many of the figures proclaim them to be local residents. Their role is thus threefold as they served as viewing models,

6  T. Dugdale, ‘Bristol’, in Curiosities of Great Britain: England & Wales Delineated (c.1850).

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Beyond the metropolis

7  Illman and Pillbrow after T. H. Shepherd, Edinburgh, from the Calton Hill (c.1847).

as indicators of locality, and also, in this instance, as ‘picturesque Scots’ who lent an additional layer of Romantic imagination and character to the scene.36 The fashion for ‘taking in’ urban views meant that towns with a convenient vantage point could gain a favourable reputation, even when the townscape itself was relatively unremarkable. Many literary accounts of urban views made an implicit distinction between the beauty of the town itself and the spectacle of the view. As the passage quoted at the outset of this chapter suggests, a view’s interest and pleasure for a tourist was not solely dependent upon picturesque beauty. Diversity of architecture, ‘benign bustle’, and panoramic scale all contributed to the reputation of a ‘view’. A vantage point could provide a ‘perfect view’ of a city, without the city itself necessarily being recognised as ‘perfect’ or even conventionally beautiful.37 This again reflected Gilpin’s advice on the appreciation of paintings and prints, about which he observed, ‘we consider a print as we do a picture, in a double light, with regard to the whole, and with regard to its parts. It may have an agreeable effect as a whole, and yet be very culpable in its parts’.38 Consequently, a suitable vantage point, and images that reproduced it, could recommend provincial towns even if their cartography, architecture, and trades suggested anything but the ‘ideal’ urban environment. In 1842 a correspondent 30

The urban prospect

for the North of England Magazine demonstrated the transformative effect that a distant and elevated vantage point could work upon an urban scene: What a beautiful prospect we have now from this elevated ground above Old Trafford! The mass of building to the right looks dark with broad black clouds hanging over it like giant incubus … But here to the left, and immediately before us, the glowing sun looks out on a landscape fair, rich and beautiful … Nature has spread out a feast of beauty and art has done no little to increase the charm of this interesting spot.39

Towns were thus presented to viewers as fundamentally visual phenomena that were best appreciated and evaluated as a whole and viewed from an appropriate vantage point. The ‘view’, its composition and pictorial conventions were central to the public perception of provincial urbanisation and it was to a town’s advantage if it could be viewed and represented as a complete and balanced picture. In addition to ‘beautifying’ an urban view, the inclusion of picturesque, traditional motifs served to associate the town and its immediate surroundings with the values of stability and continuity. In December 1795 an engraved view of Bristol was published in Harrison and Company’s Pocket Magazine, which indicates the degree to which general views of towns and cities could contort, historicise, and even marginalise their subject to suit fashionable pictorial formulae.40 Although geographically close to Bath, and often associated with the leisure pursuits of that city throughout the eighteenth century, Bristol’s prosperity was historically the result of its national status as a significant trading port.41 The advantage of easy access to shipping, and particularly transatlantic exchange, led to the growth of a number of manufactories in the region, notably those of glassmaking and shipbuilding. By 1800, Bristol’s skyline was characterised by a combination of glass furnaces and ships’ masts. In labelling their illustration simply ‘Bristol’, the publishers of the Pocket Magazine presented their engraving as a definitive view of that town. However, in this image the urban scene is positioned some distance from the viewer and is partly occluded by a hillside. The docks are completely concealed from view and the townscape itself is only partly visible. The majority of the city centre is merely sketched in with simple lines that suggest low-level residential housing. These abbreviated residential buildings could belong to one of many British towns and suggest urbanisation in general rather than a specific location. The view is only identifiable as Bristol through the inclusion of a number of prominent, mainly ecclesiastical, buildings that punctuate the skyline. Despite its commercial character, in this instance Bristol was represented as a landscape to be appreciated aesthetically rather than valued for its associative qualities of commerce and trade. Another view of Bristol, published three years later in Harrison and Walker’s Copper-Plate Magazine (1799), demonstrated a similar process of topographical selectivity.42 The title of this view by the Newcastle engraver Isaac Nicholson, suggests again that the image presented is both inclusive and definitive, encapsulating the city

31

Beyond the metropolis

and representing a visual index to the trades, residences, and civic culture of its population.43 In this instance the docks were represented, but on a far smaller scale than could have been accurate even in 1799, and the signifiers of industrial production, such as the glass furnaces and workshops, were absent. While a number of large cargo ships were depicted in port, small rowing boats littered the foreground, constituting the only evidence of human ‘industry’. Bristol proper was again reduced to a series of indistinct roofs and facades. This particular case of selectivity is perhaps explained by the fact that by the 1790s Bristol was descending the urban hierarchy and, for towns in such a predicament, a historical reputation and ancient architecture could guarantee continuing inclusion in illustrated publications. As late as 1788, Luckombe’s guide to the Beauties of England failed to address Manchester, Leeds, or Birmingham individually, and focused instead upon historical county towns and their ‘antiquities, remains of palaces; monasteries, camps, and castles’.44 One popular vantage point used in the depiction of townscapes throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was the approach road or urban thoroughfare. In such images the perspective of the viewer repeats that of approaching visitors as they catch their first glimpse of the townscape from the turnpike road. Artists who employed this ‘town approach’ perspective thus replicated the initial urban encounter for an ever-expanding remote audience. In Kelly’s Glasgow the artist confers the status of traveller on the viewer as the road that leads to the city leaves the picture plane towards the centre of the lower edge of the image, thus ‘situating’ the viewer on the road itself.45 In an engraving after Turner’s Sheffield from Derbyshire Lane, published in the CopperPlate Magazine in August 1798, the rustic foreground almost eclipsed the town behind a sylvan swathe and rural cottages.46 Although figures occupy the road, in Turner’s image they were conspicuously ‘rural’ figures, suggestive of a local landowner and his tenants. The town itself appears as a distinct feature, but one of equal status to the surrounding hinterland. There are examples of all major towns being depicted in this manner throughout the early decades of the nineteenth century.47 In one view of Birmingham ‘taken’ from Washwood Heath (c.1830) the foreground was again dominated by an unpaved road that leads the attention of the viewer towards the central feature of the urban skyline.48 As with Kelly’s view, the inclusion of pedestrians and a covered wagon not only served as a decorative device, but also reinforced the status of the town by representing it as a destination and therefore an object of regional and possibly national importance. As urban migration accelerated, townscapes began to encroach on the foreground of such views to the extent that industrial and residential development brought the urban environment into the rural hinterland. Maxine Berg has argued that J. M. W Turner in particular recorded this sprawl as ‘not just the towns but the countrysides were painted with the activity of industry reaching out. The roads were painted prominently as main arteries busy with people on the move’.49 A comparable process is evident in printed views. In View of 32

The urban prospect

8  W. Dugdale (attr.) View of Birmingham from Bradford Street (c. 1816).

Birmingham from Bradford Street (c.1816) (see Figure 8), attributed to Sir William Dugdale, a main route into the town was represented along with symbols of prosperity and commercial exchange. In the foreground a dairyman transports milk churns to market; just ahead is a shepherd or driver walking his livestock towards Birmingham for a similar purpose. Although these are rural characters on a relatively quiet and peripheral road, they suggest the qualities of urban and rural harmony and regional prosperity. Thus, as well as providing pictorial access to the townscape, the ‘stage’ of the turnpike road or urban thoroughfare provided the opportunity to advertise a town’s growing prosperity and role as the centre of regional or national commercial exchange. Still, commerce and industry do not yet dominate other urban values. The tradesmen are local as their produce is agricultural rather than industrial. The townscape and the characters that populate it thus signify a balance between the commercial, regional, and industrial aspects of the town’s identity. To the right of the road stands a pair of bottle furnaces but the centre of the view, which is dominated by church towers and steeples, balances these substantial structures. These themes of commercial exchange and regional influence, as well as the opportunity to view large tracts of the town from different perspectives, are even more evident in images that utilise waterways and, later, railways to provide vantage points. Natural waterways and the seas that surround the British Isles predate even turnpike roads as a route for commercial and social exchange and also, therefore, as potential vantage points from which to ‘take in’ an urban vista.50 33

Beyond the metropolis

9  J. Cousen after C. Cope, View of Leeds Looking North West along the River Aire (1834).

The continuing use of river and coastal routes throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries led to their exploitation by artists as vantage points in a similar fashion to the roads discussed above. In some cases, a winding river was employed to the same effect as a curving road, as in C. Cope and J. Cousen’s View of Leeds (1834) (see Figure 9). Here, the River Aire provides a visual route into Leeds, guiding the viewer into the town centre. However, rather than a diminutive skyline, framed within a wide rural context, the river leads the viewer into the industrial heartland that lines the banks of the waterway. The approach serves to introduce the viewer to both the urban centre in general and its industrial character in particular. The visual progress from rural periphery to urban epicentre is less explicit, if not erased entirely. The creation of visual pathways into towns was not the only way in which waterways were employed in urban views. In the case of large seaports, their waterside position enabled artists to exploit vantage points on or across the water. For some towns like Liverpool, the characteristics of this marine vantage point became a defining feature of their image. The visual screen created by commercial buildings and dockyards was made denser by the constant presence of a vast number of ships, leading one visitor to characterise the view from the river as ‘an unintermitting line’.51 The array of buildings, cranes, and shipping created a spectacle for observers who viewed the port from the Mersey or the 34

The urban prospect

Birkenhead shore opposite.52 As one inhabitant of the city noted in the early decades of the nineteenth century, the docks were ‘considered as the most magnificent spectacle in the town’.53 The combination of this dockland screen and the preference for using rivers as a foreground against which to ‘set’ important ports and coastal towns resulted in the emergence of a relatively restrictive convention for representing the city of Liverpool. The most common view of Liverpool in circulation became one in which the city was dominated by large dockland structures such as hoists and commercial warehouses. This prescriptive view reiterated many literary accounts of the town that focused exclusively upon its trades. As one anonymous observer from 1799 claimed: ‘A history of Liverpool will be found to be rather of a people than of a place; divested of her complicated traffic, increased shipping, and nautical erections, there is nothing to recompense inquiry’.54 The extent of the perceived two-dimensionality of the Liverpool townscape is particularly notable in Pen and Hole’s engraved View of Liverpool (c.1806), the last in a series of ‘historical’ views of the Liverpool waterfront in Thomas Troughton’s History of Liverpool from the earliest authenticated period to present time (1810) (Figure 5). Troughton’s book was conventional in both its aims and scope. Although perhaps more heavily illustrated than many similar historical guidebooks, the structure was customary in the manner in which it led the reader chronologically through the development of Liverpool’s commerce, politics, and topography. More unusually, each of the numerous vignette prints and plates is dedicated to a prominent townsman, local aristocrat, or naval personage, creating a kind of commemorative album not only of the town itself, but also of its inhabitants. The 1806 View of Liverpool is dedicated to the Duke of Clarence, who, at that time, was Admiral of the Blue and President of the Society for the Improvement of Naval Architecture. In this small image the whole town is abbreviated into a façade of masts, warehouses, and church spires, dominated by the River Mersey, which occupies both the foreground and middle distance. The signature tall ship masts which provided an unusual and distinctive feature of the townscape are abbreviated into a series of indistinct lines, which dominate the view and obscure the majority of the town’s buildings. This suggestion of a twodimensional urban screen is emphasised by the contrast between the horizontal lines that compose the tonal values of the sky and the river and the dense, vertical strokes that comprise the mast and towers of Liverpool’s waterfront. The result is effectively a rough, silhouetted skyline constructed of simple cross-hatching rather than specific and identifiable three-dimensional structures. As one midcentury account phrased it, ‘if ever there were a place where one may speak of a “forest of masts,” surely it is Liverpool!’55 This effect was also evident in William Daniell’s grand colour aquatint, Liverpool, Taken from the Opposite Side of the River (1815), in which the central section of the townscape is completely obscured by an array of masts.56 Daniell was a highly accomplished artist and a relatively famous name, therefore his images and publications commanded a far greater price than the small vignettes that illustrated Troughton’s History of Liverpool and 35

Beyond the metropolis

10  R. G. Reeve after S. Walters, View of the Port of Liverpool (1836).

The Land We Live In, later in the century. Nevertheless, the way in which Daniell delineated the townscape relies upon similar techniques to those exercised in the more modest publications. In a comparable fashion to the abbreviated roofscapes of the Bristol and Birmingham images, here it is ship masts that evoke general notions of density, abundance, and commerce, and promote these associations as the dominant characteristics of Liverpool. Although differing in purpose, R. G. Reeve’s fine quality presentation aquatint, View of the Port of Liverpool (1836), depicts a similarly limited perspective of the famous port town (see Figure 10).57 Here there is the suggestion of greater depth to the town than that articulated in Pen and Hole’s view, but both plates conform to the established convention of depicting Liverpool from the river. Until the middle of the nineteenth century and the arrival of new vantage points like those provided by the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, as well as new distinctive urban structures including St George’s Hall, Liverpool’s most widely recognised and frequently represented characteristic remained its waterfront and, as R. G. Reeve’s view exemplifies, conformity to a prescribed format was not restricted to cheap, derivative imagery. This offshore view of Liverpool can be seen in imagery ranging from academic marine oil paintings of the academy to small guidebook vignettes and even ceramics.58 Although artists employed different shipping motifs in the foreground and varied the view with atmospheric

36

The urban prospect

effects and tidal conditions, this image of Liverpool changed little throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The only perceptible changes to the Liverpool townscape from the river, were the addition of new warehouses and docks which contributed further to the ‘screen’ of the waterfront. 59 The result was an image of the town that was dominated stubbornly by its commercial function. Although not explicitly designed as commercial advertisements, images that presented Liverpool in this manner functioned in a similar way to the late nineteenth-century models of advertising discussed in Chapter 4. Both kinds of imagery presented viewers with a vision of commercial and manufacturing towns that privileged their economic function, an approach that was to intensify over time. Scale, scope, and abbreviation As the size of provincial towns increased dramatically, the means by which they were visually represented altered also. Picturesque beauty alone could not necessarily be relied upon to present the most desirable urban prospect. In his Rides on Railways of 1851, Samuel Sidney observed that ‘in a picturesque point of view there are few towns more uninviting than Birmingham … as it is built upon a dead flat in long straight lines, its effect is more pleasing to the citizen after a hard day’s work, than to the artist, architect, landscape gardener, or lover of the picturesque’.60 Priorities differed between viewers and attempts to meet increasingly contradictory expectations led to some surprising and paradoxical imagery. Print audiences relied increasingly on large, distinctive, and sometimes aesthetically radical structures like chimneys, docks, and new municipal buildings to identify towns depicted in distant views. In one view of Birmingham published by the local Birmingham bookseller Edward Umfreville (c.1840), a general view of residential facades, steeples, and chimneys is identifiable as Birmingham mainly as a result of the central positioning of the distinctive town hall, inspired by classical Roman architecture and designed in 1831 (see Figure 11). The abbreviated urban surroundings accentuate the dominance of this one building and its attendant associations of civic power, urban improvement, and fashionable neo-classicism. It is worth noting that a number of other designs proposed for the new Town Hall were also classical in style, albeit Greek.61 However, it was not merely its classical allusions that made the Town Hall a positive symbol for the town, it was also, paradoxically, its modernity. The visual emphasis placed upon new structures is apparent in another description of Birmingham by a contemporary commentator who observed that ‘its spires are not conspicuous for loftiness, its only visible giants are its chimneys’.62 It was increasingly through the position, scale, and number of such architectural ‘giants’, rather than by their distinct design, that towns were identified to viewers. This is illustrated in one of the most famous views of Manchester, commissioned from the artist William Wyld to commemorate Queen Victoria’s visit to the town in

37

Beyond the metropolis

11  E. Umfreville, Birmingham South (c.1840).

1851 and much replicated during the following decades.63 In one example that appeared in the ILN in 1857, Manchester appears as a sequence of chimneys (see Figure 12). Although a few houses and church towers are identifiable, the overall impression is one of architectural and atmospheric density, rather than specific architectural ‘portraits’. In such views, the process of urbanisation, as well as its impact upon particular townscapes, was subject to visual abbreviation. This model of representing a town through a small collection of monumental buildings in an otherwise indistinct townscape was repeated across Britain.64 In some instances, where the urban vista was articulated more through tonal depth than individual lines, the most identifiable feature was the overall shape of the town rather than individual buildings. Indeed, the technique of engraving, by which an image is built up from a series of distinct fine lines, was not well-suited to creating the illusion of distance and atmospheric effect so popular among consumers of urban views. Rather than merely translating the techniques applied in reproducing portraits, cartouches or other ‘close’ subjects, distant views required engravers of steel and copper plates to develop a new vocabulary of line. In William Westall’s view, Sheffield taken from the Attercliffe Road (1828–30) the entire townscape is represented more as a visual pattern than as a series of distinct structures (see Figure 13). The small scale of the plate, combined with the enormous size of the subject demanded that the scene should

38

The urban prospect

12  ‘Manchester from Kersal Moor’, ILN, 4 July 1857.

be condensed graphically. Tonal contrast, rather than the precise delineation of details, conveys distance, with the result that the urban area appears as a carpet of development; it is the contours of the town and its surrounding countryside that make the scene identifiable as Sheffield. Despite the inclusion of a few of the same type of large, ecclesiastical structures that identified Bristol to viewers of the Pocket Magazine, most of the scene is identifiable only as ‘urban’ as opposed to ‘rural’. The townscape is abbreviated to the extent that Sheffield’s specific urban characteristics are sacrificed to visual shorthand for urbanisation. This combination of a generic visual codification of the urban environment and distinctive, identifiable landmarks is evident to varying degrees in almost every distant urban view produced from the 1820s onwards. In the mid-nineteenth century, the prolific London publishers of souvenir imagery, Rock and Company, produced a range of ‘telescopic’ views that represented urban vistas within small circular frames, replicating the parameters of the telescopic lens.65 As a result of this restrictive scale, the views abbreviate the townscapes and incorporate only the major structures in a sketchy form. This visual simplification was also necessary in other small-scale illustrations, especially those that were published in pocket-size periodicals and pamphlets.66 In ‘telescopic’ views and other similarly small-scale images, fine detailing was omitted by necessity, but in larger images

39

Beyond the metropolis

13  E. Finden after W. Westall, Sheffield (1828–30).

the townscape was intentionally abbreviated to produce a variety of aesthetic effects and visual commentaries. High-quality folio or individual prints display a finer level of workmanship than cheap vignettes and journal illustrations, but the townscape as represented in fine engravings is often similarly abbreviated into a mesh of indefinite roofs and facades. In one particular view of Nottingham, engraved after a sketch by S. T. Davis (c.1854), even the towering chimneys appear as mere composite pieces of a broad and indistinct townscape (see Figure 14). The height of each stack dictated that it be delineated individually, but their standard design makes them a repetitive, and therefore generic symbol of manufacturing, rather than a distinctive feature of the town’s skyline. This view appears in The Land We Live In, issued between 1854 and 1856, in which views of other towns including Leeds, Liverpool, and Manchester are also included. The publication is organised by region, and incorporates fine steel-engraved plates, full-page wood engravings and small, engraved vignettes alongside descriptive accounts of towns and of domestic travel in general. Yet, despite this dedication to representing each town in detail, the majority of the steel-engraved townscapes incorporate identical urban ‘motifs’ alongside a generic and indistinct representation of the urban scene. The townscapes are represented as complete, integrated, and impenetrable screens that resist the intimate scale of human activity. In this way, towns appear as places to be viewed from without rather than experienced from within. Provincial urbanisation is represented as the transformation of towns from sites of human interaction into sights for visual appraisal. This progressive pictorialisation of the 40

The urban prospect

14  K. Johnson after S. T. Davis, ‘Nottingham’, in The Land We Live In (1854–56).

urban environment is particularly significant as it developed alongside a surge in popularity of provincial urban guides, many of which were heavily illustrated, and were often read by ‘remote’ readers who would never visit the towns in person. As well as abbreviating key features, artists and engravers applied other visual devices to assist in the simplification of views and the creation of specific identities for various towns, including translating a skyline into silhouette. From the late eighteenth century onwards, a silhouette became a common means of representing London as the fame of large distinctive buildings like St Paul’s cathedral, and later the Houses of Parliament, meant that the city was immediately recognisable.67 However, provincial urban buildings were often less well known. For a town to be recognisable in this manner, the public needed to have acquired a certain degree of visual familiarity with that site. Thus, the simplification of townscapes in this way is testament to the increasing fame and public familiarity with the provincial urban landscape throughout the early decades of the nineteenth century. These various techniques for abbreviating the townscape did more than merely improve the ease and speed with which artists and engravers could produce saleable imagery. To some extent, the wide circulation of simplified and silhouetted townscapes led to a comparable simplification in the public perception of provincial urbanisation in general. 41

Beyond the metropolis

15  ‘Manchester, from the entrance to the London and North-Western Railway’, in The Land We Live In (1854–56).

Artists increasingly abandoned the rural foreground in urban views and the expansive, diverse prospect was superseded by slimmer, panoramic roofscapes that emphasised the atmospheric impact of urbanisation in general, rather than delineating the physical complexity of individual towns. During the Industrial and Consumer Revolutions, towns like Manchester and Birmingham came to be most commonly associated with manufacturing, almost to the exclusion of all other urban qualities. As the nineteenth century progressed, this industrial association led to a literal darkening of the landscape. By the 1840s, direct environmental contrasts such as that between the unhealthy atmosphere of the town and the wholesome air of the country had become familiar literary territory. In Charles Dickens’s Hard Times, Sissy and Rachael escape the ‘cast ashes’ of Coketown for a Sunday excursion into the fields and shady lanes of rural Lancashire, observing that ‘in the distance one way, Coketown showed as a black mist; in another distance hills began to rise; in a third, there was a faint change in the light of the horizon where it shone upon a far-off sea’.68 During the twentieth century it was this image of a dark, parasitic city, draining the agrarian hinterland of both labour and produce, which dominated historical readings of urbanisation. Because of its numerous mills and their prerequisite chimneys, Manchester was particularly susceptible to this brand of derogatory representation and views such as ‘Manchester, from the entrance to the London and North-Western Railway’ (1854), and C. W. Clennell’s view of the town in 1857, typify the atmospheric, smoke-filled urban imagery produced. In The Land We Live In, the town itself was almost completely obscured by the smoke and fog that dominated the skyline (see Figure 15). C. W. Clennell’s view, produced in 1857, depicts a similarly blackened townscape as the artist shrouded the buildings in thick smog and the cathedral is isolated among a forest of industrial chimneys. 69 Yet, even such a dramatic smoke-filled vista should not be interpreted as an unqualified condemnation of the changing provincial 42

The urban prospect

townscape. The Land We Live In eulogised the achievements of the ‘city of steam’ as ‘Herculean’ and incorporated another more traditional view, complete with a pastoral foreground.70 Similarly, and notwithstanding the emergence of a dark vision of provincial urbanisation and manufacture, the majority of topographical artists continued to integrate established traditions and inherited values into their urban imagery. A contrasting view, executed in the 1850s, and taken from a similar vantage point on the high ground north of Manchester, reveals the extent to which established pictorial models could continue to shape topographical imagery, even when the resultant image was blatantly inaccurate. Lenz’s View of Manchester (1850) employs all the traditional components of the European landscape genre, combining picturesque framing with the pastoral motifs of cattle and a reclining herdsman (see Figure 16). In this engraving, the cathedral is the most prominent building, situated among other church spires and steeples, so that the form of the townscape evokes the Buck brothers’ prospects of the early eighteenth century. Such a discrepancy between this scene and that produced by Clennell only seven years later suggests that rather than responding to changes in the physical form of the city, artists often preferred to reflect the conservative aesthetic tastes of their customers. Instead of supplanting old urban values and the visual models commonly used to articulate them, the new urban

16 Lenz, View of Manchester (1850). 43

Beyond the metropolis

17  ‘View of Bradford’, in The Land We Live In (1854–56).

environment merely widened the spectrum of attitudes towards, and images of, provincial towns. Traditional urban values and visual motifs, although often at odds with the rate and direction of urban expansion, survived in distant topographical views throughout the nineteenth century and were occasionally even accommodated into completely incompatible visions of the urban scene. One such view of the northern town of Bradford appeared in a section of The Land We Live In, titled ‘Leeds and the Clothing District’ (see Figure 17). As the title suggests, the engraving focuses heavily upon the industrial manufactures of that region and it is therefore unsurprising that chimneys and weaving sheds dominate 44

The urban prospect

the view. No civic buildings are evident and the only visible church spires are confined to the outer perimeters of the scene. However, in stark contrast to the dominant industrial features, the foreground is given over to the traditional pastoral motifs of grazing livestock. In agreement with Maxine Berg’s study of J. M. W. Turner, in his appraisal of that artist’s watercolour Leeds (1816), Stephen Daniels argues convincingly that rather than representing the urban hinterland as a rural idyll, by including motifs such as cattle and sheep, artists acknowledged the industrialisation of the countryside for the purposes of cattle farming and wool production.71 Yet, notwithstanding Daniels’s observations, in the view of Bradford, the conflation of old and new topographical motifs extends beyond the individual components of the engraving, to the overall composition and tonal values used to render the view. The irregular outline and dark tone of the ‘picturesque’ coppice of trees is balanced by the irregular form and depth of tone of the clouds of steam and smoke on the corresponding side of the vista.72 Rather than dividing the scene in two, the comparable treatment of the trees and the smoke plumes unifies the view. Although rooted in distinct and apparently oppositional systems of urban representation, the natural motif of the tree crown and industrial motif of the smoke plume are here combined, suggesting a perceived correspondence between aesthetic harmony and urban–rural codependence. This confirms what E. A. Wrigley identified as an ‘interface between city and country’.73 Furthermore, if, as Borsay has argued, the raison d’être of a provincial town was the influence it held over the surrounding hinterland, then the inclusion of a large and impressive rural hinterland in topographical imagery may well have functioned as a means of aggrandising rather than ‘assimilating’ a townscape.74 In the first few decades of the nineteenth century, the conurbations that were to become known collectively as the ‘industrial north’ were surrounded by an expanse of increasingly dissected, but substantial, rural hinterland that conformed easily to the conventions of landscape painting. Manufacturing and market towns, which by late nineteenth-century standards were still embryonic, remained heavily reliant upon close regional trade to feed urban commercial activity.75 Unlike later readings of the urban environment, it was still possible to perceive urban and industrial expansion as complementary to aesthetic beautification as both served to elevate a town’s reputation. Consequently, eighteenth-century aspirations of a marriage between beauty and utility in the townscape characterised early nineteenth-century attitudes to urban development.76 The population explosion and industrial development, which led to the representation of the industrial town as a gross Leviathan, belongs to later decades when the ‘railway fever’ had affected a transformative impact upon both towns themselves and the interconnecting countryside. Unlike later responses to London, and to some extent, the urban environment in general, at the dawn of the nineteenth century towns like Manchester and Leeds were not perceived as places in which urban expansion and the aesthetic beauty of the rural hinterland were inherently incompatible. Nor were these towns universally condemned as 45

Beyond the metropolis

‘parasites’ or blots on the surrounding rural districts. Rather than attempts to ‘contain and neutralise’ or expunge the city, images of urban centres situated within their rural districts could be interpreted as an attempt to synthesise the conventions of topographical representation and the iconography of commercial superiority.77 The evolving townscape was often articulated in a familiar pictorial formula, not in order to conceal its presence, but instead as an attempt to acknowledge the scope and history of its economic influence. The interpretation of the rural hinterland as testimony to a town’s prestige as opposed to an aesthetic compensation for the urban townscape is supported further by the continued inclusion of a pastoral foreground, even when the urban environment occupied a larger portion of the view. In ‘View of Birmingham from Bordsley Fields’, engraved as a frontispiece for William Hawkes Smith, Birmingham and its Vicinity as a Manufacturing and Commercial District (1836), the manufactories and houses of the town fill the middle ground (see Figure 18). No attempt is made on the part of the artist to deny or conceal the large manufactories that now comprise the majority of the town. However, the foreground remains dedicated to the familiar rural motifs of the idling shepherd, slow-running stream and Italianate trees. The contrast between urban and rural is more striking in this image than in the distant town views discussed above. However, the inclusion of pastoral imagery remains a visual acknowledgement of the continued and expanding influence exercised by Birmingham over its

18  ‘View of Birmingham from Bordsley Fields’, in Birmingham and its Vicinity as a Manufacturing and Commercial District (1836). 46

The urban prospect

surrounding rural vicinity. Such a marriage of aesthetic design and commercial values is to be expected from a period during which urban identity and prestige were intrinsically linked to a town’s commercial and political purchase upon the surrounding region. There is also substantial evidence to suggest that a town’s immediate vicinity was considered a component of the townscape itself and views taken looking from a town towards the surrounding countryside could certainly contribute to its visualisation as much as those that looked into the townscape. In his The Tour of the River Don, originally published in the Sheffield Mercury in 1836, John Holland dedicated an entire chapter to what he describes as the ‘pictorial inlets’ or particularly attractive views of town and country enabled by Sheffield’s unusual topography. Let any person look from High-street at the scenery in the direction of Attercliffe, and he will often find occasion to admire it, as the atmosphere may happen to be more or less favourable, or even by moonlight. The appearance of the Cholera Monument from Surry-street, and of the Southern extremity of the Park from various openings parallel to the last mentioned, must often attract the eye … It will be at once concluded, that where every street becomes a telescope to the country, in the manner just stated, the surrounding neighbourhood must rise from the town.78

Again, Holland’s description suggests that rustic beauty and commercial prosperity were not necessarily considered to be mutually exclusive or contradictory. As towns depended upon the agricultural produce of their immediate hinterland, the quality of that land and its suitability for cultivation symbolised urban prosperity as much as it did rural fecundity.79 Even the lowest rank of provincial conurbation, the ‘commercial town’, was integrated in a very tangible and practical way with the surrounding countryside.80 As E. A. Wrigley argues, ‘the town could not fail to depend upon the country’ but ‘the countryside was not obliged to be dependent on the town for any of the economic necessities of life’.81 Thus, a rural hinterland was by no means universally understood as a benign antidote to the commercial and ‘worldly’ pursuits associated with town life. On the contrary, a newly industrialised skyline could be recommended as a product of the successful harmonising of nature and human endeavour. In 1828, Blackwell’s Sheffield Directory and Guide eulogised: To these scenes of natural beauties, the murmur of the cataracts, and the clatter of the noisy wheel, add considerably to the effect, and produce a sensation in the mind difficult to describe. These things do indeed, exhibit nature’s God, in an attire most lovely, while they create ideas of majesty, dominion, and power, nothing short of omnipotent.82

Just as the rural surroundings of a growing town were not automatically attributed the associations of an ‘archaic’ idyll, nor were such ‘qualities’ paramount to urban and regional prestige. 83 Even if the two components of town and country represented distinct and contrasting values to a nineteenth-century audience, it does not necessarily follow that such variation in the physical environment 47

Beyond the metropolis

‘generated tension’ as Caroline Arscott, Griselda Pollock, and Janet Wolff have suggested.84 This paradox is evident in a great deal of visual material and, as Maxine Berg noted in relation to Turner’s many watercolours of provincial towns, ‘the countryside depicted is one in movement, connected to the town through stagecoaches, canals and rivers, and human economic activity which is frequently non-agricultural’.85 Still, there were myriad ways in which the growth of towns was affecting a change on the manner of their representation and nowhere is this more apparent than in the changing pictorial relationship between Manchester and its historically prestigious neighbour, Salford. In 1792 the editor of a new local newspaper, the Manchester Herald, was able to justify the introduction of another town periodical as a response to the ‘rapid increase of its COMMERCE and POPULATION’.86 Manchester was growing in size and ascending the urban hierarchy, rivalling other towns of the north-west region such as Chester and Salford, whose governmental and political influences had traditionally outranked those of Manchester. It had risen from the status of a ‘regional centre’ to that of a ‘provincial capital’ and over the next five decades would attain an international commercial role to rival that of London.87 By 1750 the town’s population outnumbered that of Chester by 5,000 and by 1801 Manchester supported a population of 75,000, the third largest in the country. However, the greatest leaps in the town’s population, and consequently geographical size, would occur over the twenty years between 1820 and 1840, when the number of people resident in the town almost doubled, reaching 250,000 by 1841.88 This surge necessitated the geographical spread of the town and a comparison of Pigot’s Map of Manchester and Salford from 1819, and G. Simms’s Map of the City of Manchester and its Neighbourhood published in 1858 reveals the level of residential and commercial expansion which took place, particularly to the south of the town across the river Medlock. One consequence of this sprawl was the visual, although not municipal, amalgamation of the commercially expanding town of Manchester with its historically more prestigious neighbour. Salford had been traditionally considered the more powerful of the two townships and was listed in T. Cox’s Magna Britannia et Hibernia of 1720 as one of the seven Hundreds of Lancashire to which Manchester was listed as a subsidiary market town.89 The unification of the two settlements was strengthened by the construction of the New Bailey Bridge in 1785. However, these two adjacent districts continued to be considered as distinct townships and William Green’s plan of the whole area produced in 1794 still referred explicitly to both Salford and Manchester in its title.90 In the strictest terms the two sites remained separate towns, being incorporated individually and at different dates (Manchester in 1838 and Salford in 1844), and building two separate town halls in the nineteenth century. However, as the sub-divisions of James Drake’s Road Book of the Grand Junction Railway, from Birmingham to Liverpool and Manchester demonstrates, early nineteenth-century guidebooks often referred to the facilities and landmarks of both towns within one volume or entry, and in a number of topographical views the two districts are depicted as one, unified urban site.91 48

The urban prospect

The high land to the north west of Manchester, as well as the open ground of the Ordsall district that remained undeveloped well into the nineteenth century, provided ideal opportunities to survey the entire area. As the two banks of the River Irwell became increasingly dense with industrial and residential development, the division between the two towns became proportionately less distinct. The two sides of the river, which had for centuries fostered independent and distinct urban identities, were increasingly unified within one urban vista. Images of the New Bailey Bridge, which spanned the River Irwell, clearly reflect this visual unification of the two townships of Salford and Manchester. In one such view, delineated by John Roffe after William Westall in 1829, both sides of the river Irwell are depicted as a single urban site (see Figure 19).92 Although the Irwell divides the picture plain, the towns appear as one continuous urban development, spread horizontally across the entire view and unified visually, as well as economically and socially, by the New Bailey Bridge. Rather than demarcating the towns of Manchester and Salford, the river acts as a visual pathway into the urban scene, suggesting an internal waterway rather than an exterior boundary of either town. The depiction of Manchester’s gradual physical dominance over, and integration with, Salford throughout the early nineteenth century contributed to the redefinition of both towns in the public imagination and the process is evident in images of other towns that were also slowly enveloping nearby villages.

19  J. Roffe after W. Westall, ‘New Bailey Bridge, Manchester’, in Great Britain Illustrated (1830).

49

Beyond the metropolis

20  G. Pickering and J. Sands, Liverpool from Toxteth Park (1834).

For centuries, the area of Toxteth on the outskirts of Liverpool provided an ideal vantage point from which to view the large port town. Many artists took advantage of its elevated position to gain a panoramic view of both the town and the River Mersey. In many printed views, Toxteth represents the familiar territory of the rural, even pastoral, foreground, inhabited by peasants and polite onlookers.93 However, as the town of Liverpool and its economic influence expanded, so the previously rural area of Toxteth became, and was represented as, an industrial subsidiary of its larger neighbour. G. Pickering and J. Sands Liverpool from Toxteth Park (1834) reflects this industrialisation of the town’s previously rural hinterland (see Figure 20).94 The barriers of countryside, water, and fences, which might divide the viewer from the urban scene, are here dispensed with. Although acknowledging the visual representation of this process of urban expansion contributes little in itself to the well-established historical narrative of urban sprawl, the relatively early date of this image indicates that the impact of the changing urban hierarchy was being acknowledged visually in topographical prints decades before it received recognition in the form of electoral and administrative reorganisation. Despite the significance of this integration of neighbouring townships like Salford and Manchester and the sprawl of older cities like Liverpool, population growth and physical expansion alone do not fully explain the shifts in the visual representation of towns between 1780 and 1880. Great size, whether welcomed

50

The urban prospect

or criticised, was usually treated as evidence of other, more intrinsic, values or weaknesses. In his Grand Junction and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Companion of 1837, J. Cornish hints that size was sometimes perceived as the result of noble and intellectual qualities: Looking at the size and state of Manchester now, with its numerous dependencies, one is tempted to ask, what has produced so mighty and so magical a change. And we answer, science, art, and commerce … To call that injury and evil, which converts a small town into a large one, and at the same time betters the condition of the inhabitants generally, appears to be reversing the order of language and things.95

Thus, urban expansion, and the physical transformation that accompanied it, should be understood as conveying more to the nineteenth-century observer than mere evidence of either improvement or undesirable sprawl. While it would be unwise to dismiss the role of aesthetic beautification upon a topographical view, it is equally misleading to confuse a degree of aesthetic aggrandisement with a universal disapproval of urban reality. Rapid urbanisation was not automatically perceived as a challenge to art and beauty, or an affront to the rural hinterland. Rather, in some quarters, urban development and industrialisation itself was understood as a product of the town’s inherent artistic and inventive excellence. By the 1860s provincial manufacturing centres were most conspicuously celebrated for the commercial advantages they afforded their inhabitants and the nation as a whole, rather than for an historic heritage or picturesque situation. There were, of course, a number of vocal critics of the expanding size, influence, and industrial character of provincial towns. Those who relied upon the traditional values of natural aesthetic beauty as criteria for evaluating the urban environment found Manchester lacking, but this did not blind all onlookers to the virtues of urbanisation. If indeed there existed a universal underlying disapproval of provincial urbanisation and consequently a popular desire to deny or beautify the townscape, then it is fair to surmise there would have been little commercial demand for urban topographical views. Yet, what makes the genre of the distant view so important to historical enquiry is the extent to which it survives throughout the nineteenth century. A profusion of prints of the urban scene continued to be published and circulated.96 The distant urban view appeared in new formats, evolving into theatrical panoramas, dioramas, and eventually appearing on picture postcards and souvenir-ware china.97 The increasing demand for, and number of, townscapes refutes any claim that the town was considered either an unworthy or undesirable object of visual attention. As these images demonstrate, the function of distant urban views was far more complex and varied than that of a mere aesthetic exercise or an attempt to placate audiences by minimising the visual appearance of the townscape. Through a combination of pictorial devices, visual selectivity, and a range of vantage points, artists presented their audiences with an array of urban prospects from which to evolve opinions in line with their own personal attitudes and

51

Beyond the metropolis

values. Thus, distant views not only reflected existing attitudes towards the urban environment, but also helped to initiate and define changing expectations and aspirations for provincial British towns. Although in the early years of the nineteenth century these expectations were likely to relate to civic heritage, historic prestige, and other similarly traditional values, the ‘new’ values of commercial and industrial expansion came to dominate these aspirations and reshape the very manner in which provincial towns were imagined and visualised. Notes  1 W. Orr, ‘A bird’s-eye view’, in The Land We Live In: a pictorial, historical, and literary sketch book of the British Islands …, 3 vols (London, 1854–56), I, p. 50.  2 J. Speed, Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine (London, 1612).  3 N. Buck, Antiquities; or, venerable remains of above four hundred castles, monasteries, palaces, &c., &c., in England and Wales (London, 1774). See also P. Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance; culture and society in the provincial town 1660–1770 (Oxford, 1989), pp. 80–5; and J. Elliot, The City in Maps: urban mapping to 1900 (London, 1987), p. 59.  4 B. Love, Manchester As It Is: or, notices of the institutions, manufactures, commerce, railways etc., of the metropolis of manufacture (Manchester, 1839), pp. 9, 19 and 26.  5 W. Gilpin, An Essay Upon Prints: containing remarks upon the principles of picturesque beauty; the different kinds of prints; and the characters of the most noted masters (London, 1768), pp. 9–10. (Original emphasis.)  6 E. McKellar, Landscapes of London: the city, the country and the suburbs 1660–1840 (New Haven, CT and London, 2013), p. 88.  7 A. W. N. Pugin, Contrasts: or, a parallel between the noble edifices of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and similar buildings of the present day [1836] (Leicester, 1969), p. 105.  8 P. K. Gilbert, Imagined Londons (New York, 2002), p. 12.  9 P. Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance, p. 3. 10 J. M. Ellis, ‘“For the honour of the town”: comparison, competition and civic identity in eighteenth-century England’, Urban History, 30 (2003), 325–37 (325–6); and P. Elliott, ‘Towards a geography of English scientific culture: provincial identity and literary and philosophical culture in the English county town, 1750–1850’, Urban History, 32 (2005), 391–412 (397). 11 R. J. Morris and R. Rodger (eds), The Victorian City: a reader in British urban history (London, 1993), p. 1. 12 A. Briggs, Victorian Cities (Los Angeles, CA, 1963), pp. 50–1. 13 J. Whitaker, History of Manchester in Four Books (London, 1773). 14 F. Calvert, ‘Wolverhampton from the Penn Road’, in W. West, Picturesque Views and Descriptions of Cities, Towns, Castles, Mansions and other objects of Interesting Features in Staffordshire and Shropshire (Birmingham, 1830), opposite p. 16. 15 ‘The Queen’s Visit to Leeds’, Illustrated London News, 11 September 1858, 242–3. See cover image. 16 U. Price, An Essay on the Picturesque (London, 1794); W. Gilpin, Three Essays on Picturesque Beauty, on Picturesque Travel, and on Sketching the Landscape (London, 1792); and R. Payne Knight, The Landscape (London, 1794). See R. Lister, Prints and Printmaking: a dictionary and handbook of the art in nineteenth-century Britain (London,

52

The urban prospect

1984), p. 54; and B. Hunnisett, Steel-engraved Book Illustration in England (London, 1977), p. 2. 17 R. Sweet, Antiquaries: the discovery of the past in eighteenth-century Britain (London, 2004), p. 309. 18 J. Aikin, England Delineated; or, a geographical description of every county in England and Wales, 2nd edn (London, 1828); and J. Britton, Picturesque Antiquities of the English Cities; from drawings by G. F. Robson (London, 1830). 19 W. Gilpin, Three Essays on Picturesque Beauty, pp. 19–28. 20 J. M. W. Turner, W. Collins, W. Westall et al., An Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour Round the Southern Coast of England: illustrated with eighty-four plates, from drawings (London, 1849); S. Daniels, ‘The implications of industry: Turner and Leeds’, Turner Studies, 6 (1986), 10–17; M. Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque: landscape aesthetics and tourism in Britain, 1760–1800 (Aldershot, 1989), pp. 192–3, 209–10. See J. Landseer after J. Farington, ‘View of Stockport’, in W. Byrne, Britannia Depicta: a series of views of the most interesting and picturesque objects in Great Britain (London, 1806). 21 J. Britton, Picturesque Antiquities of the English Cities, p. v. 22 A. and C. Black, Black’s Picturesque Tourist of Scotland, 2nd edn (Edinburgh, 1842), p. 18. 23 W. Thomson, Prospects and Observations on a Tour in England and Scotland: natural, oeconomical, and literary (London, 1791), pp. 8–11 and 13. 24 C. Laurent, A Topographical Plan of Manchester and Salford, with adjacent parts; shewing also the different allotments of Land proposed to be built on (Manchester, 1793). 25 W. Gilpin, Three Essays on Picturesque Beauty, p. 77. 26 G. Heath, The New History, Survey and Description of the City and Suburbs of Bristol; or complete guide (Bristol, 1794), p. 2. 27 View of Manchester from Strawberry Hill, on the Bolton Canal (1818). MLSL, m07521. 28 ‘The Queen’s Visit to Leeds’, 242–3. For a comparable analysis of the use of such figures see Cindy McCreery’s analysis of A Prospect of Portsmouth (1740) in C. McCreery, Ports of the World: prints from the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich c.1700–1870 (London, 1999), p. 32. 29 W. Gilpin, Three Essays on Picturesque Beauty, p. 77; and C. Hussey, The Picturesque: studies in a point of view (London, 1967), pp. 118–19. 30 S. Prout, Prout’s Microcosm: the artist’s sketch-book of groups of figures, shipping, and other picturesque objects (London, 1841), p. 3. 31 E. P. Dennison, S. Eydmann, A. Lyell et al., Painting the Town: Scottish urban history in art (Edinburgh, 2013), p. 7. 32 ‘View of Manchester’, Illustrated London News, 20 August 1842, 225. 33 W. Willis, Bristol from Brandon Hill (c.1845). BCBL, IV, 62. 34 J. Redaway after W. H. Bartlett, ‘View of the City of Bristol, From S.W.’ in J. Britton, Picturesque Antiquities of English Cities. 35 A version of this engraving appeared in J. Britton, Modern Athens, displayed in a series of Views; or Edinburgh in the nineteenth century (London, 1829), p. 55. 36 The use of regional dress was common in topographical images of Scotland. See also Harvey and Prior, ‘Edinburgh from the Calton Hill’, in The Land We Live In, II, frontispiece to Edinburgh section; and Kemp and Dick, Edinburgh from the neighbourhood of Arthur Seat, published by Archibald Fullerton and Company (c.1835). 37 ‘Bristol from Brandon Hill’, in The Land We Live In, III, pp. 318–19. 38 W. Gilpin, An Essay Upon Prints, pp. 1–2.

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Beyond the metropolis

39 H. Heartwell, ‘Characteristics of Manchester: in a series of letters to the Editor’, North of England Magazine, March (1842), 97. 40 ‘A View of Bristol’, The Pocket Magazine; or, elegant repository of useful and polite literature, 2 (1795), 372. 41 V. Waite, ‘The Bristol Hotwell’, in P. McGrath (ed.), Bristol in the Eighteenth Century (Newton Abbot, 1972), pp. 106–9. Guidebooks often combined accounts of Bath and Bristol as well as the nearby health resort of Hotwells. See T. Shepherd, Bath and Bristol, with the Counties of Somerset and Gloucester … (London, 1829) and E. Shiercliff, Bristol and Hotwell Guide (Bristol, 1793). 42 ‘Bristol’, Copper-Plate Magazine; or, Monthly Cabinet of Picturesque Prints, 4 (1799), plate 170. 43 K. Layton-Jones, ‘Bristol docks: a picturesque port or a sublime scene?’, in S. Poole (ed.), A City Built Upon the Water: maritime Bristol 1750–1900 (Bristol, 2013), pp. 138– 54 (p. 141). 44 P. Luckombe, The Beauties of England; or, a comprehensive view of the chief villages, markettowns, and cities, 3rd edn (London, 1767). 45 See also T. Grainger, View of the City of Glasgow (c.1800). 46 J. Walker after J. M. W. Turner, ‘Sheffield from Derbyshire Lane’, Copper-Plate Magazine; or monthly cabinet of picturesque prints, 4 (1798), 157. 47 See also G. Cooke and E. Blore, Sheffield from the Attercliffe Road (1819). SLSL, s11421.  48 Birmingham taken from Washwood Heath (c.1830). BLSL, WK/B11/2621. 49 M. Berg, ‘Representations of early industrial towns: Turner and his contemporaries’, in M. Rosenthal, C. Payne and S. Wilcox (eds), Prospects for the Nation: recent essays in British landscape, 1750–1880 (New Haven, CT, 1997), pp. 115–32 (pp. 127–8). 50 C. McCreery, Ports of the World, pp. 29–47; and A. Hemingway, Landscape Imagery and Urban Culture in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge, 1992), p. 216. 51 G. Head, A Home Tour Through the Manufacturing Districts of England in the Summer of 1835 (London, 1836), p. 21. 52 W. Angus after Jenkinson, ‘View of Liverpool from the Ferry, Lancashire’, in J. Britton, The Beauties of England and Wales (London, 1808); C. Moody, Liverpool from between Monk’s Ferry and Birkenhead (c.1854). LRO, general views folder; H. F. James, View of the Town and Harbour of Liverpool (c. 1815). LRO, general views folder. 53 H. Smithers, Liverpool; its commerce, statistics and institutions with a history of the cotton trade (Liverpool, 1825), p. 169. 54 Anonymous description of Liverpool in 1799, cited in J. A. Picton, Memorials of Liverpool, Historical and Topographical, including a History of the Dock Estate (London, 1873), p. 288. 55 The Land We Live In, I, p. 177. 56 ‘Liverpool, taken from the opposite side of the River’ in R. Ayton and W. Daniell, A Voyage Round Great Britain: undertaken in the summer of 1813 (London, 1814–25). 57 See also H. F. James’s View of the Town and Harbour of Liverpool (c.1815) LRO, general views folder and J. Aikin, View of Liverpool from Everton (1794). Collection of the University of Liverpool. 58 Cream-ware soup tureen and ladle, manufactured by the Herculaneum Factory, Liverpool (1833—36). MAG, 1975.29. 59 T. Baines, ‘The warehouses of Liverpool’, in Liverpool in 1859: the port and town of Liverpool … (London, 1859), pp. 76–8.

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60 S. Sidney, Rides on Railways, leading to the lake & mountain districts of Cumberland, North Wales (London, 1851), pp. 77–8. 61 F. Salmon, Building on Ruins: the rediscovery of Rome and English architecture (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 153–68. 62 ‘Birmingham’, in The Land We Live In, I, pp. 51–2. 63 A steel engraving by E. Goodall after William Wyld’s watercolour appeared in the Art Journal, 1 July 1857, p. 204, and a colour lithograph was produced in the later decades of the nineteenth century. 64 See the frontispiece in J. Bisset, Bisset’s Magnificent Guide: or grand copper plate directory for the town of Birmingham (Birmingham, 1808). 65 Telescopic View of Newcastle. JJC, note headings box 13. 66 For examples of townscapes printed for inclusion in small periodicals, see ‘View of Portsmouth’, The Lady’s Magazine, 4 (1773), 287; and ‘View of Liverpool’, The Lady’s Magazine, 4 (1774), 676. 67 London from the Monument. JJC, note headings box 12. 68 C. Dickens, Hard Times [1854] (Oxford, 1998) pp. 352–3. 69 C. W. Clennell, View of Manchester (1857). MLSL, m07530. 70 The Land We Live In, I, 227. 71 S. Daniels, ‘The implications of industry: Turner and Leeds’, 10–17. 72 W. Gilpin, Three Essays on Picturesque Beauty, p. 78. 73 E. A. Wrigley, Poverty, Progress and Population (Cambridge, 2004), p. 262. 74 P. Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance, p. 4. See also R. Scola, Feeding the Victorian City: the food supply of Manchester 1770–1870 (Manchester, 1992), pp. 35, 37–43 and 93–113. 75 E. A. Wrigley, ‘Parasite or stimulus: the town in pre-industrial society’, in P. Abrams and E. A. Wrigley (eds), Towns in Societies: essays in economic history and historical sociology (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 295–309 (pp. 301–4). 76 J. M. Ellis, The Georgian Town 1680–1840 (Basingstoke, 2001), p. 103. 77 C. Arscott, G. Pollock, and J. Wolff, ‘The partial view: the visual representation of the early nineteenth-century city’, in J. Seed and J. Wolff (eds), The Culture of Capital: art, power and the nineteenth-century middle class (Manchester, 1988), pp. 191–233 (pp. 219–20). 78 J. Holland, The Tour of the River Don, 2 vols (Sheffield, 1837), p. 285. 79 A. Young, A Six Weeks Tour Through the Southern Counties of England and Wales (London, 1768), p. 151. 80 P. Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance, p. 5. 81 E. A. Wrigley, Poverty, Progress and Population, p. 262. 82 J. Blackwell, Blackwell’s Sheffield Directory and Guide (Sheffield, 1828), p. vi. 83 B. I. Coleman, The Idea of the City in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London, 1973), p. 3. See also the reference to an ‘archaic rural foreground’ in relation to Thomas Burras’s numerous images of Leeds produced in the first half of the nineteenth century in C. Arscott, G. Pollock, and J. Wolff, ‘The partial view’, p. 223. 84 C. Arscott, G. Pollock, and J. Wolff, ‘The partial view’, p. 214. 85 M. Berg, ‘Representations of early industrial towns: Turner and his contemporaries’, in M. Rosenthal, C. Payne and S. Wilcox (eds), Prospects for the Nation, pp. 115–32 (p. 124). 86 Manchester Herald, 31 March 1792, 1.

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87 See Borsay’s four broad categories of town in P. Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance, p. 4. 88 See Rosemary Sweet’s table of English urban population sizes between 1670 and 1841 in R. Sweet, The English Town, pp. 3–4. 89 T. Cox, Magna Britannia et Hibernia Antiqua and Nova … (London, 1720), p. 1273. 90 W. Green and J. Thornton, A Plan of Manchester and Salford Drawn from an Actual Survey by William Green (Manchester, 1794). 91 J. Drake, Drake’s Road Book of the Grand Junction Railway, from Birmingham to Liverpool and Manchester (Birmingham, 1837), p. 76. 92 See a similar effect in T. Dixon and M. W. Fry, Manchester from Ordsall (c.1800). MLSL, m07518 93 See ‘Liverpool, Looking North’, in H. Lacey, Pictorial Liverpool: its annals; commerce; shipping, &c., a new and complete hand-book, 2nd edn (Liverpool, 1846). 94 A version of this engraving was reproduced in the first volume of the Illustrated London News, 1 October 1842. 95 J. Cornish, The Grand Junction and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Companion (Birmingham, 1837), pp. 60–1. 96 J. Gage, ‘An early exhibition and the politics of printmaking 1800–1812’, Print Quarterly, 6 (1989), 123–39; and R. Hyde, ‘A year for celebrating W. F. Rock’, Print Quarterly, 19 (2002), 341–52. 97 R. Altick, The Shows of London: a panoramic history of exhibitions, 1600–1862 (Cambridge, MA, 1978); and T. Allom and J.T. Willmore, Panoramic View of London from the Steeple of St Bride Looking East (1846).

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B2B The town on show

From the earliest galleries in pleasure gardens to cabinets of curiosity, towns both hosted and provided subject matter for displays and shows that attracted the attention of residents and visitors alike.1 They provided content for panoramas, exhibits for fairs and expositions, and officiated as hosts in their own cultural and educational endeavours. While the earliest examples were to be found in London, by the late eighteenth century, the appetite for such spectacles led to their introduction across Britain. An assortment of attractions received public attention and responses ranged from appreciation to ambivalence, condescension, and even blatant hostility. This chapter explores the various forms in which towns were represented in the exhibitions and shows themselves, and the imagery produced to accompany them. Panoramas, dioramas, and cosmoramas One of the most popular and enduring forms of urban ‘show’ was the painted panorama. The fashion for panoramas and dioramas of cities and exotic landscapes began in Paris in the second half of the eighteenth century.2 In the following decades, a number of static and moving panoramic ‘shows’ sprung up in London and large provincial towns, where they were popular among all ranks of society.3 Entrance to a panorama or diorama was relatively cheap. A leaflet advertising a ‘Highly Picturesque Peristrephic Cosmorama of Liverpool’ showing at FriarGate in Derby (1825) listed two rates of admission: one shilling for ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ and sixpence for ‘Trade’s People’, suggesting that these kinds of diorama exhibitions were accessible to, and thereby seen by a potentially diverse audience.4 British cities were not usually the preferred subject. Instead, static and moving tableaux of military campaigns (historical and contemporary) and exotic foreign territories were a more common attraction at venues such as the Leicester Square Rotunda (1793–1863) and the Colosseum at Regent’s Park (1827–1874).5 However, among some of the earliest successes was a 360-degree rendering of the

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Beyond the metropolis

dramatic skyline of Edinburgh exhibited by the panoramic artist, Robert Barker, in London in 1787. Barker’s offering was followed in 1825 by John and Robert Burford’s Description of a View of the City of Edinburgh which showed in Leicester Square.6 Edinburgh was possibly unique in being a British city depicted twice in panoramic form, but not every visitor was impressed. One disgruntled visitor to the 1825 exhibit criticised the choice of subject for having ‘not one magnificent edifice’.7 Nevertheless, panoramas continued to attract audiences, not least because they provided opportunities to ‘transport’ the viewer to the location in a more immersive way than the distant prospects of cabinet prints or guidebook vignettes.8 In fact, the illusion was so effective as to lead to the publication of ‘guidebooks’ to the panoramas themselves.9 While British cities could rarely compete with the field of Waterloo or the eruption of Vesuvius for dramatic appeal, the unique atmospheric effects and mechanical innovations that accompanied industrialisation and provincial urbanisation brought with them novel new subjects for the panoramic artists and showman.10 One of these appeared in 1834 when the Baker Street Bazaar hosted perhaps the most unusual panorama ever produced: the Railway Exhibition or Manchester and Liverpool Padorama. Speed and mechanisation were common metaphors with which to characterise the visual experiences of the modern age. Railways provided new vantage points and vistas, while the noise and velocity of the locomotive engines provided new spectacles in themselves.11 Much has been written on the phenomenology of railway travel and its impact upon perceptions of time, distance, and the landscape. In the post-war period of the 1950s and 1960s, a period of technological advancement in itself, theorists like R. A. Forsyth returned to the phenomenological themes of novelty, disjuncture, and alienation that had characterised early responses to railway travel. For Forsyth the speed and scale of railways led him to conclude that early railway travel provided its passengers not only with a novel experience, but also an entirely new ‘man-made reality’.12 In the 1980s Wolfgang Schivelbusch summarised the main perceptual impact of the early railway as ‘the annihilation of space and time’ and the mechanisation of the traveller’s perceptions.13 Topographical artists were swift to capitalise on these new perceptions and the most innovative among them produced not only new images, but also new means of viewing them. In the Manchester and Liverpool Padorama, the very mechanics of railway travel were used to replicate the sensation of movement for a stationary audience.14 As one advertisement claimed, the attraction was a novel twist on the popular diorama and panorama shows of the early nineteenth century: the public are respectfully informed that an exhibition is

NOW OPEN every day from ten till dusk, at the

BAZAAR, BAKER STREET, PORTMAN SQUARE,

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The town on show

representing by mechanical and pictorial display that

CELEBRATED WONDER OF ART AND SCIENCE, THE MANCHESTER & LIVERPOOL RAILWAY. 15

For the price of one shilling a patron was presented with a miniature railway carriage, filled with manikin passengers. On either side of this ‘carriage’ a vast canvas depicting the scenes encountered en route scrolled past the windows, creating the illusion of movement and enabling the audience to ‘approach’ the cities as a rail passenger.16 Significantly, the means of powering the spectacle was adopted from the mechanics of the real journey, as the poster explains: ‘Locomotive Engines are also at work in a similar manner to those they are copied from on the Railway’, while the show’s proprietors also heralded the railway itself as a ‘Great national Work of Art and Science’.17 This was a common plaudit. The industrialising landscape, both within towns and beyond, was frequently characterised as a ‘work of art’, a visual achievement and evidence of creative invention in itself. Nevertheless, despite the attempt to provide sensory realism, the images presented within the padorama did not constitute visual, temporal, or spatial verisimilitude. Although the passing tableau introduced the audience to ‘real’ features within the landscape of the industrial and urban north west, the images presented were highly selective. In a similar fashion to more traditional travel guides, the padorama represented a heavily edited account of the sights encountered. Still, this did not prevent the proprietors from recommending the show as an educational tool. The padorama’s instructive value was celebrated in an advertisement that appeared in the Athenaeum in the summer of 1834, which claimed: ‘it may be said to be one of the most amusing and instructive Exhibitions now before the public … every one of our juvenile friends ought in particular to see it, as it is very instructive for youth’.18 For those who did not attend the Railway Exhibition, or who wished to retain a souvenir of the experience, E. Colyer published a Descriptive Catalogue for the price of one shilling.19 This paperback publication includes a reproduction of the padorama itself and a series of views of the most significant sights to be seen (see Figure 21). Scenes depicted included Water Street Station, Manchester and the Moorish Arch at Liverpool, but, as with the padorama itself, large expanses of territory between the two were excluded. As the catalogue elucidates, ‘a repetition of the views when the route is uninteresting, has been avoided, and also the dull portions of the road omitted, so that the artists do not profess accuracy in distance between the parts represented’.20 In this respect, the catalogue is indistinguishable from the more conventional guidebooks produced to accompany real journeys. However, unlike those who experienced the real journey, those who ‘rode’ the padorama or read Colyer’s guide received only a 59

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21  E. Colyer after H. West, ‘Irwell Bridge’, in Descriptive Catalogue of the Padorama of the Manchester and Liverpool Railroad (1834).

spatially condensed interpretation of the journey and the distance between the two towns. Rather than merely ‘fragmenting’ the journey, this process of editing served to contract the landscape, uniting the towns of Liverpool and Manchester within one seamless panorama. This process of visual-spatial abbreviation conforms to Schivelbusch’s claim that railways annihilated space for the traveller and even Jonathan Crary’s bolder contention that mechanisation effectively annihilated the ‘real world’ for nineteenth-century observers.21 Although located sequentially, vast areas of undeveloped land like Chat Moss are reduced to a small vignette within the wider panorama and the distance between the towns of Liverpool and Manchester appears (misleadingly) to be densely developed with transport structures and industrial works. The north-west is consequently depicted as predominantly urban. If, as Kate Flint has suggested, the railway prevented its passengers from effectively viewing towns, then the shows and images dedicated to its representation supplemented their experience with a comprehensive range of images of towns and structures along the line.22 Although the effects of new ‘high-velocity’ travel included a diminishing appreciation of objects outside the carriages, shows and images like the Baker Street padorama and its accompanying catalogue, reintroduced the missed sights.23 Notwithstanding their visual manipulation of space, by illustrating towns and structures individually as well as in sequence, Colyer’s Catalogue provided remote viewers with a form of visual index to the urban landscapes encountered. What speed denied the viewer, a panorama could reinsert.24 Still, by excluding areas and buildings judged to be ‘of little interest’, artists and showmen were also defining public expectations towards provincial topography and urbanisation. In this sense, these highly selective scenes functioned in a similar fashion to the picturesque views promoted

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by Gilpin and his followers decades earlier and created a kind of visual ‘taste’ for the topography of industrial and urban Britain.25 Panoramas, dioramas, and even later magic lantern shows, provided audiences with an almost continual supply of engaging images of towns, cities, and the networks that connected them. However, such displays could only ever serve relatively small groups of visitors at any one time. Although a travelling panorama might eventually be seen by thousands of people, the itinerant nature of such attractions often limited their wider cultural impact to reports in local newspapers. In the middle of the nineteenth century, a new form of exhibition emerged, one that was designed to serve the principles of industrialisation, rather than merely its aesthetic effect. The Great Exhibition of 1851 In its unequivocal celebration of mass production and consumption, the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations was an official endorsement of the Industrial Revolution and its socio-political consequences. Located in Hyde Park and open to the public from May to October 1851, it has become a symbol of Victorian self-assurance and grandiosity. Much has been written about the event and the exhibits, particularly those found in the foreign section. The splendour of the India and Tunis Courts and the narratives of imperialism in contemporary guidebooks and catalogues have led many to focus almost exclusively on the international side of the venture and the representation of foreign nations. 26 Comparatively little attention has been paid to the manner in which British towns and cities exploited the event to champion their own industrial, commercial, and civic reputations. Yet, by 1851 manufacturing had become inextricably linked to urban status. At every turn, local commissioners and individual exhibitors manoeuvred to distinguish their reputation against those of other British towns. As John Potter, the then mayor of Manchester, explained to his fellow townsmen, the aim of the exhibition was to ‘bring into competition and honourable rivalry’ the skills of designers and manufacturers.27 This ‘honourable rivalry’, fortified frequently by dishonourable rivalry, ensured that visitors encountered anything but a unified ‘nation on display’.28 The seeds for this model of urban competition through exhibition had been sown before 1 May 1851. The Birmingham Exposition of 1849, also known locally as the Bingley Hall Exhibition, was an immediate precursor of the Great Exhibition. Rather than being condemned for their provinciality, events like the Birmingham Exposition assisted in elevating a city’s status, particularly in relation to the metropolis. As the London-based Art Journal demonstrated in its own praise of the 1849 event: ‘the success of the Exposition throws into shade that of the Society of Arts, with all its adventitious aids of metropolitan situation and patronage of the most exalted kind’.29 Described by the Morning Chronicle as ‘a grand Exposition of works of arts and manufactures, the product of British and

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especially local industry’, the significance of such events for local manufactures was clearly recognised prior to the international expositions that followed.30 Even the arrangement and styling of the exhibits predicted that which was to follow less than two years later, leading a correspondent for the Daily News to report that the effect was: one mass of splendour, elegance, and taste, a monument of perseverance and industry … It was a gratifying sight for those by whose perseverance the scheme has been matured to look round and witness a crowd of delighted people gazing with admiration and astonishment on the rich and rare works which, manufactured within a few yards of their own doors, they were until then ignorant of. Let no one talk of the inutility of collective assemblages of manufacturing industry.31

As with other events, both before and after, the 1849 Exposition also provided a focus around which other, smaller diversions aggregated. One such attraction was ‘Birmingham in Miniature’, described in the Birmingham Gazette in September of that year as showing in ‘one view all the Churches, Chapels, Public Buildings, Manufactories, Railways, and Canals’.32 The city was quite literally ‘exhibited’ for the consideration of fee-paying customers. Thus, before the Crystal Palace was even constructed, the potential for an exhibition to both elevate the status of its host city and the towns represented was appreciated and exploited by civic worthies and businessmen. Beneath the superficial tributes to cooperation, the British Nave of Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace served as a competitive amphitheatre in which British cities fought fiercely for commercial advantage and acclaim. In such a battle, scale and spectacle were essential to win and retain the attention of visitors. The various stands and displays that made up the British section became a physical translation of urban Britain, where scale, as well as ingenuity and style, was celebrated. The sheer magnitude of industrialisation was held up for public approval and the country’s provincial towns were redefined in the popular imagination. The organising principles of the Great Exhibition did not automatically favour the promotion of individual towns. As the organisers’ intention was to categorise exhibits by their stage of manufacture and type, the products of a single town could potentially be found distributed throughout the various classes of ‘materials’, ‘machinery’, and ‘fabricated articles’.33 However, towns might present all their exhibits together, providing they were deemed to be of one particular ‘class’.34 Most exhibits from Sheffield fell into the same classes, those dedicated to ‘Cutlery and Edge-Tools’, ‘Iron and General Hardware’ and ‘Working in Precious Metals’.35 The same could be said of the majority of Birmingham’s exhibits, which were also predominantly products of the metallurgical industries.36 As a result, both these towns presented most of their wares within their own distinct ‘courts’. This practice was repeated to a lesser extent across the British Nave. One variation occurred when a town exhibited both a finished manufacture and the machinery used to produce it. This anomaly was most common among textile

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The town on show

towns. For example, Bradford saw almost all of its exhibits located in Class XII: ‘Woollen and Worsted’, while Nottingham’s exhibits were to found primarily in Class XIX: ‘Tapestry, Carpets, Floor-Cloths, Lace and Embroidery’ but both towns also exhibited machinery in the Machinery Hall. Manchester’s presentation was similarly divided between Class XI: ‘Cotton’ and Class VI: ‘Manufacturing Machines and Tools’. Although in these instances, the towns were represented in more than one area of the building, this may have served to reiterate their industrial reputations as the noise and drama of the Machinery Hall attracted considerable attention from journalists, guidebook authors, and artists.37 Their accounts encouraged visitors to imagine the environments in which hundreds of such machines were working at once: The cotton manufacture is at once the most wonderful and extraordinary phenomenon of modern days. Its chief seat is Manchester and its neighbourhood, Bolton, Bury, Rochdale, Oldham, Ashton, Stayley Bridge, Hyde, and Stockport. The district may be regarded as one huge town, teeming with people and noisy ever with the clang of machinery and the din of wheels.38

Notwithstanding the impact of these colourful accounts and images, it was the city of Sheffield that demonstrated most effectively the potential of the exhibition arena as a means for defining and circulating a town’s reputation. The Sheffield Court was situated on the south side of the grand British Nave, close to Birmingham’s displays and within the general hardware section of the exhibition. There were a variety of display cabinets, stands, and tableaux, including a miniature parlour and a vast range of cast-iron fire grates by various manufacturers. As one correspondent for a local newspaper put it: If the stoves which thus tastefully flank the Sheffield compartment, present a handsome appearance as seen from the nave, it is not until the visitor passes into the recesses behind them and becomes surrounded by saws, and knives, and files, that he gains a fair idea of the great distinguishing feature of the industrial activity of your town.39

The scale of exhibits varied immensely, from small, etched blades to heavy machinery. While large firms such as Rodgers and Son presented ambitious exhibits in elaborate cabinets, individual craftsmen displayed their more modest contributions in mixed cases. Large hoardings advertised the names of manufacturers and the town’s heraldic banner hung above the entrance to the court.40 Although the sale of goods was not permitted within the exhibition building, in all other respects the Sheffield Court represented an emporium of the town’s manufactures or, in the words of the Sheffield Free Press, ‘the Sheffield stall’ and ‘magazine of steel’.41 The court attracted special attention from John Cassell’s companion periodical, the Illustrated Exhibitor (IE), which recounts how, within the exhibition arena, it was the town of Sheffield, rather than individual factories, which represented the steel and cutlery trade:

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Whilst many other of the courts or departments into which the Exhibition is divided, contain specimens of goods manufactured in various parts of the empire, the Sheffield Court is exclusively appropriated to the manufactures of the ‘metropolis of steel,’ in the manufacture of which, and of tools and cutlery, she stands unrivalled … we may reasonably say that Sheffield is the representative of the cutlery trade of the kingdom.42

In an extensive article of August 1851, the IE suggests how the Sheffield Court served not only to display material products, but also to depict the people and general ‘character’ of the town as admirably industrious. Here, the workmen, as well as their manufactures, are classified by trade: The workmen in this branch of trade are divided into five classes – viz., the striker, who manages the fire … the forger, who hammers the file into shape … the grinder … the cutter, who, with a sharp chisel in his left hand and a hammer in his right, makes the required grooves or teeth on the blank file, which next passes into the hands of the hardener.43

This series of descriptive passages and illustrations took the viewer beyond the confines of the exhibition to the point of manufacture and by doing so, introduced the working human element of the town to the reader. The article also describes various processes of manufacture and the working conditions under which much of the town’s population laboured.44 Child labour, heavy machinery, and the light trades associated with blade manufacture are all represented in a series of visual tableaux providing a varied, albeit anecdotal, index to the town’s industrial character.45 In its coverage of the Sheffield Court, John Cassell’s periodical elaborated upon the popular perception of this provincial manufacturing town to incorporate its workshops, modes of production, and perhaps most importantly of all, its people.46 Within the exhibition arena, the exhibits and the means of their production began to inform popular conceptions of Sheffield’s physical and social character. Not only did Sheffield represent the edge-tool trade but also, through the Sheffield Court and its representation, the nature of edgetool production came to represent the town and its inhabitants. Rather than ‘conjuring out of sight’ the realities of productive labour as one historian has suggested, the exhibition arena enabled a process of public familiarisation with provincial urban populations and their dominant trades.47 This process of familiarisation was continued and extended in other publications. Knight’s Cyclopædia of the Industry of All Nations employed a distinctive illustrative format that made an explicit connection between the items on display in London, the manner of their production, and the towns in which they were manufactured.48 Again, Sheffield was represented in a plate that combined an image of saw grinders cutting ivory handles, with a more picturesque scene of labourers resting by one of the city’s famous water wheels.49 Labour and location are cross-referenced here, reiterating the close relationship between the topography and natural resources of the town and the manufactures that fuelled its growth. This model of pairing images of manufacturing with more traditional,

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The town on show

topographical scenes was replicated throughout the Cyclopædia, although the views chosen were sometimes more contradictory than complementary. Plate 6 in the sequence depicts stages in the manufacture of copper and lead above a conventional, possibly even ‘stock’, image of the ‘Town and Bay of Swansea’ described as ‘the centre of the copper and smelting industry’(see Figure 22).50 The inclusion of a view of Swansea alongside an illustration of industrial processes helped to form a connection in the mind of viewers between the physical appearance of that town and the trade conducted there. A similar pairing of images is employed in the plate depicting ‘button making, stamping, pressing and punching’ and ‘the Bull ring, Birmingham’.51 The aesthetic incongruity of some of these pictorial combinations may owe something to many British observers’ attempts to champion the scale of industrial production at a national level without denigrating the individual towns that suffered environmentally for that achievement. Nevertheless, within the context of the Great Exhibition, industry and manufactures took precedent. As the editor of the Cyclopædia, George Dodd, explained: ‘The wood engravings which appear in this Work have reference chiefly to large departments, and occasionally localities, of British industry’.52 Thus, the towns and cities illustrated and discussed by Dodd were selected only by virtue of their ability to conform easily to the categories imposed by the exhibition commissioners. Here then, the towns served to represent their trades, rather than trades representing their towns. This reversal of signifiers is particularly apparent in pairings that either caricatured or romanticised the town concerned. In the plate that represents cotton manufacture, a pair of technical drawings of a spinning mule and the roving machine and a view of the interior of a weaving shed, surround a well-rehearsed image of a Manchester factory at night (see Figure 23). This manner of romanticising industrial premises dates back at least as far as Joseph Wright of Derby’s Arkwright’s Cotton Mill by Night (1782– 83) and nearly seventy years later, the convention served to almost pasquinade Manchester as a symbol of industry. The towns that produced the exhibits were thus also ‘exhibited’ as being representative of their type. Ironically, an event motivated by a desire to distinguish cities and countries by the quality of their products had in part resulted in compounding a generic image of the ‘industrial north’, characterised by machinery and human toil. In addition to the visual and verbal accounts, heraldic banners, and ‘courts’, the exhibits themselves provided manufacturers with opportunities to depict either the towns in which they were produced or locations crucial to their economic survival. By the mid-nineteenth century, miniature or oversized wares had become a common means of exhibiting workmanship at trade fairs and repositories. As well as utilising particularly exotic and expensive materials, many such pieces also incorporated views of towns, houses, and historic sites. In this way, decorative exhibits combined material quality with the promotion of national, regional, and private interests. Perhaps the most famous and elaborate of all such promotional objects is the enormous Norfolk Knife (see Figure 24). Produced by Rodgers and Sons of Sheffield and exhibited at the Great Exhibition, 65

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22  ‘Town and Bay of Swansea’, in Knight’s Cyclopædia of the Industry of All Nations (1851).

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The town on show

23  ‘Manchester’, in Knight’s Cyclopædia of the Industry of All Nations (1851).

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24  Rodgers and Sons’ Norfolk Knife, Company of Cutlers, Sheffield. Photography by kind permission of Stephen Brooks.

this giant sportsman’s knife took centre stage in a large custom-built display cabinet for the company’s wares.53 At over 30 inches long and finished with an engraved mother-of-pearl handle, it followed the convention for luxurious oversized exhibition pieces. However, even more impressive than its size were the numerous etched views that decorated its eighty blades. Although many were relatively conventional in their subject matter and depicted subjects including Windsor Castle and Chatsworth House, the corpus of imagery also included 68

The town on show

views taken within the town of Sheffield, such as Sheffield College. As well as making this obvious link between the cutlery trade and the civic achievements of the town, the blades of the Norfolk Knife also depict a number of American views including Capitol Hill and the port town of Albany. This American imagery is less incongruous than it might at first appear. Throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the town of Sheffield depended heavily upon the export trade to America, particularly for the market in hunting knives.54 In representing these views, alongside sites of national significance and local civic accomplishment, Rodgers and Sons presented the visiting public with a concentrated image of international commercial supremacy, linked firmly to the town’s civic identity. The success of large-scale, expensive exhibition objects of this type depended upon the provision of a proportionately grand venue to attract and house the viewing public. However, their popularity ensured that promotional objects were produced throughout the nineteenth century, albeit on a smaller scale. In many instances these took the form of decorative arrangements of standard goods in small display cases, which sometimes incorporated the firm’s name.55 In addition, regional repositories and small trade fairs provided opportunities to display single exhibition items embellished with promotional imagery, albeit on a smaller scale than the Norfolk Knife. Extant examples of these smaller promotional pieces are rare. One exists in the form of a pair of shears, manufactured by the same Sheffield firm who were responsible for the Norfolk Knife.56 The shears were finished with highly decorative handles and etched blades, each of which depicts a different view of Rodgers and Sons’ Sheffield premises. The firm’s name was also incorporated, etched along the blunt edge of the blades. Combined, these aspects replicate the formula of the grand Norfolk Knife in presenting tradesmen, customers, and curious exhibition-goers with both a physical and visual referent of Sheffield manufacturing. Considering the evident expense and workmanship invested in such pieces, it is reasonable to speculate that such items circulated around a number of trade fairs and events, and were, therefore, viewed by a large portion of the public across Britain and even abroad. The Great Exhibition closed its doors to the public in October 1851, but its legacy endured. In the years that followed, trade directories were littered with advertisements that referred explicitly to companies’ presence at the event and, if they were fortunate enough, depicted the medals obtained as a result.57 As well as direct and explicit references to the exhibition in advertisements, the scale of the project helped also to shape the evolving visual language of urban promotion. In 1851 the vast ‘British Nave’ within the Crystal Palace had provided visitors with a broad vista dominated by luxurious, high-quality manufactures. Those who had been unable to attend the exhibition itself had this vision of British manufacturing towns relayed to them through the numerous works of graphic illustrators. Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century the grandeur and celebratory tone of the Great Exhibition continued to shape the representation of 69

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urban manufacturing towns. As commissioners became more familiar with the structure of large exhibitions, attempts to consolidate a town’s exhibits and forge a positive urban identity became even more pronounced. London International Exhibition of 1862 In the decade that followed the Great Exhibition, a number of similar events were hosted by those who sought to replicate its commercial and industrial evangelism. The first was the Dublin Great Industrial Exhibition of 1853, followed swiftly by New York’s first World’s Fair in 1853–54 and the more famous Exposition Universelle in Paris a year later. In 1862 attention returned to London as it hosted a second event at which the reputation of British cities could be reaffirmed or challenged. The London International Exhibition of Industry and Art replicated many of the features of its predecessor. Goods were again classified, there was a machinery hall, and a new building was erected for the purpose. It is true that some changes, such as the inclusion of Fine Art galleries, attracted attention away from the industrial manufactures, but other innovations served to renew public interest in provincial urban Britain and its products. The addition of ‘Trophies’ to the display canon enabled towns to promote themselves in a new and dramatic fashion.58 ‘Trophies’ were essentially elaborate displays that combined decorative sculpture with exhibits organised around a single theme, product, or location. A number of countries produced them, including Russia and Ireland which exhibited a ‘Brush Trophy’ and ‘Linen Trophy’ respectively. Few cities were afforded the opportunity to display wares in such a distinctive way, but Liverpool and Birmingham were among the fortunate. The Liverpool Trophy was 38 feet long and 8 feet wide and comprised a richly decorated structure of glass cabinets, incorporating large frosted silver tableaux depicting slaves, workers, and a sculpture of Liver birds. The exhibits contained within included cotton, cereals, wools, silks, coffee, sugar, and rice. Described by the Daily News as ‘a very complete collection of the imports of that place’, the Liverpool Trophy was located in a prominent position at the northern end of the Central Avenue, in front of the entrance to the Royal Horticultural Society gardens.59 Neglected by much of the national press, neither Cassell’s IE, nor the ILN chose to illustrate it. However, the Liverpool Mercury was, perhaps predictably, more enthusiastic and detailed in its description. The local newspaper praised it for ‘worthily exemplifying the pre-eminence of the port as the greatest importing emporium in the world’ and in a later issue for affording ‘a comprehensive view of the multifarious commerce of the port’.60 Here again, the entire city was styled as an ‘emporium’ akin to the ‘trophy’ that represented it. The Birmingham Small Arms Trophy was covered more widely in the popular press. This may have been by virtue of the fact that it displayed only one classification of goods, and as such fitted more easily into the structure of most guides and accounts. Its location on the British side of the Nave, flanked

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25  ‘Birmingham Small Arms Trophy’, ILN, 14 June 1862, 618.

by two large cannon, ensured that it attracted great attention and appeared on a number of general views as well as discrete illustrations (see Figure 25). The IE for 1862 applauded it for being ‘designed with taste, constructed with skill’ and for presenting ‘a very attractive contrast to the various surrounding objects’.61 Like many of the displays in the Birmingham Court of 1851, here explicit

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reference to Birmingham was made on the front of the display case. In addition, the names of the contributing manufactories were emblazoned on the remaining three sides of the structure. It is possible that the names of companies as well known as Thomas Turner and B. Woodward and Sons would have been famous enough to signal to viewers the quality of the manufactures on display, but if not, guidebooks, newspapers, and the captions given to the many engravings made the point explicit. In 1862 as in 1851, the exhibition visitor was introduced to the towns and cities on display exclusively through their manufactures and the companies that produced them. The wares on show were presented not so much as the product of an urban community, as the basis for its existence. While national and international exhibitions such as the Great Exhibition and London International Exhibition provided opportunities to promote a town and its trades to a wide audience, it still left local commissioners with relatively little control over the nature of that promotion. Notwithstanding their selection of specific exhibits and cabinets, the organising principles of such events were traditionally set by committees located in London. Local interests necessarily came second to national interests. One means of avoiding this potential conflict of interest was for a town to host an exhibition itself in the manner of the 1849 Birmingham Exposition. On such an occasion, local exhibitors could both dictate the purpose and form of the event and have complete control over individual exhibits. This allowed for great diversity in style and presentation. In some instances, exhibitions were essentially industrial showcases, while others focused on art or scientific experimentation. Some exhibits integrated seamlessly with the primarily industrial and commercial attractions of their host cities. In his 1807 edition of Stranger in Liverpool, Thomas Kaye professed that in that town ‘the principal objects of curiosity to the stranger are the docks and shipping’, while in his 1835 tour of Manchester, the diarist George Head noted that the sight most worthy of attention was a hydraulic press at work in a local warehouse.62 Although not formal ‘exhibitions’, such attractions clearly served similar purposes and blurred the perceived parameters of ‘exhibitions’ and ‘sights’. By the middle of the century, there was a more formal system of exhibitions , but an uneasy distinction continued to be made between exhibitions that reflected the industrial or commercial character of large provincial towns and those events which challenged such simplistic caricatures. In 1842 Horace Heartwell concluded his account of Manchester’s lyceums and institutions by lamenting the limited impact of the Royal Manchester Institution upon the tastes of the town’s uneducated population. Barry’s institute building, he claimed, is ‘a beautiful temple, but the altar is cold, and the worshippers scattered’.63 This tension between the commercial image of the provincial urban giants and their cultural aspirations was brought into focus in 1857 by an exhibition that challenged the cultural dominance of the capital and simultaneously styled Manchester as the home of artistic appreciation and merit.

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Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857 Prior to 1857, fine art exhibitions had almost universally been held in capital cities or else were relatively small-scale. In the six years since 1851, both Dublin and Paris had hosted notable international art exhibitions, but nothing of the scale proposed for the Art Treasures project had been attempted in any of the so-called provincial ‘manufacturing districts’ of Great Britain.64 More than merely converging the needs of a newly evolving urban society with inherited expectations towards civic culture, the Art Treasures Exhibition represented a divergence from former models of provincial urban exhibitions. A single, ambitious event on a national scale, it signalled a bold escalation in the cultural aspirations of provincial manufacturing towns. Contemporaries clearly noted the significance of hosting an artistic showcase in a location that was not only provincial and urban, but also famously industrialised. As one foreign visitor wrote, ‘I can’t get used to the idea that I am going to see the same Leonardo da Vincis guarded by a “policeman”, and that I am going to be taken in front of the Jean Bellinnis, the Giorgiones and the Veroneses by bus and not by gondola’.65 Even the editor of the exhibition catalogue confessed to harbouring initial doubts as to the eligibility of the city to host such an event.66 However, there was some recognition of the town’s artistic cognizance. In its first edition in 1839, the Art Journal endorsed Manchester’s cultural progress and ambitions by proclaiming: This town has long been considered as the strongest provincial ‘help’ to artists; and, we believe, a greater number of works of art have been sold to the cottonspinners and cotton-printers – princes in wealth, munificent in display, and exhibiting continual proofs of taste and judgement – than have been disposed of in any other city or town of England.67

Following an initial meeting with Prince Albert on 7 May 1856 a general council was convened in the mayor’s parlour in Manchester with the purpose of establishing a general fund. The list of subscribers and members of the executive committee reveals the significance of local interest and self-promotion in the scheme.68 The Earl of Ellesmere, Lord Lieutenant of the county, was the president of the general council and the mayor, James Watts was made the chairman. The executive committee comprised among others: William Entwisle, who belonged to an association to fund education with local rates; Joseph Heron, who served as the town clerk for the Manchester Corporation from its inception in 1838 until his death in 1889; Edmund Potter, proprietor of the local Dinting Printing Works and President of the Manchester School of Art, who had contributed to the improvement of art manufactures by authoring a book titled Calico Printing as an Art of Manufacture (1852); and Thomas Fairbairn, son of William Fairbairn who had served as a local commissioner for the Great Exhibition. In total the list of subscribers and committee members comprised at least three bankers, eighteen manufacturers, five merchants or traders, three engineers, eight Members of Parliament, and twelve men involved with local government, of which five

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would at some point serve as mayor of either Manchester or Salford. Yet, notwithstanding the involvement of these members of the Manchester elite, one of the most celebrated pretexts for the exhibition was its intended accessibility to the masses. The Art Treasures Exhibition was to be open to all, and was intended to attract local artisans and labourers. As the newspaper of another provincial industrial town, the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent enthused: The true nobility of the design of these Manchester men is to be seen in this, that they have laboured for no selfish pleasure … no elevation of a clique, but to please and improve the masses of their countrymen. Venice in her day of pride was a great patron of art. She had her merchant princes, who revelled in all the glories of art. But there was a system of exclusiveness … Manchester bids the world to the great feast she has prepared; and indulges no luxurious dream, but aims to mould and mark the character of the time.69

Manchester’s ‘merchant princes’ could congratulate themselves personally for their role in elevating the cultural reputation of the city, but the manufacturers and politicians had special reason to promote such an event if it promised to improve manufactures and raise the national profile of the town. Both local patrons and the observing public at large clearly realised the potential of such an event to raise the cultural profile of a town to a national level. The Art Journal described it as a ‘magnificent enterprise, so patriotically carried out by inhabitants of Manchester, but in truth worthy of a great nation’.70 Clearly an exhibition of such an ambitious scale was designed to project a more cultural image of Manchester than had hitherto been attempted and high hopes were placed upon the ability of such an event to improve the national perception of the city: As this exhibition brings the nobility and country gentleman of the land to our city, we do not doubt that many of their preconceptions will be disabused, and that they will carry away the impression that, either physically, socially, or politically, Manchester is not quite so black as it is represented.71

As Paul Greenhalgh has observed, the fine arts were widely recognised as ‘the counter-poise to industry and the sciences, the non-functional aspect of human endeavour … Fine Art Palaces bristled with traditional aspects of civilization; they reminded urban dwellers of their pre-industrial heritage and of value systems vaguerised by modern life’.72 Beyond the promise of this new, albeit temporary, monumental cultural venue, the Art Treasures Exhibition provided an ideal focus around which the town’s other cultural and recreational attributes could be advertised to a national and international audience. One issue of the Manchester Weekly Advertiser, published shortly after the opening of the exhibition in May 1857, carried two articles suggesting additional attractions that might appeal to the visiting public. The first, ‘Our statues’, drew attention to the large number of monumental statues erected to ‘departed greatness’ as evidence of the city’s inherent public-spiritedness and cultural inclination. The second, titled ‘Places in Manchester a stranger should see’ directed potential visitors to an exhibition 74

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of works by local artists which was being held at Peel Park, as well as permanent attractions such as the Museum of Natural History in Peter Street, the cathedral, and various libraries and institutions.73 The Art Treasures Exhibition thus provided a forum in which the people of Manchester could promote themselves as established advocates of public education and aesthetic appreciation. In addition to visiting these sites a large proportion of visitors to the Art Treasures Exhibition remained keen to see the town’s most famous tourist attractions, the factories and warehouses. One correspondent to the Manchester Guardian regretted that in anticipation of the exhibition, manufacturers were ‘pestered to death with applications’ to view their mills.74 Even the Society of Arts combined their visit to the exhibition with a tour of the local manufactories.75 Thus, rather than detracting attention away from the industrial heritage of the region, the Art Treasures Exhibition seems to have been conceived as an opportunity to broaden the town’s reputation and to promote all its triumphs, both cultural and commercial in equal measure. The scepticism directed towards the compatibility of provincial manufacturing towns and high culture was not restricted to Manchester. The cultural aspirations of any provincial city were often damned as inappropriate. In one of its later summaries of the exhibition, The Builder qualified its claim that the city ‘has not yet given to the world much of beauty along with its manufactures’ by also noting that its ‘woven and printed fabrics have not made worse manifestation of art in their day, than have the manufactures of Birmingham and Sheffield’.76 Even open supporters of the exhibition seemed to appreciate the difficulties raised by such a venue and the Prince Consort warned the exhibition commission that the national importance of the event would have to be emphasised if they were to secure the patronage of potential exhibitors.77 Ulrich Finke has suggested that a hesitation among some members of the aristocracy to send their possessions to Manchester resulted from their questioning whether they ‘owed any great debt of gratitude’ to the city.78 This implies a degree of personal distrust on the part of some potential exhibitors towards a town that epitomised a new, socially ambitious elite and the business practices they favoured. These misgivings were variously fortified and challenged by myriad visual representations of the event. The scale of the exhibition building and the ambition of its committee ensured that from the time when the proposal first became public, to the eventual auctioning-off of the building, the event was reported and illustrated in both the national and local press. It was through this flurry of local and national journalism surrounding the exhibition that a ‘new’ image of Manchester was most widely disseminated. Shortly after the initial meetings of the committee had taken place in 1856 the ILN began its coverage of the exhibition within the ‘Town and table talk on literature, art etc.’ section. At this early stage, the newspapers reserved their judgement, but from the opening ceremony onwards, the exhibition and its host town were subjected to detailed scrutiny. Week after week, the popular press was littered with extensive reports and wood engravings ranging from detailed views of the ‘palace’ to processions and individual exhibits. 75

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The great hall comprised the largest single area within the Art Treasures Palace, flanked on either side by two smaller arched halls, each of which stretched the full length of the building. As one French visitor noted, ‘inside it resembles a church in the form of a Latin cross, vaulted in glass and divided in three big naves’.79 The Great Exhibition had established a precedent for large-scale exhibition ‘palaces’ or ‘cathedrals’ and many artists sought to take advantage of the impact they provided.80 As with the Crystal Palace of 1851, the Art Treasures Palace was an immense pre-fabricated structure. In 1856 a piece of land in Old Trafford was rented from the city’s cricket club and proposals were invited for a suitable building to house the collected artefacts. A number of well-known architects submitted designs and among them was one by the renowned architect, Owen Jones. Having originally settled upon Jones’s design, the committee proceeded to change its mind and eventually decided upon a submission by Messrs C. D. Young and Co., an Edinburgh iron foundry. 81 The final structure measured a vast 700 feet in length, approximately 200 feet in width, and 140 feet in height and lists of these impressive statistics littered accounts in both the local and national press long before the building itself was completed.82 In some cases the vastness of the premises led to unequivocal praise, as in a comic account of the exhibition, published by Abel Heywood’s brother John Heywood. A Yewud Chap’s Trip to Manchister to see Prince Halbert, th’ Queen, an’ th’ Art-Treasures Eggshibishun described the building as ‘a fizzer, beside bein mighty grand’.83 Nevertheless, the premises did not always prompt automatic praise and the majority of accounts were more measured in their enthusiasm for the architecture. The enormous scale of the structure, as well as its architectural style, represented a clear departure from all previous provincial exhibition venues. The extent of this deviation from provincial precedent is clear if we contrast an earlier advertisement for an exhibition in the town (c.1815) with another, more elaborate lithographic view of the Art Treasures Palace, published by John Heywood in 1857 (see Figures 26 and 27). The former occupies a central site in what appears to be a terrace of town houses. Both the style and the scale of the premises conform to those prescribed by the Georgian street or square. In doing so, both the building and its representation reflect a similar adherence to pictorial conventions as the images of manufactories discussed in Chapter 4. By contrast, the Art Treasures Palace dominated and redefined its surroundings. The site’s location beyond the restrictions of the town centre meant that these grounds could be landscaped to accentuate and serve the purpose of the building. As a result, a series of paths and lawns provided a visually attractive and extensive foreground from which artists could record the prospect. For some, the plain style of the building, as opposed to an attempt at ostentation and grandeur, qualified the structure for the environs of Manchester. For others like The Times, the beauty of the building was perceptible in its function and contrast to the surrounding skyline, ‘under the canopy of its black cloud from innumerable chimneys, arises a temple dedicated to the beautiful’.84 Despite implicitly endorsing the event in 76

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26  Advertisement for the Manchester Exhibition (c.1815).

his Historical, Descriptive, and Biographical Handbook to the Exhibition of the United Kingdom’s Art-Treasures, at Manchester, 1857, T. Morris subtly qualified his praise: ‘Although not architecturally pretentious, the front has a very neat appearance, much of its pleasing effect being due to the great variety in its outlines’ and The Times praised the ‘chaste’ quality of its decorations.85 Even some of those who admitted their disappointment at the exterior appearance of the ‘palace’ attributed its plain character to the very Mancunian virtues of practicality and thriftiness, as the Art Journal explained: ‘we by no means complain that there has been no large expenditure upon the outside – the building is, what it was designed to be, a plain edifice, calculated to “house” a collection’.86 However, some were 77

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27  J. Heywood, The Exhibition of Art Treasures, Manchester, 1857 (1857).

more scathing in their criticism. The Illustrated Times described the exterior as resembling a ‘carriage repository or a railway shed’ and its first impression when entering the building to be one of ‘agreeable disappointment’ that the city had not squandered money on an ostentatious hall.87 Even a correspondent for the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent commented that it reminded him of a railway tunnel, sentiments echoed in a number of periodicals, including The Builder.88 For many, the modesty of the building and its ‘neatness’ rather than ‘pretension’ was seen as a concession to the provinciality of the event. Whether it was done with a tone of generous condescension or disappointed resignation, such accounts tempered their approval of the event and their surprise at the aesthetic qualities of the area with reassurances of the inescapable provinciality of the organisers, architecture, and character of local inhabitants. One local newspaper acknowledged and challenged the criticism made by the national press, who it claimed, ‘seem determined to regard the Exhibition of Art Treasures as a sign of preternatural change … It is hailed as the first-fruits of a tardy repentance’.89 Clearly, in reviewing the Art Treasures Exhibition, editors were often careful to qualify their praise for cultural ambition by suggesting that Manchester’s population exhibited more enthusiasm for art than evidence of artistic cultivation. In this manner the ILN ensured that any praise awarded to the event was undermined by a tone of metropolitan condescension. Views of the Palace were most often ‘taken’ from the east or the north, so that the centre of Manchester was absent from the vista. Yet, despite their similar 78

The town on show

vantage point, the emphasis of these views did vary. The majority of the views were executed from the edge of the grounds and so located the viewer on the lawned area in front of the premises.90 This enabled a relatively large, expansive view of the façade but prevented any detailed delineation of its architectural features. Unusually, the ILN chose to illustrate the exterior of the building from a relatively close vantage point which enabled a higher level of architectural detail to be represented, but failed to convey the physical presence of the structure on the landscape.91 Occasionally, variations of this format appeared which incorporated aspects of the wider landscape that were usually concealed. On one side of the Palace lay the city’s Botanical Gardens, which contained its own impressive ‘glass palace’ in the form of a large hothouse, designed by Thomas Worthington and completed in 1854. During one of the extensive planning meetings for the event, an arrangement was made to allow visitors to the exhibition to have free access to these gardens, and to complement the art exhibition next door the Botanical and Horticultural Society hosted their own series of horticultural shows throughout the summer.92 As one local newspaper observed, Such a collection as is provided at the Art Treasures Palace will doubtless, as we once heard the idea expressed, be a charmed cup of blessing to those who are shut up day after day in a smoky city … fortunately, we shall have the advantage of revelling amongst the loveliest of art, and, after having pleasant glimpses of its beauties, betake ourselves for, a short season to the beauties of nature, and enjoy the glad and glorious green scenery of the garden, the pleasure ground, and the wood, so conveniently within our reach on the north side of the Exhibition.93

Consequently, what evolved on the Old Trafford site was not merely an art exhibition, but effectively an entire cultural complex comprising a number of different cultural and recreational pursuits, where, thanks to its special railway siding, visitors could completely avoid encountering the town proper. Many views of the Art Treasures Palace convey this sense of scale and so present the building as a physical as well as cultural achievement. The ILN’s own illustrations of the Palace replicated the format of the grandest vistas of the Crystal Palace. ‘The Manchester Art-Treasures Exhibition – The Great Hall’, which appeared in the ILN on 30 May 1857, covered two entire pages. As the editor claimed, the view served ‘to convey to those who have not yet visited the Exhibition a notion of the coup d’oeil presented by the Nave’.94 The large size of the illustration reflected the scale of the Manchester Palace, but artists and publishers of relatively small illustrations attempted also to relate the enormity of the project to their customers. In one relatively small view published by Abel Heywood (himself a relative of three of the Exhibition’s committee members), the densely packed contents of the immense building are revealed to the viewer by use of a ‘cut-away’ device (see Figure 28).95 In this way Abel Heywood’s guidebook not only testified to popular cultural awareness in the city, but also presented the Manchester Exhibition as a paragon of accessible public culture.

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28  ‘Interior View of the Art-Treasures Palace’, in Heywood’s Pictorial Guide to Manchester and Companion to the Art-Treasures Exhibition (1857).

While these engravings certainly communicated the spectacle of the venue and its contents, perhaps the most powerful testimony as regards changing ‘popular’ perceptions of Manchester can be seen in the accounts and illustrations of Royal visits to the exhibition. The issue of the ILN that followed the opening of the exhibition carried a lengthy report of that particular proceeding, from the arrival of the prince at the mayor’s residence of Abney Hall in Cheadle, the procession to Old Trafford and the opening ceremony, to the eventual dispersal of the crowds when ‘the love of art was superseded by the insatiable cravings of appetite’.96 Illustrated with a series of wood engravings, this account provided the reader with a more comprehensive introduction to the physical and cultural character of Manchester than that provided by images and literary guides to the exhibition itself. The peripatetic nature of the prince’s procession via Oxford Road to the site of the Art Treasures Palace seems to have encouraged the ILN journalists to approach each stage of the journey as another ‘exhibit’ and to treat the ‘character’ and visual appearance of each locality as a curiosity. This system of ‘cataloguing’ the region revealed a number of popular conceptions, in some cases misconceptions, about Manchester and its hinterland, as journalists either confirmed or refuted what they considered to be universally acknowledged truths about industrial, urban Britain. Of the areas on the very outskirts of Manchester the ILN reported with some surprise a vision of ‘country carts and vehicles of all kinds filled with country people … reminding one of a rural “Derby Day” on a small scale’.97 When the cortège reached Oxford Road the reporter appeared to be less pleased, albeit vindicated in his low expectations, as the crowds ‘began to 80

The town on show

assume somewhat of that dingy aspect which must be expected from a gathering of factory workers’.98 In this manner the ILN repeatedly reinforced derogatory provincial stereotypes and reiterated the subordinate position of the town in relation to London: ‘On the confines of Cheadle an arch bore the inscription, “Welcome to Cheadle”; at Didsbury was another … and on all an humble attempt at artistic decoration’.99 In contrast, one correspondent for The Times was encouraged by the street decorations, which he claimed ‘presented a very tasteful appearance.’100 However, albeit to a lesser extent than the ILN, The Times frequently employed a similar tone of metropolitan condescension. Despite its praise of the opening gala, a few days later, on 11 May 1857 the paper contested the infamous statement: ‘What in the world has Manchester to do with Art?’101 by claiming: ‘Manchester has to do with art, if only because it is condemned to the most continuous and unlovely forms of labour … because art is a potent means of education and refinement; and without these Manchester cannot continue to prosper, morally or materially’.102 In a similar approach to that adopted by the ILN, the Illustrated Times also produced a number of elaborate wood engravings, including illustrations of the decorative arches to accompany an extensive account of the Queen’s visit to the exhibition in July 1857.103 The illustration of the archway situated at the entrance to the Old Trafford site certainly presented a positive image. However, the view of the procession and decorations at the city-centre location of St Anne’s Square provided readers with a rare picture of the town’s wider urban environment (see Figure 29). Here, the crowds and decorations appear against a backdrop of smart buildings situated around a spacious open square. The neo-classical façade of the Royal Exchange is situated centrally in the composition and the image is one of leisure and recreation. As such, the scene represents a complete contrast to that of the smoke-laden skyline, littered with chimneys and warehouses, which was a staple motif in political and social polemics against the city. The Illustrated Times delivered a generally positive endorsement of Manchester’s efforts. However, unsurprisingly, the most vocal praise originated in the local newspapers. The Manchester Guardian’s account of the Royal procession and opening ceremony described these same structures as ‘tastefully designed arches’.104 Similarly, the Oldham Advertiser was also appreciative of the inhabitants’ artistic efforts as it described ‘a handsome triumphal arch … of laurel, ivy, and other evergreen, supported on columns of imitation marble’.105 The discrepancy between these local accounts and those of the metropolitan papers might be explained away as no more than a matter of personal taste, and the role of these structures as merely one of hollow ornamentation. However, as well as proving popular among the locals, these archways and the variety of other street decorations and bunting that accompanied them were an important means of representing public support and local endorsement for the project. This opportunity did not go unrealised by the town’s inhabitants and in July a letter signed N. S. Crumpton was published in the Manchester Guardian, recommending

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29  ‘The Queen’s Visit to Manchester – The Royal cortege passing through St. Anne’s Square’, Illustrated Times, 11 July 1857.

the ‘propriety’ of leaving the arches at Stretford Road and Old Trafford standing until the end of the exhibition.106 In addition to demonstrating the city’s loyalty to the Crown and a general enthusiasm for the exhibition, street decorations were used to accentuate specific buildings and to demonstrate the commitment of specific individuals to the redefinition of Manchester.107 Upon the occasion of the Queen’s visit to the city, two months later, advertisements appeared in the local press for subscriptions to fund triumphal arches and the Manchester Guardian’s first account of the Queen’s visit was dominated by descriptions of these structures and acknowledgements of those who had designed and/or funded them. Listed under regional headings such as ‘Worsley and Swinton’, ‘Manchester’, and ‘Salford’, specific decorative features were described and sponsors or subscribers commended as the paper’s description of Exchange Street demonstrates: ‘The principal displays in this street were the establishments of Messrs Agnew and Son and of Mr. J. C. Grundy. At the former, there was a trophy of flags, the royal arms, and several banners, the whole being very tastefully arranged.108 Both 82

The town on show

Thomas Agnew and J. C. Grundy were figureheads in the mid-nineteenth-century Manchester art scene, operating as art dealer and auctioneer/dealer respectively. By decorating their premises, they drew attention not only to their personal support for the project, but also to the established presence of cultural enterprise in the city. Notwithstanding the verbal condescension directed towards these provincial ‘attempts’ at street decoration by the metropolitan press, visual representations of these specially erected arches tend to represent a positive image of provincial enthusiasm for the Royal visit and the exhibition itself. Furthermore, illustrations that featured these structures provided an opportunity to contextualise the event within the wider scheme of provincial urban improvement. Yet, notwithstanding the large quantity of positive coverage that the event received in both the local and national press, collectively journalists presented an ambivalent response to the exhibition. A shift in popular perceptions was required if towns like Manchester were to successfully challenge the cultural dominance of London and it was a shift that would be most widely and effectively represented in images and accounts that unequivocally celebrated their cultural achievements. The Art Treasures Exhibition elevated the status of provincial cultural events and attracted the attention of the nation, but such an achievement was always to be tempered by a suitable degree of implied modesty and deference to the grandeur of metropolitan exhibitions. This was a sentiment expressed in the Athenaeum’s final report of the exhibition, which called for the treasures to be exhibited in London and which qualified its statement ‘Manchester has done well’ with the retort ‘let London do better’.109 Nevertheless, the exhibition was a conscious rebuke on the part of a number of Manchester’s prominent citizens to those who would treat their cultural aspirations with condescension. It represented a confident reconfiguration of the city’s image in a manner that was not prescribed by the capital city.110 Rather than presenting displays of manufactures, which would reinforce the industrial caricature of manufacturing towns, Manchester instead hosted a cultural spectacle that attracted thousands of non-commercial travellers. In so doing, the city established a new standard in the cultural reputation of provincial towns. The Art Treasures Exhibition claimed culture as well as commerce as a central feature of the new urban giants. As the range of exhibitions discussed here demonstrates, exhibitions and the images produced to promote, commemorate, and report them, contributed to the reputation of towns either through the exhibitions and their buildings serving as signifiers of urban prestige, or as platforms upon which urban values could be defined and displayed. Yet, these values varied from town to town in accordance with pre-existing perceptions of artists and their customers and the ambitions of the town concerned. In some instances, such as the Railway Padorama and the Great Exhibition, notions of northern towns as mechanical in both form and function were reaffirmed, while events such as the Art Treasures Exhibition sought to moderate if not completely reform those reductive stereotypes. Exponents of both perspectives succeeded to some degree in circulating their particular narrative of provincial urbanisation, but neither dominated 83

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completely the discourse surrounding urban function, purpose, and identity. To change significantly the parameters of that debate required a transformation of the towns themselves; a transformation that was recorded in, and to some degree informed by, urban imagery. Notes  1 R. D. Altick, The Shows of London: a panoramic history of exhibitions, (Cambridge, MA, 1978), pp. 5–33 and 87–98; C. Preston, ‘In the wilderness of forms: ideas and things in Thomas Browne’s cabinets of curiosity’, in N. Rhodes and J. Sawday (eds), The Renaissance Computer: knowledge technology in the first age of print (London and New York, 2000), pp. 170–83.  2 R. D. Altick, The Shows of London, pp. 203–4; and D. Harkett, ‘Illusions of power: the diorama and the Royalist press in Restoration Paris’, Visual Resources, 22 (2006), 33–52.  3 R. D. Wood, ‘The diorama in Great Britain in the 1820s’, History of Photography, 17 (1993), 284–95; and R. Hyde, Panoramania: the art and entertainment of the ‘allembracing’ view (London, 1988), pp. 131–5.  4 Advertisement, ‘A Highly Picturesque Peristrephic Cosmorama of Liverpool’ (1825). JJC, Diorama 4.  5 B. Comment, The Painted Panorama (London, 1999), pp. 24–8.  6 L. Garrison (ed.), Panoramas, 1787–1900: texts and contexts, I (London, 2013), pp. 203– 16.  7 The Times, 4 April 1825, 3.  8 Advertisement for Panorama of the Cities of London and Westminster at Leicester Square (c.1795). JJC, Diorama.  9 For examples see J. Adlard, Panorama, Leicester Square: short account of Lord Nelson’s defeat of the French at the Nile (London, 1799) and R. Burford, Description of a View of the City of Damascus, and the Surrounding Country, now Exhibiting at the Panorama, Leicester Square (London, 1841). 10 E. P. Dennison, S. Eydmann, A. Lyell et al., Painting the Town: Scottish urban history in art (Edinburgh, 2013), pp. 30–1. 11 R. A. Forsyth, ‘The Victorian self-image and the emergent city sensibility’, University of Toronto Quarterly, 33 (1963–64), 61–77. 12 R. A. Forsyth, ‘The Victorian self-image and the emergent city sensibility’, 70. 13 W. Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: the industrialisation of time and space in the nineteenth century (Oxford, 1986), pp. 41 and 55. 14 The title of ‘Padorama’, a corruption of the more familiar ‘panorama’, was the name applied specifically to this show by its proprietor, E. Colyer. 15 Advertisement, Railway Exhibition (1834). JJC, Railways 4. 16 ‘The Padorama’, The Times, 12 May 1834, 4. 17 Advertisement, Railway Exhibition (1834). JJC, Railways 4 and an advertisement for the ‘Railway Exhibition’, The Athenaeum, 28 June 1834, 494. 18 Advertisement, ‘Railway Exhibition’, The Athenaeum, 5 July 1834, 509. 19 E. Colyer, Descriptive Catalogue of the Padorama: of the Manchester and Liverpool railroad, containing 10,000 square feet of canvass, now exhibiting at Baker Street, Portman Square,

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20 21

22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41 42

illustrated with twelve lithographic views, taken on the spot, by artists of acknowledged talent (London, 1834). E. Colyer, Descriptive Catalogue of the Padorama, p. 8. W. Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey, pp. 41–50. See also M. C. Boyer, The City of Collective Memory: its historical imagery and architectural entertainments (Cambridge, MA, 1996), p. 41; and J. Crary, Techniques of the Observer: on vision and modernity in the nineteenth century (Cambridge, MA, 1992), p. 14. K. Flint, The Victorians and the Visual Imagination (Cambridge, 2000), p. 8. W. Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey, pp. 42–3, 53, 55. I. Shaw, Views of the Most Interesting Scenery on the Line of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (Liverpool, 1831). W. Gilpin, Three Essays on Picturesque Beauty, on Picturesque Travel, and on Sketching Landscape (London, 1792), p. 44. F. Vanke, ‘Degrees of otherness: the Ottoman Empire and China at the Great Exhibition of 1851’, in J.A. Auerbach and P. H. Hoffenberg (eds), Britain, the Empire and the World at the Great Exhibition of 1851 (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 191–206; L. Kriegel, ‘Narrating the subcontinent in 1851: India at the Crystal Palace’, in L. Purbrick (ed.), The Great Exhibition of 1851: New Interdisciplinary Essays (Manchester, 2001), pp. 146– 78; P. Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions and World’s Fairs, 1851–1939 (Manchester, 1988). Manchester Guardian, 3 August 1850, 8. J. Auerbach, The Great Exhibition of 1851: a nation on display (New Haven, CT, 1999). J. Auerbach, The Great Exhibition of 1851, p. 56. ‘The Birmingham Exposition of Arts and Manufactures’, Morning Chronicle, 4 September 1849. ‘The Exhibition of Manufactures at Birmingham’, Daily News, 3 September 1849. ‘Birmingham in Miniature’, Birmingham Gazette, 3 September 1849. Illustrated Exhibitor (hereafter IE), 7 June 1851, 6–8. P. Berlyn, Gilbert’s Popular Narrative of the Origin, History, Progress and Prospects of the Great Exhibition, 1851 (London, 1851), p. 155. G. W. Yapp and R. Ellis, Official Catalogue of the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations 1851, 3 vols (London, 1851), II, pp. 107–23. A stand from the Birmingham Court can be seen illustrated in the IE, 20 December 1851, 540. ‘The machinery of the Exhibition’, Art Journal, 1 January 1850, i–viii; G. D. Dempsey, The Machinery of the Nineteenth Century; illustrated from original drawings, and including best examples shewn at the exhibition of the works of industry of all nations (London, 1852–56); Louis Hague, The Great Exhibition: moving machinery, Royal Collection 19979 (watercolour) and ‘The machinery of the exhibition as applied to textile manufacture’, Art Journal Illustrated Catalogue (1851), p. I**. ‘The cotton machinery in the Exhibition’, IE, 20 September 1851, 285. ‘The Sheffield goods’, Sheffield Free Press, 17 May 1851, 6. ‘Flags inside the exhibition’, IE, 28 June 1851, 75; and ‘The municipal banners of the Crystal Palace’, Manchester Guardian, 6 August 1851, 2. ‘The Sheffield stall’, Sheffield Free Press, 10 May 1851, 3; and ‘The Sheffield goods’, Sheffield Free Press, 17 May 1851, 6. ‘Sheffield contributions to the World Fair’, IE, 23 August 1851, 202. Although there is no reference to a ‘Birmingham Court’ in the IE or the official catalogue of the 85

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43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

63 64

exhibition, the plan of the exhibition provided in the latter publication, suggests that the Birmingham stand actually occupied a larger area than the Sheffield Court. This is supported by the approximate numbers of exhibitors provided by an official catalogue, which claims that Sheffield provided only 158 exhibitors in comparison to Birmingham and Manchester, which sent 230 and 192 respectively, G. W. Yapp and R. Ellis, Official Catalogue. ‘Manufacture of files’, IE, 23 August 1851, 208 (original emphasis). IE, 23 August 1851, 209. ‘Treading the clay’, ‘Saw-cutting’ and ‘Saw-punching’, IE, 23 August 1851, 206–8. B. Maidment, ‘Entrepreneurship and the artisans: John Cassell, the Great Exhibition and the periodical idea’, in L. Purbrick (ed.), The Great Exhibition of 1851, pp. 79–113 (p. 87). L. D. Lutchmansingh, ‘Commodity exhibitionism at the London Great Exhibition of 1851’, Annals of Scholarship, 7 (1990), 203–16 (208); and B. Maidment, Reading Popular Prints, 1790–1870 (Manchester, 2001), p. 145. G. Dodd (ed.), Knight’s Cyclopædia of the Industry of All Nations (London, 1851). G. Dodd (ed.), Knight’s Cyclopædia, plate number 10. List of Illustrations, in G. Dodd (ed.), Knight’s Cyclopædia, end matter. G. Dodd (ed.), Knight’s Cyclopædia, plate number 4. G. Dodd (ed.), Knight’s Cyclopædia, p. 1807. ‘Rodgers and Sons display case’, IE 23 August 1851, 201; and R. Ellis (ed.), Official and Descriptive Illustrated Catalogue: Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations (London, 1851), p. 667; J. A. Auerbach, The Great Exhibition of 1851, p. 112; C. H. Gibbs-Smith, The Great Exhibition of 1851: a commemorative album (London, 1951), p. 94; and J. R. Davis, The Great Exhibition (Stroud, 1999), pp. 140–1. G. Tweedale, Sheffield Steel and America: a century of commercial and technological interdependence 1830–1930 (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 1–10. A range of this type of promotional display can be seen in the Hawley Collection, Sheffield. See also the Great Exhibition stand for W. and S. Butcher, IE, 23 August 1851, 210. Shears manufactured by Rodgers and Sons (c.1855). Collection of the Company of Cutlers, Sheffield. Unwin and Rodgers advertisement, White’s Gazetteer and General Directory of Sheffield (Sheffield, 1852). ‘The Crystal Palace as a teacher or art and art manufacture’, The Art Journal (1856), 253–4. Daily News, 8 May 1862. Liverpool Mercury, 6 May 1862 and 8 May 1862. IE (1862), 35. T. Kaye, The Stranger in Liverpool: or an historical and descriptive view of the town of Liverpool and its environs (Liverpool, 1810), p. 142; and G. Head, A Home Tour Through the Manufacturing Districts of England in the Summer of 1835 (London, 1836), pp. 74 and 77–8. H. Heartwell, ‘Characteristics of Manchester: in a series of letters to the Editor’, North of England Magazine, October 1842, 564–5. U. Finke, ‘The Art Treasures Exhibition’, in J.H.G. Archer (ed.), Art and Architecture in Victorian Manchester: ten illustrations of patronage and practice (Manchester, 1985), pp. 102–26 (p. 105). 86

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65 C. Blanc, Les Trésors de l’art a Manchester (Paris, 1857), p. 5 (unpublished translation by D. C. K. Jones, 2004). 66 J. B. Waring (ed.), Art Treasures of the United Kingdom from the Art Treasures Exhibition, Manchester (London, 1858), preface. 67 Art Journal, 15 February 1839, 5. 68 For a comprehensive list of the individual subscription amounts see the Stockport Advertiser, 25 April 1857, 3. 69 ‘Royalty, art, and the people’, Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 9 May 1857, 8. 70 Art Journal, 1 January 1857, 21. 71 R. Lamb, ‘Manchester and its exhibitions of 1857’, Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, 51 (1857), 387. 72 P. Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas, p. 198. 73 ‘Our statues’ and ‘Places in Manchester a stranger should see’, Manchester Weekly Advertiser, 23 May 1857, 5. 74 ‘Sights during the Exhibition’, Manchester Guardian, 2 April 1857, 4. 75 ‘Visit of the Society of Arts to Manchester’, Manchester Guardian, 5 August 1857, 3. 76 ‘The close of the Exhibition of “Art Treasures,” Manchester’, The Builder, 24 October 1857, 602. 77 The term ‘exhibitors’ was used by the committee to refer to anyone who lent a ‘treasure’ to the exhibition. 78 U. Finke, ‘The Art Treasures Exhibition’, p. 110. See also R. Lamb, ‘Manchester and its exhibitions of 1857’, 384. 79 C. Blanc, Les Trésors de l’art a Manchester, p. 17. See also ‘The Art Treasures Exhibition’, The Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 7 February 1857, 9. 80 See H. C. Selous, The Opening of the Great Exhibition (1851–52), painting, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Also, Dickinson Bros, Dickinsons’ Comprehensive Pictures of the Great Exhibition of 1851 (London, 1854). 81 The Builder, 28 June 1856, 354; 5 July 1856, 374; and 19 July 1856, 398. 82 Dimensions vary between accounts but most agree on the length being 700 feet. See Manchester Guardian, 16 April 1857, 3; and The Builder, 16 August 1856, 446. 83 J. Heywood, A Yewud Chap’s Trip to Manchister to see Prince Halbert, th’ Queen, an’ th’ Art-Treasures Eggshibishun (Manchester, 1857), p. 8. 84 The Times, 11 May 1857, 11. 85 T. Morris, An Historical, Descriptive, and Biographical Handbook to the Exhibition of the United Kingdom’s Art-Treasures, at Manchester, 1857 (London, 1857), 16; and The Times, 6 May 1857, 9. 86 Art Journal, 1 June 1856, 186. 87 Illustrated Times, 9 May 1857, 294. 88 ‘The Art Treasures Exhibition: the opening by Prince Albert’, Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 9 May 1857, 12; ‘The Art Treasures Exhibition’, The Builder, 9 May 1857, 264; and The Builder, 19 July 1856, 398. 89 ‘Editorial’, The Manchester Examiner and Times, 5 May 1857, 2. 90 See additional views of the Art Treasures Palace, Manchester. MLSL, m58895 and m58878. 91 ‘The Art-Treasures Exhibition building, Manchester: exterior’, ILN, 2 May 1857, 407. 92 ‘Botanical and Horticultural Society: the Art Treasures Exhibition’, Manchester Guardian, 3 March 1857, 4; ‘Manchester Botanical and Horticultural Society and the Art Treasures Exhibition’, Oldham Advertiser, 7 March 1857, 9; and ‘Art Treasures 87

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Exhibition: the Botanic Gardens’, Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 23 May 1857, 10.  93 ‘The Botanical Gardens’, Manchester Examiner and Times, 2 May 1857, 6.  94 ILN, 30 May 1857, 532.  95 The Manchester publishers Abel Heywood and John Heywood, both of whom produced images and books to accompany the exhibition, were related to ATE committee members James Heywood, Oliver Heywood, and Sir Bartholomew Heywood.  96 ILN, 9 May 1857, 432.  97 ILN, 9 May 1857, 432.  98 ILN, 9 May 1857, 432.  99 ILN, 9 May 1857, 432. 100 The Times, 6 May 1857, 9. 101 Duke of Devonshire, quoted in the Manchester Guardian, 5 May 1857, 3. 102 The Times, 11 May 1857, 9. 103 ‘The Queen’s visit to Manchester – the royal cortege passing through St Anne’s Square’ and ‘The Queen’s visit to Manchester – triumphal arch at Old Trafford’, Illustrated Times, 11 July 1857, 28. 104 Manchester Guardian, 6 May 1857, 3. 105 Oldham Advertiser, 9 May 1857, 3. 106 ‘Correspondence’, Manchester Guardian, 2 July 1857, 4. 107 Advertisement, ‘Flags, banners, and decorations from Whaite’s Fine Art Gallery, Broad Street’, Manchester Guardian, 2 July 1857, 1. 108 Manchester Guardian, 1 July 1857, 2. 109 Athenaeum, 1 May 1857, 564. 110 B. Hilton, A Mad, Bad and Dangerous People?, England 1783–1846 (Oxford, 2006), p. 167.

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B3B Improving the urban image

Since the late 1970s when Peter Borsay identified an ‘English urban renaissance’, eighteenth-century improvements to market places, thoroughfares, and streets disfigured by ‘unseemly buildings’ have been the subject of an extensive historiography.1 Scholars have analysed the cultural, economic, and architectural ramifications of urban improvements and in doing so have stretched the original chronological parameters of 1680–1760 to include the early nineteenth century. However, despite this categorical modification, there remains a tacit consensus that the optimism which accompanied urban improvement, and which characterises Borsay’s formula, was broadly over by the 1840s. Although urban improvement was to remain an ongoing project, as evidenced by the countless improvement acts passed throughout the century, historians are reluctant to construe these later incarnations as evidence of similarly positive attitudes to the urban realm. Instead, improvements instigated in the mid- and late nineteenth century are presented as evidence of growing anxieties about urbanisation. Using images of both realised and unrealised improvements to docks, streetscapes, and public spaces, this chapter examines whether this is a tenable or useful perspective and explores alternative interpretations. As the authors of the recent Painting the Town: Scottish urban history in art note, one of the main objectives of urban improvement was to sculpt ‘new shapes of townscape’.2 There were many new shapes, each responding to the particular needs of specific towns. From streets to manufactories to suburbs, and wholly new forms of public leisure space in between them, provincial towns were the focus of conscious and conscientious attempts to improve their appearance and function. Improving commerce By the close of the eighteenth century, growth in the pace and scale of national and international trade had led to the intensification of commercial competition 89

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between towns and cities. The conurbations affected had little option but to respond by investing in disruptive and often expensive improvements to their commercial infrastructure. Port towns were impacted particularly and throughout Britain, locations including Cardiff, Glasgow, Hartlepool, and Liverpool benefited from new docks, wharfs, and commercial premises. The necessity of embarking on such schemes, however financially risky, was acknowledged in 1881 by James Deas of the Clyde Navigation Trust: No wonder that the Harbour and Docks of Glasgow and the navigable part of the river Clyde excite admiration and envy of the intelligent visitor, when he learns that, 80 years ago, the quayage of the Harbour was only 382 yards and that in 1880 the length of the quayage was 8,422 yards … All honour to the shrewd, far-seeing men who not only conceived the grand idea of bringing the sea to Glasgow and making its Harbour the heart of the City, but resolutely set about accomplishing these ends … What would Glasgow have been today but for this great enterprise?- a mere burgh about the size of Dumbarton.3

As port towns underwent large-scale dockside improvements, the waterside became not only a platform from which to appraise the townscape and its commercial activity, but also an object of curiosity in itself. Prints provided an opportunity to advertise a port’s commercial function and artists sought to capture the scale and modernity of infrastructural engineering in images of docks, harbours, and riverside warehouses.4 By the time that Thomas Allen’s Lancashire Illustrated was published in 1832, the skyline of the port of Liverpool had been so frequently represented that mere fractions of the façade were needed in order that a viewer might identify the illustration.5 Allen’s publication comprised a series of views ‘taken’ throughout the county of Lancashire, including images of ‘towns, public buildings, streets, docks, churches, antiquities, abbeys, castles, seats of the nobility.’6 In this way it was a relatively conventional publication. However, the number of images used to describe each location indicates a change in the structure of such volumes. Rather than representing a town in one allencompassing view, it was now affordable and profitable to produce a number of illustrations for each town, some of which focused on wholly modern features. In total, Allen’s volume includes ten different ‘scenes’ taken along Liverpool’s waterfront, including four by Samuel Austin, each titled simply ‘Liverpool from the Mersey’. In the early 1800s both Liverpool and Bristol enjoyed the benefits of trade, not only from their immediate hinterlands, but also from an extended network made accessible by shipping and inland water navigation.7 In fact, the extent of these connections made some Liverpool inhabitants concerned for the future of the town’s commercial autonomy: This port, extensive as its commerce in the article of cotton may appear, is gradually becoming only the medium of shipping and receiving the returns, under the direct orders of the manufacturers of Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Sheffield and other manufacturing districts.8

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Nevertheless, if they were to continue to flourish, towns with extensive trading commitments needed to continually expand their warehouse and dockyard capacity to accommodate ever-increasing traffic.9 Liverpool’s location on the natural reach of the River Mersey, a tidal basin flowing into the Irish Sea, made it an ideal Atlantic trading port. It imported American cotton for the Lancashire cotton mills, as well as the more ‘traditional’ imports of slaves, tobacco, and sugar, and in return it exported British manufactures, such as hunter knives from Sheffield.10 However, the tidal pattern of the River Mersey posed problems for shipping, since the safest place to dock was the natural Pool, from which the town derives its name. In the early eighteenth century the expanding levels of Atlantic trade led to the construction of the world’s first commercial wet docks, the Old Dock, built within the confines of the Pool in 1715.11 Following the commercial success of this new facility, the eighteenth century became a period of almost constant development along the banks of the Mersey, with the construction of the Salthouse Docks in 1753 and the Georges Dock in 1771.12 By 1810, an entire stretch of the banks of the Mersey alongside the town of Liverpool had evolved into a dense complex of docks and warehouses. Even with these massive developments, building struggled to keep pace with the demands of trade throughout the first half of the nineteenth century.13 Development continued with the opening of the Princes Dock in 1821 and the Clarence Dock, intended specifically for the new steam ships, opening in 1830.14 In Bristol, the floating dock, constructed in 1804, constituted significant improvement to both the image and the profitability of the city’s harbour.15 Providing shelter from tidal patterns, the innovation made some progress in overcoming the historic limitations of the River Avon.16 Despite its vast expense at £590,014, costly maintenance, and issues of access, in terms of urban competition it represented a statement of modernisation and expansion to rival the ambitions of the city’s northern challengers.17 This was a sentiment propounded by the Reverend J. Evans who, in 1828, paid homage to the recent improvements in the harbour, ‘for doing honour to the “public spirit of the age”’.18 As at Liverpool, the docks constituted Bristol’s economic backbone. In addition to its trades with America, albeit with the more traditional cargo of sugar, wine, coffee, and tobacco, rather than cotton and steel, Bristol had operated within the Atlantic slave-trading triangle, which included Africa as well as America.19 However, unlike Liverpool, the commercial expansion of Bristol was hindered by poorer inland connections until the arrival of the Great Western Railway in the town in 1841. With an increasing reliance upon large steam ships that found it difficult to navigate through the necessary locks, Bristol’s floating dock presented a clear image of modernisation for the town in an age of cut-throat competition with Liverpool and the Pool of London. As the demands of merchants and carriers shifted in response to ever larger vessels and heavier cargos, past triumphs such as Bristol’s prior dominance of Atlantic traffic became a less powerful tool with which to attract new trades and customers. It is therefore not surprising that this

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30  S. Bradshaw after W. H. Bartlett, ‘Bristol from Rowham Ferry’, in The Ports, Harbours, Watering-places, and Coast Scenery of Great Britain (1844).

new technological project features prominently in contemporary imagery of the town. In his illustrations for Edward Francis Finden’s two-volume project, The Ports, Harbours, Watering-places, and Coast Scenery of Great Britain (1844), William Henry Bartlett produced a view of the city from the perspective of Rowham Ferry, which provided a panoramic prospect of the floating dock (see Figure 30).20 Although conventional in terms of composition, the engraving provides an unusual view of Bristol, orientated wholly around the new facility. The dock occupies half the picture plane, with the historic centre confined to a distant corner of the scene. This and other large-scale industry-related projects, such as the Clifton suspension bridge, gradually came to dominate accounts and images of Bristol, reflecting shifts in public interest and urban values.21 Although striking architectural features of antiquarian interest, such as the church of St Mary Redcliff, continue to appear in general views throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, testifying to the city’s antiquarian status, such values were no longer the dominant currency for urban prestige. In challenging the now larger industrial and commercial centres of the north, towns like Bristol were reduced to emulating a new urban model: a model that celebrated large-scale development and radical improvement projects. 92

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Despite the evident interest in improvements that contributed to commercial expansion, provincial towns that experienced particularly rapid growth were also vulnerable to being characterised as blinkeredly commercial and therefore uncivilised and unhealthy. Such locations faced a persistent problem as they struggled to retain the commercial prestige that accompanied large-scale industrial activity, while improving the environmental quality of their town. The schemes and designs they produced reveal much about the perceived value of improvements to public and private architecture and spaces within the urban realm. William Fairbairn’s Observations on Improvements, published in 1836, is one example of these often ambitious attempts to ally a town’s commercial expansion with the loftier qualities of environmental, sanitary, and moral improvement.22 Fairbairn’s biography is that of a quintessential nineteenth-century industrialist. He was a self-educated, self-made entrepreneur. A successful engineer, he was elected a member of the Manchester Athenaeum Club and served as President of both the British Association and the Institute of Mechanical Engineers. In addition, and most importantly for our purposes, Fairbairn was conspicuously eager to improve his hometown of Manchester. Although he was born in Kelso, Fairbairn formed his first business partnership in Manchester and earned his reputation as an engineer of water wheels from his premises on Old Street. Despite moving his later shipbuilding business to Millwall, Poplar, he continued to reside in the Polygon, his Manchester house, until his death.23 In Observations Fairbairn proposed a physical remodelling of principal areas of the town, while constantly reiterating the paramount importance of sustaining manufacturing and commerce as the finest exponents of Mancunian qualities: As resident inhabitants of Manchester, we feel deep interest in its prosperity: not exclusively as a manufacturing town, but, that it should stand conspicuous as a city, equally distinguished for the chaste form of its streets and buildings, as it does for its spirit of enterprise, and the high attainments which pervade its inhabitants … In making these suggestions to the public, we have no wish to involve the town in unnecessary expense, nor to pull down useful buildings, to make way for what some may term an Utopian scheme.24

In Fairbairn’s view, the spatial and visual improvement of a town was a complement to, and a direct result of, a progressive and industrial society. For him, manufacturing within the urban environment did not signal the descent of civility and culture but was instead an opportunity to exhibit the virtues of aspiration and enquiry that had fed Manchester’s commercial ascent. In proposing to introduce architecture of ‘good taste’ that ‘bespeaks knowledge of the sublime and beautiful’, his design to remodel Piccadilly and to incorporate statues of local worthies was an attempt to celebrate industry as an indicator, rather than an enemy, of urban civility (see Figure 31). 25 The figures to be memorialised were the inventors James Watt and Richard Arkwright, the local eighteenthcentury pioneer of the canal network, the Duke of Bridgewater, and the only allegorical figure, Hygæia, goddess of Health. This last choice may appear to be

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31  ‘Perspective View of Bridgewater Crescent, Manchester, Piccadilly’, in Observations on Improvements of the Town of Manchester (1836).

an anomaly in the group, but it stands as evidence that significant contemporary dilemmas, such as public health, could also be perceived as opportunities for urban improvement. Like Fairbairn, many townsmen saw urban sanitation and industrial pollution as challenges to the engineer and architect as much as to the politician or physician. Poor sanitation and a polluted atmosphere were interpreted as failures of engineering and innovation, rather than as the unavoidable attendant evils of urbanisation. As Fairbairn himself lamented in a report on the prevention of smoke pollution in towns, ‘habits of economy and attention to a few small and effective rules are either entirely neglected or not enforced … if this were accomplished … the public might look forward with confidence to a clear atmosphere in the manufacturing towns’.26 If fault lay with engineers and architects, then so too did the potential resolution and, as E. D. H. Johnson observes, ‘the great engineers and industrial architects of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries were esteemed not only as public benefactors, but also as true artists whose work enhanced the landscape’.27 In Observations, Fairbairn criticises Manchester for not displaying indications, either privately or publicly, of a culturally informed population; a view echoed by the guidebook 94

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author Benjamin Love, who three years later proclaimed that ‘no town in the Kingdom … has been so destitute, until lately, of ornamental buildings and good streets as Manchester’.28 However, Fairbairn did not believe that improvement demanded the supplanting of industry with a hollow façade of grandeur. Rather he recommended the development of industrial buildings and commercial districts to reflect what he perceived to be the inherent virtues of prudence and cultural elevation that predicated the town’s success.29 This reliance upon what were considered to be fundamentally Mancunian characteristics as a means through which to re-invent and re-present the town to the observer and visitor is a crucial aspect of the establishment of provincial urban identity in the first half of the nineteenth century. Industrialising towns were formulating a new system of urban values, which rivalled the old criteria of urban evaluation. The urban hierarchy ceased to reflect antiquarian authority or historical commercial prestige exclusively, as it had in previous centuries; a fact that was slowly conceded by inhabitants of formerly dominant towns.30 Using his paper the Bristol Journal as a mouthpiece, in 1823 the editor John Matthew Gutch noted that what distinguished towns was purely commerce and manufacturing, continuing with a warning to Bristol’s town’s officials that, in order for the city to maintain its high status and prestige, the town needed to ‘embrace likewise and cultivate those enlarged and enlightened conceptions and feelings, which are raising other parts of the British Empire to the most glaring rivalry, in rank and importance, with this ancient city’.31 The authority held by Manchester and other expanding towns depended, almost universally, upon their wealth, which in turn depended upon their manufactures. Thus, as the value system for urban evaluation evolved, and urban prestige reflected industrial productivity as well as judicial and governmental authority, the chimney as much as the town hall came to symbolise the prestige and authority of these towns. In a chapter dedicated to the ‘art of design as applied to steam engine chimneys’ Fairbairn acknowledged the town’s smoke problem but then goes on to seek a means of aggrandising these industrial landmarks rather than concealing or removing them, arguing that the qualities found in industrial towns, such as ‘a desire to excel, and a spirit to improve’, are the same qualities that predicate urban improvement.32 In the plate that accompanies his proposals, the chimney, an ostensibly functional construction and for many the symbol of urban pollution and the signature of an industrial town becomes the central decorative feature of the improved urban square (see Figure 32). In fact, Fairbairn proposed that, in addition to being a monument to the town’s industries, this one monumental stack should become the single outlet for the entire town’s manufacturing smoke, transforming the town into a single, united productive enterprise. The diminutive effect that largescale manufacturing has upon both the human figure and the urban thoroughfare is presented as a spectacular achievement, a monument to the town’s commercial significance. In Fairbairn’s own words:

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To a certain extent the nuisance of smoke is abated by the aspiring spirit of the manufacturers, who vie with each other in the erection of tall, and in many instances, elegant chimneys: much good has been done in this way; and too much praise cannot be bestowed on the perfect symmetry and chaste form of some of these structures.33

This attention to the role and appearance of conspicuously industrial architecture within the provincial townscape was not peculiar to William Fairbairn. The architectural historian James Douet identifies the early nineteenth century as a period in which there was a general movement towards the legitimisation of the industrial chimney as architecture.34 By the middle of the century, a number of engineers, architects, and civic leaders were turning their attention to the integration of chimneys in the wider scheme of urban design.35 However, these later efforts in industrial urban improvement led most frequently to the modification of the chimney form to accommodate evolving fashions in architecture and, as such, were essentially superficial.36 By contrast, in his plan for Piccadilly, Fairbairn envisaged the conspicuous unification of industrial landmarks and civic spaces such as town squares and thoroughfares. In emphasising the industrial ‘heritage’ of the town in his plans,

32  ‘Sketches of an Improved and Elegant Style of Steam Engine Chimneys’, in Observations on improvements of the Town of Manchester (1836).

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along with reassurances to the reader that Manchester’s trade would not suffer as a consequence of redevelopment, Fairbairn did little to challenge the town’s industrial identity. His vision was therefore not so much an attempt at civic and industrial integration, as it was informed by an inherited notion of industrial and civic harmony, in which neither took precedence and each could complement, rather than conceal, the other. Crucially, as a great advocate of Manchester’s urban prestige, William Fairbairn did not find it necessary to challenge the town’s predominantly industrial reputation in order to improve its image. Improving the environment As viewing the urban scene grew in popularity throughout the early nineteenth century and the town proper gradually encroached on the immediate hinterland, vantage points themselves came to be considered urban features in their own right. As the report of the 1833 Select Committee on Public Walks testifies, walkways, arbours, and bridle paths were often designed to take advantage of the views and accentuate the most striking and picturesque aspects of both the hinterland and the townscape. When questioning a number of Liverpool residents about the provision of green space within the town the commissioners enquired: ‘Is there any high walk just outside the limits of the town, on the east side, commanding an extensive view and open to the air?’ and ‘is there any other place in the neighbourhood of Edge-hill … that is on high ground, and will then have a good, airy and extended view?’.37 The development of such vantage points into fashionable walks was certainly thought, by some, to represent the finest means of celebrating the success and prestige of a town. In The Land We Live In, Brandon Hill near Bristol was recommended as an ideal site for such development: We have often thought what a perfect public garden this hill, or rather little mountain, would make. Touching the confines both of Clifton and the city, it might be rendered a marriage-ground of beauty between them. Properly laid out, its natural capabilities improved by art, it would afford a pleasure-spot not to be surpassed by any in the kingdom. From its cone-like form, ornamental water could not be well introduced; but has it not the river at its base, winding along and animated all its length by commerce, and dotted by glancing sails? – a far nobler prospect than any Virginia Water, with all its swans. And then what a really poetical mind could make of it! What statues might be erected here to the great men who have toiled, and thought, and served in the city lying at its foot.38

Although such sites remained accessible to many urban residents throughout much of the nineteenth century, urban sprawl progressively encroached on previously remote vantage points, detaching green hinterlands from historical town centres in the process. In the words of the Select Committee: The means of occasional exercise and recreation in the fresh air are every day lessened, as inclosures [sic] take place and buildings spread themselves on every

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side. A few Towns have been fortunate in this respect from having some open space in their immediate vicinity, yet preserved as a Public Walk, to which their inhabitants have hitherto been permitted to have access … yet, even at these places, however, advantageously situated in this respect, as compared with many others, the accommodation is inadequate to the wants of the increasing number of people.39

Yet, erosion of the green hinterland did not result in the removal of green space from urban iconography. On the contrary, there was a notable growth in the number of discrete images of urban green spaces produced throughout the period.40 In some towns and cities, green space was woven intricately into the urban fabric as a result of natural topography. In these locations, where spaces were often ancient and integrated into the daily lives of residents, there is little evidence that they were perceived to be interruptions to the city. Instead, they were appreciated and represented as categorically urban features, neither perceived nor represented as a void or antidote to the urban fabric, but instead as an intrinsic element of the wider urban form. Accordingly, commentators and artists registered urban green space simply as another element of the urban tapestry. Before the creation of large municipal parks, these sites tended to be relatively modest areas including churchyards, garden squares, botanic gardens, and walks, and artists exploited them extensively. One site that appears in numerous engravings produced at this time was the graveyard of Glasgow Cathedral and the neighbouring Fir Park. In the 1820s, the area itself served as a popular vantage point, but it also provided a subject in wider views of the city. In ‘View of Glasgow from Knox’s Monument’, which appeared in Joseph Swan’s celebrated Select Views of Glasgow and its Environs (1828), the graveyard serves the same pictorial function as Toxteth Fields in Liverpool, or Kersal Moor in Manchester, by providing a spatial interruption between the artist and the city proper (see Figure 33). Artists in general and engravers in particular were familiar with the principle of articulating forms through the negative spaces that surround them on the picture plane. Within the dense and developing cities of early nineteenth-century Britain, churchyards, gardens, alleyways, and peripheral green spaces provided the ‘negative spaces’ alongside which the built form of the townscape could be defined. Without such visual respite from the dense streetscape, the individual character and profile of a city was lost. In this view of Glasgow, the concealment, by the judicious placement of bushes, trees, roads, and other boundaries between the two open spaces of the graveyard and the park, exaggerates the extent of the open space and so mimics views of the hinterland that was being eroded on every side. Such devices served to camouflage the progress of towns on peripheral green space. Even so, the contrast between the sensorial experience of the built environment below and the pseudo-natural landscape of the urban green space was apparent to observers. As the description that accompanies this engraving demonstrates, this perspective was replicated in written accounts:

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The Fir Park, to the east of the Cathedral, on the loftiest part of which the monument to the great reformer Knox has been erected, is probably one of the finest situations, from whence Glasgow, and the surrounding country can be viewed … [it is] when thus gazing on the works of man’s hands, on such a theater of his exertions as this, that we are made most sensibly to feel, at once the littleness, and the greatness of our nature. How very insignificant is the individual being, who forms but a single unit in that huge congregated sum of human existence: and yet how great, how wonderful the mind of man, which has, as it were, created all that bright magnificence, – that wealth, which lies thus scattered at our feet … How appalling is the contrast between that scene of living bustle and activity – of unceasing mental and physical exertion; and this, of death and repose.41

Thus, notwithstanding attempts to utilise urban green spaces in relatively conventional pictorial models, there was evidently a growing recognition that the vast scale of urbanisation would affect the urban landscape qualitatively as well as quantitatively. Rather than counteracting the impact of such change, the contrast between the ‘congregated sum’ that comprised much of the city and the relative quiet and space that characterised urban squares, cemeteries, and walks meant that both types of urban environment enabled a heightened appreciation of the other. In this way, throughout the first half of the nineteenth century,

33  J. Swan, ‘View of Glasgow from Knox’s Monument’, in Select Views of Glasgow and its Environs (1828).

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34  G.W. Wilson, Glasgow Necropolis (1870).

urban green space did not so much compensate for, as accentuate the visual impact of urban expansion and congestion. As the built environment and urban green spaces became more reticulated, the latter were increasingly recognised as distinct features in their own right. This example of Fir Park, on which Knox’s Monument stood, was itself transformed into the Glasgow Necropolis and was increasingly affected by the city it overlooked. The first interment took place in 1832 and thereafter the function of the site as vast, landscaped city of the dead came to dominate its reputation and representation. By 1857 a guidebook to the Necropolis explained rather ghoulishly that ‘A city of the dead is silently growing up in the midst of her, even while she still lives, extends, prospers and multiplies’.42 An early souvenir photograph published by George Washington Wilson of Aberdeen demonstrates how, by 1870, the Necropolis was so full of ornate mausoleums and memorials that it had become an urban ‘sight’ in itself (see Figure 34). Even these supposed refuges from the city were described more and more in terms of their role within the wider urban project. The changing function of Fir Park in Glasgow is representative of similar inherited green spaces and vantage points across Britain. Such locations on the periphery of towns were increasingly becoming what Elizabeth McKellar has called ‘landscapes of transition’.43 The term is apposite on two levels as such sites often lay on a new fault line where one crossed from the expanding urban centre into the rural hinterland, while they were also subject to significant changes in 100

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their own function and appearance. This latter process can be identified in images of St James’s Walk in Liverpool, which was initially improved and developed for recreation between 1753 and 1768 and later incorporated St James’s Cemetery below (consecrated 1829). In the 1770s, the modest walk along the edge of the quarry was celebrated for the spectacular views it afforded: Among the public places, the Terrace, at the furthest end of the town, called St James’s Walk, deserves to be particularly mentioned. It is upon an agreeable elevation, which commands an extensive and noble prospect, including the town, the river, the Cheshire land, the Welch [sic] mountains, and the sea.44

As the city expanded in the eighteenth century, Liverpool’s residential streets spread south, towards St James’s Mount, Myrtle Street and Toxteth Park. Historical vantage points were lost among a rash of town houses and even the spectacular views were slowly occluded by pollution. As the Select Committee on Public Walks concluded, the area had become ‘little frequented in consequence of its being surrounded by the town, and the trees being spoiled by the smoke’.45 Artists and engravers seeking to utilise these green spaces as vantage points were increasingly forced to reinstate features concealed by smoke or else beautify unattractive residential developments. However, over time, the creation of new urban green spaces provided artists with new subjects, which although unequivocally urban in character, often conformed to pre-existing picturesque formulae. St James’s Cemetery and Walk became just such a site and was subsequently depicted from a variety of vantage points. With the conversion of the redundant quarry into a burial ground in the late 1820s, a new urban green space was created in the vicinity of the former walk. For artists, the sunken position of the cemetery enabled them to confine the view to the burial ground, detaching the landscape within from the bustling commercial city without. In December 1833, one such view appeared on the front page of the Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction (see Figure 35). Here, the town is hardly visible; the scene is dominated by John Foster junior’s Oratory (1827–28), designed in the manner of a Greek Doric temple, and the grounds laid out before it. Significantly, the article that accompanies this illustration draws upon the remarks of the garden designer, John Claudius Loudon who praised the site despite regretting that ‘we would have had the gravel walks and the lawn as smooth and as closely shaven as those of any gentleman’s pleasure-ground’.46 Loudon’s comparison of a cemetery with a pleasure garden was common among nineteenth-century commentators who often lacked precedents upon which to evaluate entirely new forms of urban green space and artists faced a similar challenge. Although, in reality, the site is small and confined, artists clearly drew upon and accentuated its resemblance to grand garden schemes of the eighteenth century, such as the Temple of Concord and Victory and Grecian Valley at Stowe (1747–49). Just as designers aped the architectural pretensions of their predecessors, so artists appropriated the visual language with which to represent them. The reliance upon the visual and verbal

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35  ‘St. James’s Cemetery, Liverpool’, The Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction, 14 December 1833.

language of pleasure gardens in the design and description of functional facilities such as urban cemeteries highlights the extent to which established aesthetic formulae informed even the most modern and utilitarian urban improvements. Another view of the St James’s Cemetery, number 7 in the ‘Lacey’s Liverpool Localities’ series (c.1835), illustrates the extent of this hybridisation of picturesque styling with modern, urban subject matter (see Figure 36).47 In this example, the surrounding town houses of Hope Street and St James’s Road frame the scene, but still provide a stark contrast to the utilitarian warehouses constructed in increasing numbers along the waterfront. Within the cemetery itself, Foster’s Mausoleum for the local MP William Huskisson serves as a temple to a local worthy. Modelled on the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates near the Acropolis in Athens, its inclusion in most images of the cemetery reiterated the allusion to grander, classically inspired gardens. The extensive access ramps are populated by couples and families who stroll with pleasure rather than purpose. A lady carries a parasol, while men point out areas of interest in the manner seen in the earlier urban prospects and in place of agricultural workers, a funeral procession makes its way towards the pedestrian tunnel that led up to street level.

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36  H. Lacey, St. James’s Cemetery, Liverpool (c.1835).

Such spaces were clearly recognised as distinct urban features and, unlike the hinterland that preceded them, could be presented by artists as discrete subjects in themselves. However, in the early decades of the century, their representation in imagery remained subject to traditional aesthetic tastes and treatments. As urban expansion increased in both scale and pace, urban green spaces served new functions, including the provision of boundaries that delineated new developments from each other and from the pre-existing town. One of the most arresting examples of this effect is the site now known as Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh. Developed in two phases in the 1770s and 1820s, the land passed between public and private ownership more than once. Throughout the nineteenth century the visual impact of the strip of green functioned to demarcate the medieval Old Town from the New Town constructed between 1765 and 1850. One engraving produced (and much copied) during this period reveals the extent to which such key open spaces served to define the most popular and widely recognised images of towns as much as provide places of respite and resort for inhabitants and visitors. William M. Craig’s View of the Old City of Edinburgh from an Original Drawing by the Marchioness of Stafford (1815), reveals the visual impact of the gully between the two halves of the city even before it was more intensively landscaped in 1876 (see Figure 37). Here, the viewer is located on Princes Street itself, with their back to the smart new thoroughfare. The Old Town is depicted on the other side of the steep depression which people cross by virtue of a narrow raised causeway. The green space is foregrounded so that although central and urban in location, it functions here in a similar

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37  E. Goodall after W.M. Craig, View of the Old City of Edinburgh from an original drawing by the Marchioness of Stafford (1815).

manner to the rural hinterland in distant views. The presence of the green space, and the concealment of the New Town behind the viewer, creates the illusion of removing the viewer from the urban subject. In this way, the green space enabled the artist to employ the conventions traditionally used to depict an inclusive townscape while representing only a selective view of the city. This reiterated further the division between the Old Town and New Town as, when taken from either side of the ravine, images of Edinburgh could completely deny half of the city. To some extent this minimised the size of the city, but more importantly it enabled extreme selectivity. The city could appear either exclusively modern and ‘improved’ when looking north-west, or else exclusively ancient and ramshackle when looking to the south-east. In the case of Edinburgh, examples of the latter far outnumber the former, even when the effect is apparently unflattering (see Figure 3). This may have been due to the fact that these particular examples withstanding, most images taken from that vantage point took in the very dramatic prospect of the castle, reinforcing the importance of the inherited urban values discussed in Chapter 1. But whatever the rationale behind specific images, utilising urban green spaces as a proxy for the increasingly remote hinterland was one way in which artists could exploit existing pictorial models to present radically changing urban subjects. The growth of the public parks movement in response to the catastrophic cholera epidemics of the 1830s meant that, from the 1840s onwards, new, 104

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extensive, and specially designed public parks began to be created across Britain. Although these green spaces were surrounded by large suburban developments, the sale of which subsidised the parks’ landscaping, for the most part the landscape architects who designed them, such as Joseph Paxton, Edward Kemp, and Thomas Mawson, continued the convention of concealing the surrounding townscape. To some extent, this was an attempt to create the illusion that a park was larger in extent than it really was, an illusion particularly welcome among purchasers of the new suburban villas who aspired to ownership of a country house. As a result, images of sites such as Princes Park in Liverpool often denied the surrounding townscape entirely.48 As J. A. Picton explained in his 1875 guidebook to the town, ‘overlooking the expanse of the Park, everything appears “couleur de rose.” The cosy comfort of an English home shines out clearly in the burnished plate-glass windows’.49 In other instances, particularly on sites on the very outer limits of a town, it was easier and more acceptable to create the illusion of extent by incorporating views beyond the park boundary. This process of visual misdirection is apparent in many images taken from public parks. Some combine arrangements of trees and shrubbery that pay homage to the visual language of traditional landscape paintings and frame conservatories and public summer houses in the same fashion as a country house but rather than denying the townscape, these external vistas often confirmed the presence and proximity of the townscape proper. This was sometimes unintended, as in the case of Stanley Park in Liverpool. On the day of the official opening in 1870, the reporter for the ILN recounted how the view from the terrace there was ‘commonly obscured by the smoke of the factory districts’.50 However, elsewhere, the urban vista was clearly acknowledged and appreciated. In Wolverhampton, the urban skyline provided a diverse and attractive backdrop to a relatively flat piece of land used as a race course, and later a public park.51 Natural topography clearly played a part, but landscape designers and artists alike could manipulate views to either accentuate or conceal the urban vista that gradually surrounded green spaces. Most importantly, the desire to employ either one of these effects varied, even within individual towns. This suggests that ideas about how to ‘improve’ both the physical reality of a town and its appearance in images were relative and particular to each community. As towns grew in size and fractured into plural communities, each of which occupied distinct urban territories, improvements increasingly took different, sometimes conflicting forms. The ‘mosaic’ of local government to which Louise Miskell has attributed the variation in urban improvement across the country also occurred within the towns themselves.52 Rather than contributing to the realisation of a single, unified, and healthy whole, urban improvements increasingly reinforced the geographical and economic divisions that segregated urban populations. Notwithstanding the plurality of attitudes to improvement at a local level, in the national arena such schisms became secondary to collective efforts to champion a town. Negative perceptions of a city as uncivilised, uncultured, or uncouth affected all ranks of society and led to concerted attempts to ‘improve’ 105

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the urban population of many, especially commercially focused, provincial towns. Improving the urban population By the early decades of the nineteenth century, local, urban affiliation was an increasingly powerful currency of self-identification. The relatively small elite of touring seasonal aristocracy were progressively outnumbered by a new class of wealthy resident merchants, tradesmen, and manufacturers who unlike their predecessors were permanent residents, spending the majority of the year in the town that hosted their commercial interests. In response, new societies such as the Royal Manchester Institution (RMI) signified a critical change in what John Seed has termed the ‘social location of culture’.53 These new venues of provincial culture, recreation, and education, were mostly initiated and attended by the newly emerging middle classes rather than the established gentry, with the result that provincial urban culture was increasingly organised around what Peter Clark and R. A. Houston describe as an ‘associational basis’.54 As a result of this consistent local patronage, cultural and intellectual facilities were shaped by the needs and requirements of local inhabitants, rather than the tastes of a peripatetic, seasonal aristocracy. Unlike the facilities in resort towns such as Bath and Tunbridge Wells, which could be purchased by any visitor for a fee, the patrons of these new provincial urban social elites were defined by their regional identity.55 This shift in cultural power and the primary audience for its output did not prompt the immediate democratisation of cultural activity in provincial towns. Although the governmental structures of Mechanics Institutes entered a process of democratisation during the 1820s and 1850s, with the election of subscribers becoming more usual than the nomination of members by existing directors, in the early decades of the nineteenth century the structure and aims of the institution were defined by unelected directors who usually hailed from the ‘employing classes’.56 Although deemed a positive presence and force for improvement within provincial towns, this ‘athenaeum clique’ or ‘haute bourgeoisie’ did not testify to the presence of a culturally aspiring majority.57 The social gap between this group of employers and even the most respectable strata of the lower middle classes ensured that the cultural character of provincial towns was defined by an exclusive minority.58 Even institutions such as Mechanics’ Institutes, which operated ostensibly for the benefit of the local working masses, were initially presided over by members of this small exclusive network; the rationale being, that those seeking instruction were, by definition, ill-equipped to manage the education of others.59 Notwithstanding this caveat, new urban cultural and scientific institutions provided a means for social intercourse for the commercially competitive middle classes. In doing so, they potentially helped to form and consolidate provincial urban society, which, in the words of Robert Morris, served to ‘counter the effects of transiency, personal isolation

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and the divisive influence of diverse interests and class tension in the growing towns’.60 However, one consequence of limiting access in this manner was that visual images of cultural and educational institutions became the extent of many casual tourists’ knowledge of such provincial facilities.61 In his final letter from Manchester during his 1807 tour of England, Robert Southey proclaimed that ‘a place more destitute of all interesting objects than Manchester it is not easy to conceive’ and accounts from the middle of the century indicate little change in perception.62 Both overtly and covertly, many commentators, critics, and artists constructed an image of the northern industrial provinces as cultural and intellectual wildernesses. This could not have been further from the truth, as the numerous images of new urban institutions illustrate. Views of provincial cultural institutions appeared in a number of formats throughout the nineteenth century. Just as was the case with commercial advertisements, one of the most common outlets for this type of imagery was the local and national press. In the early decades of the century, particularly in centres of industrial and commercial activity, the notion of ‘public’ culture expanded to incorporate the cultivation of public taste throughout society and the perceived importance of popular education and cultural activities seems to have increased in proportion. In 1851, the local cotton manufacturer and Great Exhibition juror, George Jackson argued: ‘In former times the paramount consideration was the luxury and enjoyment of the few; the present object is to promote the instruction and happiness of the “million.” Aristocracy of mind is obtaining its position’.63 By 1853, James Hole was describing the ‘right of the people to culture’ as ‘more primary and pressing than the right to labour or the franchise; a right great as the right to live, since it makes life worth living’.64 At the same time the link between culture and public education was being strengthened. Indeed the North of England Magazine justified its own existence by expressing a wish to be ‘labourers in the field of Popular Education’.65 John Seed has claimed that in London this emphasis upon public culture constituted an attempt on the part of the new oligarchy to ‘integrate the lower orders into the cultural hegemony of the capital’ in the aftermath of the cholera outbreaks and popularity of Chartist activism during the early 1830s.66 A similar motive was clearly influential in the establishment of a number of societies and clubs in provincial industrialising towns as by 1842 the North of England Magazine’s correspondent Horace Heartwell was arguing for ‘the great necessity of educational training during the early periods of life, to secure a rational, moral, and religious community’ among Manchester’s working population.67 As the wealth acquired through provincial manufacturing and trade was channelled into projects designed to educate urban populations and aggrandise their built environments, new provincial cultural institutions and their activities became a familiar subject for journalists and graphic illustrators alike.68 Articles on the character of provincial urban culture can be found in the local and national press as exemplified by the ‘Art in the provinces’ column that ran throughout the early decades of the Art Journal.69 However, visual accompaniments to such 107

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pieces were not widely included until after the abolition of newspaper stamp duty in 1855, when the public fascination in provincial urban improvement was fuelled by the rise of the pictorial newspaper.70 For the most part, the inclusion of images of cultural venues in newspapers reflected their status as recent, relevant ‘news’. Thus, while the novelty of many cultural institutions and the scale of the buildings that housed them led to a level of popular curiosity, it was opening ceremonies and similarly noteworthy events that provided the context in which provincial urban culture was most frequently discussed and illustrated in the press. A representative example of this form of cultural journalism can be seen in a pair of images and a verbal account of the laying of the foundation stone of the Liverpool Free Library and Museum, which appeared in the ILN in May 1857.71 The top half of the page was given over to an engraving of the main benefactor, Mr William Brown MP, laying the foundation stone and the event is the central subject of the accompanying text, which emphasises the public standing of the attendant local ‘worthies’ as well as the large crowd of spectators drawn from ‘all classes of the inhabitants’. However, perhaps more significant than the ceremony itself and the demonstration of local enthusiasm for the project is the inclusion, in the lower section of the page, of a view of the building’s edifice (see Figure 38). The architecture of the building is the most apparent evidence of the cultural ambitions of the town. Designed in the fashionable neo-classical style, the style reflects that of the nearby St George’s Hall (1854) and many other civic and cultural buildings erected throughout provincial towns during this period.72 By illustrating Allom and Weightman’s successful design as well as the ‘newsworthy’ event of the foundation stone ceremony, the ILN presented its readers with visual evidence of both the cultural ambitions of this town and the physical realisation of these ambitions in architecture of a grand scale and good taste. This attention to provincial cultural ambition is reiterated in the broader treatment of the view. In this wood engraving the façade is represented in the vignette format used in guidebooks and tours in the eighteenth century. The building appears extracted from its urban location, which in this instance included a large railway terminus. The area is airy and expansive, with space for townspeople to stand and reflect upon the building’s magnificence and by association their status as cultured inhabitants. In a similar manner to picturesque views, welldressed figures populate the foreground.73 The use of such figures reiterated the associated benefit of culturally ‘improving’ a population through the quality of the architecture that surrounded them. This belief in the role of architecture as a tool of social and cultural education was a recurrent theme for advocates of provincial urban expansion. In his Picture of Liverpool published in 1833, Thomas Taylor argued that ‘next to literary and scientific works, the most prominent and lasting evidences of the good taste, ingenuity and industry of a people are its architectural structures, in which are at once combined utility and ornament’.74 Clearly, visual representations of ornamental and useful buildings testified to the implicit quality of ‘good taste’ among the citizenry.

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38  ‘The Liverpool Free Library and Museum’, ILN, 2 May 1857.

The importance of images in spreading awareness of provincial urban improvement and its relationship to the increasingly dominant ‘qualities’ of mercantile wealth and manufacturing can be inferred from the verbal account that accompanies the illustration of the Liverpool Library and Museum. Quoting the local Liverpool Mercury the reporter claims that ‘such an institution, while it commemorates the progress of the age, must ever remain an enduring monument of the munificence of one of our merchant princes’.75 In this way, through a combination of aspiration and self-conscious justification, cultural improvement could be represented as the natural consequence of trade and its associated wealth, rather than compensation for commercial expansion.76 Manufacturing no longer merely provided funds for a few to enjoy elite cultural activities, but also, by expanding the nation’s workforce of designers, weavers, metal workers, and finishers, provided a huge increase in demand for cultural instruction with a practical application. As the author of The Stranger in Liverpool, published in 1810 proclaimed: Wealth, the natural result and the just reward of commercial enterprise and industry, has not only been employed in Liverpool for the enlargement of the town, and the condition of those offices which are absolutely necessary for mercantile purposes, but, with a spirit equally credible to the taste and honest pride of its possessors, has likewise been used to patronise genius, to unite the ornamental with the useful … and at the same time to give an air of respectability and splendour to the town in the number, stile [sic] and adjustment to its public edifices.77

Making this qualitative connection between improvements to commerce and culture provided the towns concerned with a means of accessing a number of urban values such as good taste, refinement, and social exclusivity, which

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some thought incompatible with industrialisation and rapid urban expansion. However, the continuing need for interested parties to reiterate this connection challenges Simon Gunn’s assertion that the qualities of ‘civility’ and ‘improving culture’ were perceived to be intrinsic characteristics of the urban environment.78 Although the early decades of the nineteenth century were a period of massive investment in urban infrastructure, architecture, and education, the resulting institutions and buildings were not automatically awarded equal status to those that had preceded them in the resort and leisure towns of the eighteenth century. Notwithstanding the apparent enthusiasm among contemporaries to accredit culture to the same ‘spirit’ as trade and manufacture, the realisation of this symbiosis between industry and culture in the physical townscape was perhaps due more to the financial rewards of enterprise than to an inherent taste for cultural improvement.79 In addition to the general pictorial press, specialist publications like The Builder and the Art Journal also contained accounts of new cultural institutions and exhibition spaces.80 Perhaps unsurprisingly, The Builder and the later, Building News, tended to focus upon the architecture of the buildings, rather than the ethos upon which such institutions were founded.81 Conversely, the Art Journal’s reportage was usually restricted to succinct verbal accounts of provincial exhibitions, subscription figures, and the varying commitment to cultural improvement across the country, rather than the physical presence of cultural institutions within the townscape.82 As the editorials of the Art Journal suggest, despite the clear correlation between commercial enterprise and cultural investment, many onlookers perceived a tension between the economic basis for the ascent of industrial and commercial towns and the desire, among many of their inhabitants, to combine a commercial identity with more flattering cultural and educational associations. Although these anxieties were articulated frequently in journals and newspapers, such scepticism does not appear to have suppressed the reading public’s appetite for visual images of cultural, educational, and recreational facilities and views of provincial exhibition spaces and institutions became common subjects for engravers and their customers.83 Venues including the Royal Institution and Athenaeum in Manchester, were depicted on singlesheet prints produced primarily for the tourist market.84 The famous and long-standing London firm, Rock and Company, published hundreds of vignette souvenir images throughout the 1830s and 1840s, depicting buildings, bridges, gardens, and other landmarks. In some instances the composition replicated that of the traditional picturesque view. A print by Rock and Company, depicting the Royal Institution and Athenaeum, Manchester, exemplified this form of urban picturesque.85 In that small, cheap souvenir view, the location of the new premises, on a busy urban junction, prohibited the use of certain picturesque devices such as trees and an elevated vantage point. Nevertheless, a number of conventions were employed to present the building as a subject worthy of the interest. As with the view of the Liverpool Library and Museum, the scene lacks any explicit references to manufacture or commerce. 110

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By avoiding those features, this souvenir vignette presented purchasers and recipients with a wholly alternative view of Manchester. As a result, a form of pictorial iconography evolved, which made specific venues and buildings immediately recognisable to viewers, but also pictorially unrelated to their wider urban context. Arguably the most common source of views of provincial towns aimed at the leisure visitor was the guidebook or tourist directory. Although, as we have seen, industrial and commercial premises gained popularity as subjects for visual representations, pictorial ‘tours’, guidebook engravings, and prints also illustrated public institutions, libraries, and entertainment venues. The appearance of this form of imagery in ‘tourist’ publications suggests that, despite the trend towards restricting membership of such societies to the resident population, authors and publishers continued to circulate an image of their town that was formulated specifically for an external, leisured audience. Vignette prints of scientific and cultural institutions, or at least the buildings that housed them, comprised a substantial percentage of the imagery of manufacturing and commercial towns in circulation. A number of commemorative stand-alone prints reflect this apparent attempt to privilege images of urban culture and education by excluding less ‘elegant’ structures. In Liverpool, buildings as diverse in their scale and intention as St George’s Hall and the Mechanics’ Institute, appear in flamboyant and highly decorative presentation prints which commemorate the buildings depicted (see Figure 39). While it is perhaps not surprising that such prints focus entirely upon single buildings, it does reveal the extent to which these structures were perceived as discrete achievements within the wider narrative of urban development. This is evident in prints by a number of artists and publishers, many of which were copied almost wholesale from other artists.86 Although it is difficult to discern which prints were ‘original’ views as opposed to general copies, the practice of appropriating imagery from other publishers and artists contributed to the evolution of a standard ‘stock view’ of certain buildings.87 Large volumes and county histories often incorporate an engraving of a Mechanics’ Institute or Athenaeum among more general views of a town.88 These plates varied in quality but could be of a high standard, often engraved on copper, or later steel, and printed on high-quality paper, occasionally hand-coloured. If volumes were purchased unbound, customers could select which views they wished to include, as well as their location within the text. Images could therefore be chosen from a printer’s stock range, which included stand-alone views, maps of varying quality, and occasionally portraits of local or historical figures.89 Even when the printing blocks themselves were identical, the combinations in which a purchaser could buy and insert them altered the emphasis of their virtual tour. For example, in two extant editions of Thomas Kaye’s Stranger in Liverpool dating from 1829 and 1838, identical views of the Athenaeum appear in both versions, alongside views of the Dispensary and Lyceum respectively (see Figure 40).90 In contrast to later mass-produced guidebooks that defined the route a tourist took, and therefore their overall impression of a town, this process enabled even 111

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39  Commemorative print of ‘St. George’s Hall’, Liverpool Standard, 7 October 1851.

greater selectivity on the part of the consumer. In small pocket tours, where the size of the page made it difficult to include more than one engraving per sheet, images tended to be produced separately and inserted as plates at appropriate stages in the text.91 This is evident in the range in size and type of prints found in a number of illustrated guidebooks from this period. In one copy of The Picturesque Hand-Book to Liverpool (1842), high-quality engraved plates are interleaved into a publication that was already illustrated with a number of lower-quality wood engravings.92 The scope for variation was limitless. It is significant that even though accounts of commercial premises such as factories and warehouses often comprise a substantial proportion of the verbal narrative of these volumes, those purchasers who were in a position to ‘grangerise’ their guidebooks by incorporating extra notes, maps, and images, often chose not to incorporate additional material relating to industry and commerce. Few such premises are depicted visually. Consumers chose instead to illustrate their publications with views of exhibition spaces, libraries, and athenaeums. It is perhaps unsurprising that those structures which were considered to be ‘ornaments to the town’ were also considered the most fitting subjects with which to ornament publications or drawing-room walls.93 Still, the inference is clear; despite the curiosity value 112

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40  T. Kaye, ‘Athenaeum’ and ‘Lyceum’, Stranger in Liverpool (1838).

of urban manufacturing, the elegance and classical proportions exhibited by so many cultural institutions remained a more appealing subject for print buyers. Although the grangerising of guidebooks and pocket tours continued throughout the nineteenth century, by the 1830s it had become relatively common practice to include a standard series of views in even the most modest urban handbook. As a result, guidebook illustrations tended to be produced in a uniform style and format by one or two artists per publication. Manchester As 113

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It Is, is relatively representative of this type of small publication, in its verbal content, the choice of subject for illustration, and the pictorial model in which these buildings are presented. The contents page lists eighteen chapters of which five pertain to institutions, clubs, and societies where the central purpose was either instruction or cultural diversion.94 After this category, the most common theme is charitable and educational establishments. Only two chapters at the end of the guide relate to the town’s commerce and industries under the headings ‘commercial buildings’ and ‘warehouses, mechanics etc.’95 This emphasis upon venues for instruction and diversion is reflected in the visual content. The guide contains a total of nineteen illustrations including maps and views of buildings. Of those nineteen images, nine relate to clubs, societies, and institutions, while another six depict what might be deemed ‘civic’ institutions such as schools, hospitals, and town halls. Although tourist guides often focused upon cultural diversions, Benjamin Love did not exaggerate the number of such establishments available in Manchester. Even in the late eighteenth century, the town was home to a number of artistic, philosophic, and scientific institutions. Two of the earliest examples were the Gentleman’s Concert Club founded in 1770 and the Theatre Royal, Spring Gardens, the town’s first permanent theatre which had been built in 1775. New institutions and buildings to house them continued to be established and erected throughout the following century. By 1839 Manchester had two theatres, an assembly room, eleven ‘literary and scientific institutions’, and eight ‘literary and educational institutions’ many of which maintained their own, specialist libraries.96 Institutions such as the Manchester Academy, founded 1786; the Portico Library, built in 1806; and the Manchester Architectural Society, founded 1837, answered a demand to provide arenas for scientific and philosophical debate within the town as well as libraries and large news-reading rooms.97 In line with the convention already described, the illustrations in Manchester As It Is depict buildings ranging from the New Concert Hall to the Portico Library and the less-famous Natural History Society’s Hall. In a similar fashion to standalone prints, these buildings appear in pictorial isolation. In this particular publication the views also appear within distinct linear frames. This was, to some extent, a result of the dual usage of plates and engraved blocks to produce both book illustrations and small souvenir prints. However, notwithstanding this practical reason for an image’s pictorial isolation, the resulting images presented a particularly consistent, standardised formula for visualising provincial urban culture. The visual consistency and regularity of Tyler and Stephanson’s illustrations for Manchester As It Is are enhanced further by the architectural unity of the buildings depicted. All the structures depicted are evidently newly built, many in the fashionable Greek-revival style, which as well as indicating a level of ‘good taste’ on the part of the governing classes, also served to reiterate the youth of Manchester’s appetite for culture and prestige.98 This was a perspective reiterated in the text as the authors conceded that ‘no town in the Kingdom possessed, in proportion of half the wealth, has been 114

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so destitute, until lately, of ornamental buildings and good streets’.99 Alongside the broader literary description of a town’s industrial and commercial character, the image of urban Britain that proliferated in this type of publication was clearly one founded firmly upon the inherited values of architectural elegance and conventional cultural exclusivity. Even when the engravings themselves were more sophisticated and complex, the image of urban culture presented was similarly restrained and devoid of human action.100 The result is that rather than introducing readers to the town’s distinctive cultural identity, this extensive series of views serves to reduce the buildings into inert, almost abstract facades. As printing technology advanced and pictorial content became cheaper to produce, it became commercially viable to insert relatively elaborate illustrations into a publication’s pages, embedding views of premises into the narrative flow of the text. In this new format, a small vignette appeared directly above or below a brief account of a venue’s opening hours, purpose, founders, and the price of admission or subscription. However, despite the varying scale and format of these illustrations, they continued to depict premises in the same isolated format. A good example of the extent of visual simplification in this type of vignette can be seen in the 1842 edition of Wareing W. Webb’s successful Picturesque Hand-Book to Liverpool.101 Here the visual devices of simplification and isolation, employed in guides like Manchester As It Is and the early editions of Thomas Kaye’s Stranger in Liverpool, are employed in small wood engravings that recur throughout the accounts of cultural and recreational venues. As well as producing a more compact volume, this new format enabled publishers to insert images in sequence, adding verisimilitude to the ‘tour’ and ‘guide’ format of the book. Some versions of this format even presented readers with a number of different ‘routes’, each illustrated with buildings specific to that itinerary, creating an early version of what Lynda Nead has identified as a process of ‘spatialisation’.102 Such fidelity to the sequential order of the real urban environment was not merely an idle conceit on the part of publishers; it was a means of informing a remote readership of the changing character of their town by embedding that physical environment in the narrative. As M. Christine Boyer has argued, in city views ‘the fragmented city of multiple views was recomposed into a unified image, positioning the spectator in the centre’.103 In addition to locating views above and below their associated verbal descriptions, publishers began to embed images within paragraphs of text. It is easy to gauge the extent of this process by contrasting the arrangement of image and text in the 1842 Picturesque Handbook to Liverpool with a later edition of the same book, published in 1851.104 In both editions the verbal narrative remains ostensibly the same, with the exception of a few minor corrections and additions. However, the illustrations and their location within the narrative have been reconfigured. The view of the Lyceum has changed from a simplistic motif, isolated from its surrounding urban context, to a more inclusive view of the building in situ within an urban thoroughfare. Although by no means a vision of conspicuous trade and dense population, the view does go some way to 115

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indicating the building’s role within the wider built environment. In contrast to the increasing complexity of the illustrations themselves, in some instances, the rise in the number of pictorial vignettes resulted in a fragmented panorama of streets. This ‘fragmented panorama’ effect is particularly evident in C. Redding’s Illustrated Itinerary of the County of Lancashire (1842).105 Rather than the usual limit of one image per page of narrative, in this volume two or three small vignettes are incorporated in close proximity to one another, following the sequential format of the ‘tour’. In contrast to many earlier guidebooks, the illustrative content of this volume includes the interior of public buildings and commercial premises, manufactures, and street scenes, which serve to further contextualise cultural activities within the broader physical and commercial character of the town. Thus, while presenting the viewer with a number of disjointed scenes, the practice of integrating visual material into a conventional ‘tour’ format resulted in a far more complete and contextualised account of a town’s cultural identity than previous formats had permitted. The verbal account of a building’s vicinity, patrons, and various uses is given a physical context by the integrated vignettes. As a result, volumes in which this format was employed combined the narratives of civic, commercial, and cultural development and served to locate images of cultural institutions within a wider discourse of provincial urban development. This process of visual and verbal integration is evident in guidebooks to all the major urban centres of the nineteenth century.106 Evidently, the extent of investment in cultural and recreational facilities, as well as attempts to improve a town’s moral and intellectual state through civic and cultural architecture, was well documented in newspapers, prints, and illustrated guidebooks and tours. Yet, despite the prominence of such imagery at every level of publishing, towns like Manchester struggled to displace their evolving reputations as vast, conglomerated factories. Similarly, improvements to the environment, such as public parks and squares could as easily draw attention to the polluted and overcrowded streets that surrounded them as they could ‘contain and neutralize’ the town.107 Nevertheless, while such ‘antidotes’ to urbanisation were perhaps not universally successful in rebranding growing towns as healthy habitats populated by cultured and discerning residents, nor were symbols of industry and trade necessarily condemned. At no time did urban improvement constitute a universal attempt to negate or eradicate the features that had fuelled the growth and wealth of provincial urban Britain. Moreover, as Fairbairn’s proposals and the numerous views of the new docks at Liverpool and Bristol illustrate, these features were actively celebrated and enhanced in prints, illustrated newspapers, and souvenirs. This reveals something striking about attitudes to urbanisation prior to the emergence of the dystopian, Babylonion caricature in the closing decades of the nineteenth century; the ‘urban renaissance’, although altered in form and location, continued in spirit, and the urban project remained the defining feature of the nation’s social, cultural, political, and economic complexion.

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Notes   1 P. Borsay, ‘The English urban renaissance: the development of provincial urban culture, c.1680–c.1760’, Social History, 2:2 (1977), 581–603; P. Elliott, ‘The origins of the “creative class”: provincial urban society, scientific culture and socio-political marginality in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, Social History, 28:3 (2003), 361–87; E. Griffin, ‘The “urban renaissance” and the mob: rethinking civic improvement over the long eighteenth century’, in D. Feldman and J. Lawrence (eds), Structures and Transformations in Modern British History (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 54–73.    2 E. P. Dennison, S. Eydmann, A. Lyell et al., Painting the Town: Scottish urban history in art (Edinburgh, 2013), p. 19.    3 J. Deas, ‘The River Clyde and Harbour of Glasgow – a lecture delivered on Friday 11th March 1881’, in Lectures on Naval Architecture and Engineering with Catalogue of the Exhibitions for the Glasgow Naval and Marine Engineering Exhibition, 1880–81 (London and Glasgow, 1881), pp. 175–212 (p. 176).   4 C. McCreery, Ports of the World: prints from the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich c.1700–1870 (London, 1999), p. 15.   5 T. Allen, Lancashire Illustrated; with a series of views by S. Austin, Harwood and Pyne (London, 1832).   6 T. Allen, Lancashire Illustrated, title page.   7 J. Aikin, England Delineated; or a geographical description of every county in England and Wales, 2nd edn (London, 1788), p. 80; C. W. Chalklin, The Provincial Towns of Georgian England: a study of the building process 1740–1820 (Montreal, 1974), p. 49; M. Wanklyn, ‘The impact of water transport facilities on the economies of English river ports, c.1660–c.1760’, Economic History Review, 49 (1996), 20–34; M. J. Freeman, ‘Introduction’, in D. H. Aldcroft and M. J. Freeman (eds), Transport in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester, 1983), pp. 1–30 (pp. 24–5).   8 H. Smithers, Liverpool; its commerce, statistics and institutions with a history of the cotton trade (Liverpool, 1825), pp. 139–40.   9 E. Harold, Observations on a Scheme for Extending the Navigation of the Rivers Kennett and Avon (Marlborough, 1788).  10 H. Smithers, Liverpool, pp. 78–168; and K. Morgan, Bristol and the Atlantic Trade in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1993), p. 106.  11 J. Touzeau, The Rise and Progress of Liverpool from 1550–1835, 2 vols (Liverpool, 1910), II, pp. 514–15 and 523; and H. Smithers, Liverpool, pp. 169–84. Bristol Old Dock can be seen in the Buck Brothers’ Prospect of Liverpool (1728).  12 G. Jackson, ‘The ports’, in D. H. Aldcroft and M. J. Freeman (eds), Transport in the Industrial Revolution, pp. 177–208 (p. 201).  13 N. Ritchie-Noakes, Liverpool’s Historic Waterfront: the world’s first mercantile dock system (London, 1984), p. 3. See also G. Jackson, ‘The ports’, pp. 200–8.  14 T. Baines, Liverpool in 1859: the port and town of Liverpool and the harbour, docks and commerce of the Mersey in 1859 (London, 1859), pp. 67–76; N. Ritchie-Noakes, Liverpool’s Historic Waterfront.  15 K. Morgan, Bristol and the Atlantic Trade (Cambridge, 1993), p. 32.  16 J. Thomas, Different Plans for Improving the Harbour of Bristol (Bristol, 1800); D. Large (ed.), The Port of Bristol 1848–1884, Bristol Record Society Publications, 36 (1984),

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vii–viii; and W. Minchinton, The Port of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century (Bristol, 1962), pp. 8–23.  17 R. A. Buchanan, Nineteenth-Century Engineers in the Port of Bristol (Bristol, 1971).  18 Rev. J. Evans, New Guide; or picture of Bristol with the beauties of Clifton, 3rd edn (Bristol, 1828), p. 68.  19 ‘Description of the City of Bristol’, Pocket Magazine; or, elegant repository of useful and polite literature, 3 (1795), 372; M. Dresser, Slavery Obscured: the social history of the slave trade in an English provincial port (New York, 2001), pp. 7–52; and D. Richardson (ed.), Bristol, Africa and the Eighteenth-Century Slave Trade to America, 4 vols (Bristol, 1996), IV, pp. xv–xxxvii.  20 W. H. Bartlett, The Ports, Harbours, Watering-places, and Coast Scenery of Great Britain: illustrated by views taken on the spot (London, 1844).  21 W. W. Webb, A Complete Account of the Origin and Progress of the Clifton Suspension Bridge over the River Avon (Bristol, 1863).  22 W. Fairbairn, Observations on Improvements of the Town of Manchester, particularly as regards the importance of blending in those improvements, the chaste and beautiful, with the ornamental and useful (Manchester, 1836).  23 W. Pole, The Life of Sir William Fairbairn, Bart: partly written by himself [1877] (Devon, 1970). See also entries under Fairbairn in L. C. Sanders (ed.), Celebrities of the Century (London, 1887); Concise Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 1992); and Dictionary of National Biography (London, 1889).  24 W. Fairbairn, Observations, pp. viii and 15–16.  25 W. Fairbairn, Observations, p. 16.  26 W. Fairbairn, Report on the Consumption of Fuel and the Prevention of Smoke (London, 1845), p. 100.  27 E. D. H. Johnson, ‘Victorian artists and the urban milieu’, in J. Dyos and M. Wolff (eds), The Victorian City, 2 vols (London, 1973), II, p. 450.  28 B. Love, Manchester As It Is: or, notices of the institutions, manufactures, commerce, railways etc., of the metropolis of manufactures (Manchester, 1839), pp. 19–20.  29 W. Fairbairn, Observations, p. 12.  30 P. T. Marcy, ‘Eighteenth-century views of Bristol and Bristolians’, in P. McGrath (ed.), Bristol in the Eighteenth Century (Newton Abbot, 1972), pp. 11–41 (p. 18).  31 J. M. Gutch, Twelve Letters on the Impediments which Obstruct the Trade and Commerce of the City and Port of Bristol; which appeared in Felix Farley’s ‘Bristol Journal’ under the signature of Cosmo (Bristol, 1823), p. 1.  32 W. Fairbairn, Observations, p. 12.  33 W. Fairbairn, Observations, p. 12.  34 J. Douet, Going Up In Smoke: the history of the industrial chimney (London, 1994), pp. 14 and 19.  35 J. Douet, Going Up In Smoke, pp. 19–27.  36 R. Rawlinson, Designs for Factory, Furnace and other Tall Chimney Shafts (London, 1859); and W. W. Christie, Chimney Design and Theory: a book for engineers and architects (New York, 1899). See also J. Reynolds, The Great Paternalist (Bradford, 1983).  37 Parliamentary Papers, Report from the Select Committee on Public Walks with Minutes of Evidence Taken Before Them (1833), pp. 44, 47.  38 ‘Clifton and the Downs’, in The Land We Live In, III, p. 318.  39 Report from the Select Committee on Public Walks (1833).

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 40 K. Layton-Jones, ‘A Commanding View: public parks and the Liverpool prospect, 1722–1870’, Cultural and Social History, 10:1 (2013), 47–67.  41 J. Swan, Select Views of Glasgow and its Environs (Glasgow, 1828), pp. 49–51.  42 G. Blair, Biographic and Descriptive sketches of Glasgow Necropolis (Glasgow, 1857), p. 2.  43 E. McKellar, Landscapes of London (New Haven, CT and London, 2013), pp. 205–31.  44 William Enfield, An Essay Towards the History of Leverpool drawn up from papers left by the late G. Perry, and from other materials (Warrington, 1773).  45 Report from the Select Committee on Public Walks (1833).  46 J. C. Loudon, quoted in ‘St James’s Cemetery, Liverpool’, The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, 14 December 1833, 402.  47 See also T. Allen, Lancashire Illustrated, opp. p. 30.  48 Rock and Company, The Lake, Princes Park (1864). LRO, Photographs and small prints.  49 J. A. Picton, Memorials of Liverpool (Liverpool, 1875), p. 483.  50 ‘Opening of Stanley Park, Liverpool’, ILN, 28 May 1870.  51 Wolverhampton Race Course was converted to West Park in 1881. For an illustration of the view see ‘Meeting of the Royal Agricultural Society at Wolverhampton’, ILN, 8 July 1871, 4.  52 L. Miskell, ‘From conflict to co-operation: urban improvement and the case of Dundee, 1790–1850’, Urban History, 29:3 (2002), 350–71 (350).  53 J. Seed, ‘Commerce and the liberal arts: the political economy of art in Manchester, 1775–1860’, in J. Seed and J. Woolf (eds), The Culture of Capital: art, power and the nineteenth- century middle class (Manchester, 1988), pp. 45–81 (p. 68).  54 P. Clark and R. A. Houston, ‘Culture and leisure 1700–1840’, in P. Clark (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain Volume 2 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 575–613 (p. 587). See also G. Fyfe, Art, Power and Modernity: English art institutions, 1750–1950 (Leicester, 2000), p. 21.  55 D. Eastwood, Government and Community in the English Provinces 1700–1870 (Basingstoke, 1997), p. 117.  56 Mabel Tylecote uses the term ‘employing class’ to refer to the essentially entrepreneurial and philanthropic class that emerged in English provincial towns during the early nineteenth century. M. Tylecote, The Mechanics Institutes of Lancashire and Yorkshire Before 1851 (Manchester, 1957), p. 140.  57 B. Hilton, A Mad, Bad and Dangerous People? England 1783–1846 (Oxford, 2006), p. 165.  58 T. R. Tholfsen, ‘The artisan and the culture of early Victorian Birmingham’, University of Birmingham Historical Journal, 4:2 (1854), 146–66 (147).  59 M. Tylecote, The Mechanics Institutes of Lancashire and Yorkshire, pp. 134–7.  60 R. J. Morris, ‘Voluntary societies and British urban elites 1780–1850: an analysis’, in P. Borsay (ed.), The Eighteenth-Century Town 1688–1820 (London, 1990), pp. 338–66 (p. 356).  61 A. Brooks and B. Hayworth, Portico Library: a history (Trowbridge, 2000), pp. 17–18.  62 R. Southey, Letters from England [1807] (London, 1951), p. 213.  63 G. Jackson, ‘Great Exhibition of 1851: to the working men of Manchester’, Manchester Guardian, 1 January 1851, 8.  64 J. Hole, An Essay On The History And Management Of Literary, Scientific And Mechanics’ Institutions; and especially how far they may be developed and combined, as to promote the moral well-being and industry of the country (London, 1853), p. 11. 119

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 65 ‘Address’, North of England Magazine, February 1842, 2.  66 J. Seed, ‘Commerce and the liberal arts’, pp. 69–70.  67 H. Heartwell, ‘Characteristics of Manchester: in a series of letters to the Editor’, North of England Magazine, October 1842, 561.  68 C. W. Chalklin, ‘Capital expenditure on building for cultural purposes in provincial England, 1730–1830’, Business History, 22 (1980), 51–70; and G. Fyfe, Art, Power and Modernity.  69 H. Berry, ‘Promoting taste in the provincial press: national and local culture in eighteenth-century Newcastle-upon-Tyne’, British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 25:1 (2002), 1–17.  70 B. Clarke, From Grub Street to Fleet Street: an illustrated history of English newspapers to 1899 (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 247–8 and 253. For additional examples of pictorial papers see also the Illustrated Times (founded 1848), Pictorial Times (founded 1843) and the Graphic (founded 1869).  71 ‘New Free Library and Museum at Liverpool’, ILN, 2 May 1857, 403.  72 J. Sharples, Pevsner Architectural Guides: Liverpool (New Haven, CT, 2004), pp. 60–5. See also J. Summerson, The Architecture of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1989), pp. 151–2.  73 For further examples of the use of ‘polite’ figures in this manner see two engravings of Sheffield Music Hall (c.1830). SLSL, s02157 and s01451.  74 T. Taylor, The Picture of Liverpool or Stranger’s Guide (Liverpool, 1833), p. 57.  75 ILN, 2 May 1857, 403.  76 B. E. Maidment, ‘Class and cultural production in the industrial city: poetry in Victorian Manchester’, in A. J. Kidd and K.W. Roberts (eds), City, Class and Culture: studies in social policy and cultural production in Victorian Manchester (Manchester, 1985), pp. 148–66 (p. 149). See also the Manchester entry in ‘Art in the Provinces’, Art Journal, 1 January 1856, 8.  77 T. Kaye, ‘Public buildings’, in T. Kaye, The Stranger in Liverpool; or an historical and descriptive view of the town of Liverpool and its environs (Liverpool, 1810), p. 63.  78 S. Gunn, ‘Class, identity and the urban: the middle class in England c.1790–1950’, Urban History, 21:1 (2004), 29–47 (33).  79 C. W. Chalklin, ‘Capital expenditure on building for cultural purposes in provincial England, 1730–1830’, Business History, 22 (1980), 51–70 (53).  80 The Builder (founded 1842). The Art Journal, was originally published under the title of the Art-Union Journal (founded 1839).  81 ‘Architectural notes on Manchester’, The Builder, 6 November 1847, 526–7.  82 See the illustration ‘Liverpool Free Library and Museum’, Building News, 2 January 1857.  83 B. B. Taylor, Sheffield Botanical Gardens (c. 1850). SLSL, acc. 3663–33.  84 For an example see W.R. Harwood, The Royal Institution, Manchester (1836). MLSL, m58909.  85 Rock and Company, Royal Institution and Athenaeum, Manchester (c. 1830). MLSL, m58906.  86 For an example of this copying of views see J. Starling, Royal Institution and Athenaeum, Manchester (c.1836). MLSL, m58907; and Rock and Company’s view of the same premises, discussed above. MLSL, m58906.

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 87 A range of souvenir prints of St George’s Hall is held at LRO, St George’s Hall folder. See also J. and F. Harwood, Botanical Gardens, Sheffield. SLSL, s11026; and Rock and Company, Botanical Gardens, Sheffield (1849). SLSL, s02030.  88 ‘Royal Amphitheatre’, in T. Allen, Lancashire Illustrated, opp. p. 74.  89 For an overview of the different techniques in use by the mid-nineteenth century see G. Wakeman, Victorian Book Illustration: the technical revolution (Newton Abbot, 1973). For an example of a mix of production methods within one publication see C. Redding, An Illustrated Itinerary of the County of Lancashire (London, 1842).  90 T. Kaye, Stranger in Liverpool (Liverpool, 1829), p. 120; and T. Kaye, Stranger in Liverpool (Liverpool, 1838), p. 42.  91 W. Sotheran, Sotheran’s York Guide; including a description of the public buildings, antiquities in and about that ancient city (York and London, 1796); and The Original Bath Guide: containing an essay on the Bath waters with a description of the city (Bath, 1810).  92 W. W. Webb, The Picturesque Hand-Book to Liverpool: a manual for the resident and visitor, being a new and greatly improved edition of the ‘Stranger’s Pocket Guide’ (Liverpool, 1842).  93 Minutes of the Royal Manchester Institution. MLSL, Minutes M6/1/1–15, p. 115.  94 B. Love, Manchester As It Is, pp. 6–7.  95 B. Love, Manchester As It Is, pp. 191–9 and pp. 200–21.  96 B. Love, Manchester As It Is, pp. 100–26; see also B. Hilton, A Mad, Bad and Dangerous People? England 1783–1846 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 170–2.  97 A. Brooks and B. Haworth, Boomtown Manchester 1800–1850: the Portico connection (Manchester, 1993), pp. 2–8.  98 For a more detailed discussion of the ideological basis for the enthusiasm for classical architecture during the late eighteenth century see J.M. Levine, ‘Why Neoclassicism? Politics and culture in eighteenth-century England’, British Journal for EighteenthCentury Studies, 25 (2002), 75–101.  99 B. Love, Manchester As It Is, pp. 19–20. 100 ‘View of St George’s Hall, Liverpool’, in W.W. Webb, The Picturesque Hand-Book to Liverpool. 101 ‘The Lyceum’, in W. W. Webb, The Picturesque Hand-Book to Liverpool, pp. 79–80. 102 L. Nead, Victorian Babylon: people, streets and images in nineteenth-century London (New Haven, CT, 2000), p. 57. See also C. Redding, An Illustrated Itinerary of the County of Lancashire; E. Howell, The Royal Picturesque Handbook of Liverpool: a manual for the resident and visitor (Liverpool, 1852); and W. W. Webb, The Picturesque Hand-Book to Liverpool. 103 M. C. Boyer, The City of Collective Memory: its historical imagery and architectural entertainments (Cambridge MA, 1996), p. 252. 104 W. W. Webb, Picturesque Handbook to Liverpool (Liverpool, 1842 and 1851). 105 C. Redding, An Illustrated Itinerary of the County of Lancashire. 106 J. Drake, Birmingham in Miniature; being a concise but comprehensive account of that place (Birmingham, 1825); T. Allen, Lancashire Illustrated; with a series of views by S. Austin, Harwood and Pyne; and E. Howell, The Royal Picturesque Handbook of Liverpool. 107 C. Arscott, G. Pollock, and J. Wolff, ‘The partial view: the visual representation of the early nineteenth-century industrial city’, in J. Seed and J. Woolf (eds), The Culture of Capital, pp. 219–20.

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B4B Advertising the town

Distant prospects, panoramas, and guidebook illustrations continued to be produced throughout the nineteenth century. However, by the 1840s, perhaps the most ubiquitous and accessible form of urban imagery was that produced to advertise and promote the interests of individual manufactories, warehouses, and merchants. Bills of trade, trade cards, newspaper advertisements, and even free gifts were produced and circulated in ever greater numbers. Accordingly, a full appreciation of how the ‘new’ values of large-scale manufacturing and commercial exchange informed the reputation of provincial towns requires an interrogation of this imagery. As manufacturing and commercial complexes became numerous and conspicuous within the townscape, they also became a common subject for visual representation. Increasingly, the role of urban imagery was to transcribe these new industrial features for the benefit of remote viewers and town visitors alike. Artists were called upon to present utilitarian, sootstained architecture in an aesthetically palatable format. To some extent, flues and warehouses could be arranged so that compositionally they mimicked the forests and rock formations of rural landscapes. Yet, the drama and diversity of prominent chimneys and manufactories meant that they did not function as mere mute decorative devices. Instead, these indications of manufacturing became a criterion of urban evaluation as they testified to a location’s wealth and national significance.1 Using promotional images and objects, this chapter examines the myriad ways in which attitudes to urban manufacturing and trade evolved and informed popular perceptions of the towns they came to dominate. Starting with the origins of pictorial advertising in the eighteenth century, it will demonstrate how visual representations of the manufactory informed expectations towards the wider townscape, its shape, scale, and character. In contrast to other forms of urban imagery, it is relatively easy to identify specific agencies acting behind advertisements. Despite circulating among a public similar to that of the distant view or panorama show, the commercial advertisement owes its existence to the private interests of specific and identifiable

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commercial businesses. In addition to this contrast with what might be deemed the ‘fine art’ imagery of topographical paintings and high-quality engravings, advertisements are unequivocally positive and universally aggrandising. It may then seem that such promotional images, which usually represent only one site or product, can tell us little about the broader urban identity of the town that surrounded them. Yet, the vast majority of advertisements that incorporate views of premises also include references to nearby streets, transport routes, or architectural features that were representative of the wider townscape. Of course, advertisements, by their nature, focus upon the particular qualities and features of distinct businesses. However, taken collectively, early nineteenthcentury advertising not only provides a historical record of a town’s particular industrial or commercial character, but also goes some way to disclosing more general attitudes towards urbanisation. This is not to suggest that every pictorial advertisement informed the consumer in the same way. Rather, the wide range of imagery, objects, and exhibitions exploited for the purpose of promoting discrete commercial interests indicates the variety of audiences and markets to which such material was directed. The most common form of advertising, the two-dimensional print, was also the cheapest and one of the earliest to emerge. Nevertheless, this genre incorporates many variations.2 Since the arrival of ‘Advertisers’ in the eighteenth century, the front pages of newspapers were given over to notices of commercial, civic, and social events.3 As commercial activity expanded and printing technology became increasingly sophisticated, small motifs or vignettes were gradually introduced into formerly text-based columns of advertisements, creating what Brian Lake has dubbed ‘display’ advertising.4 These pictorial ‘displays’ were initially restricted to generic symbols such as ships and shop fronts, heading sections dedicated to transport and sales respectively.5 Such images were often re-used week-to-week in relation to different announcements and companies, and so did not represent the specific commercial identity of any single firm. During the early decades of the nineteenth century these pictorial advertisements were broadened in content to incorporate views of particular premises, goods, and, in later decades, accolades such as exhibition medals.6 Text was increasingly relegated to secondary status as pictorial imagery came to dominate even the smallest printed advertisement.7 In contrast to the column-headers that preceded them, this new generation of visual advertising presented the viewer with a pictorial reference to the specific occupations and achievements of towns and their inhabitants. Furthermore, although advertising had not yet achieved the ubiquitous status it would attain in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as advertising gradually permeated the national press, commercial advertisements became the most widespread and accessible visual representations of provincial towns.8 As the content of advertisements broadened in scope, so too did the range of material in which they could be found; pictorial advertisements for provincial manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers found their way into a broad and varied range of media. Initially, advertisements tended to represent 123

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only local businesses, therefore ‘Advertisers’ acted as an index to regional trade variations. For example, the front pages of the Liverpool General Advertiser; Or, the commercial register and Williamson’s Liverpool Advertiser and Mercantile Chronicle were dominated by shipping notices, while London’s press tended to be given over to advertisements for essentially metropolitan tradesmen, warehouses, and sales.9 As provincial firms grew in scale and influence, advertisements for their products crept into the pages of both the national press and specialist periodicals. The expanding geographical dispersal of commercial imagery, previously limited to local circulation, is demonstrated in the Art Journal’s successful supplement, in which advertisements targeted at the metropolitan retail market often incorporate explicit references to the provincial manufacturer. For example, one advertisement for the London retailer of the Birmingham glassware manufacturer F. and C. Osler depicted not the metropolitan outlet housing the ‘extensive stock’ of decorative glassware, but rather the firm’s Birmingham manufactory.10 Osler’s Broad Street manufactory is pictured from above, revealing both the scale of the manufacturing process and the firm’s apparently smart, central location, complete with pavements, pedestrians, and street furniture. Clearly, the ‘right’ provincial provenance of goods could be taken as much as an indicator of prestige and quality as the fashionable names and premises of metropolitan retailers. In addition to provincial and national newspapers, local trade directories provide yet another source of pictorial advertising. Half-page, full-page, or even large fold-out sheet advertisements were bound into numerous commercial directories published by firms such as Blackwell or Pigot and Company.11 In some instances advertisements were combined with street indexes creating both a practical and attractive guide for commercial travellers. As one particularly elaborate collection of such trade lists, James Bisset’s Magnificent Guide; Or Grand Copper Plate Directory for the Town of Birmingham (1808) demonstrates, the industrial or commercial identity of a town could be powerfully communicated by the text and image combination that characterises this form of advertising.12 Distant prospects, street scenes, and trompe l’oeil trade cards, as well as illustrations of individual premises, form a visual equivalent to the names, trades, and products advertised in the text. On page 6 of Bisset’s Guide, traditional tradesmen’s symbols denote the range of the ‘Miscellaneous Professions’ represented and all are listed beneath an inclusive and generic view of the town (see Figure 41). The remaining pages follow the convention of listing the businesses located along a particular street. Listed in this manner, the names of manufacturers and their companies appear alongside those of physicians, lawyers, and other urban professionals. On a page that lists the occupants of the High Street, a late Georgian streetscape and church spire are enveloped by a trompe-l’oeil scroll on which are listed names, including those of drapers, gilders, grocers, and innkeepers.13 Collectively, these suggest extensive geographical integration of the luxury and essential trades, as well as leisured visitors and residents. In one particularly incongruous combination, a list of ‘Inns, Hotels and Taverns’ and an advertisement of ‘Swinney’s Type Foundry’ share a page.14 This mix is consistent 124

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with Margaret R. Hunt’s assertion that town directories testify to the strength, within middling urban social groups, of an ‘ideal of cooperation between commerce and the genteel classes’.15 The result is an index to urban diversity that associates manufacturing with the most prestigious strata of professional urban society as well as highlighting the prominent position of industry in some of the grandest urban thoroughfares. The format of Bisset’s Guide was appropriated from another common form of advertisement, the trade catalogue, which rarely contained distant views or street scenes, but was instead used by regional merchants to illustrate the various wares on offer from a particular manufacturer.16 By presenting the trades and professions of Birmingham within a single volume that is both a luxury item in itself and mimics the structure of a tradesman’s catalogue, Bisset’s publication suggests a perceived synthesis between the values of manufacture and commerce and those of polite and fashionable consumption within the urban environment.17 The guide forms a kind of pictorial emporium in which the manufactures of the great ‘toy shop’ of Birmingham are displayed for appraisal and consumption. This allusion to the form and experience of the fashionable urban warehouse is expressed literally in one particular plate, which depicts the High Street premises of a Birmingham engraver, printer, and retailer of trinkets or ‘toys’. Here, the shop sign reads ‘Birmingham in Miniature; or, Richard’s Magazine for the Manufactures of Birmingham and its Vicinity’.18 From the fashionably dressed customers depicted through the open doorway, to the smart bowfronted windows, the image that fronts this index of manufactures and trades is one of opulence and urban prosperity. This sophisticated cross-fertilisation between the experience of polite consumption and the visual representation of industry, suggests a wide level of tolerance, and even active appreciation, of urban manufacturing. As well as referring explicitly to the historical status of some towns’ commercial activities, advertisements also occasionally employed more subtle means of alluding to a town’s historical pre-eminence, whether real or imagined. In one page of Bisset’s Guide, upon which are listed ‘miscellaneous professions’ the qualities of permanence, elegance, and good taste, traditionally associated with the ‘old’ borough towns, are alluded to visually by the use of a series of decorative motifs.19 Wood turners, iron foundries, and lock makers are listed in a series of engraved cartouches, each of which employs a different but complementary series of picturesque and ‘antique’ tropes. Some names are depicted ‘carved’ on apparently ancient monuments, while others appear on heraldic shields or scrolls, resting against globes and Corinthian columns. Although a few of the eight vignettes incorporate pictorial references to the trades involved, such as a padlock alongside the name of the lock maker and an ornamental fender alongside that of the wireworker, these components are secondary in the overall composition of the page. The dominant features are those that convey a sense of aesthetic awareness and the value of heritage as a foundation for urban prestige.

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41  ‘Miscellaneous Professions’, in Bisset’s Magnificent Guide (1808).

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In some cases this form of commercial representation replicated the scale and artistic ambition of high-quality topographical engravings. F. Eginton’s 1808 advertisement for Boulton’s Soho Manufactory on the outskirts of Birmingham is one such example (see Figure 42). Here references to the commercial aspect of the premises are limited to the text in the lower section of the print. The image itself adopts the format of the country-estate prospect, a common subject for tours, artists and illustrated periodicals, throughout the later decades of the eighteenth century.20 Such views were chosen for their aesthetic beauty, historic significance, or even the fame or notoriety of their inhabitants.21 Views of country estates tended to privilege picturesque features and a building’s situation, and this was mimicked in many images of commercial premises and manufactories, no matter how incongruous the effect. This ‘treatment’ often included the ‘tidyingup’ of premises and the aggrandisement of a building’s size and elegance; both types of visual modification are evident in Eginton’s advertisement. Although ostensibly a site of manufacture, the foundry’s rural location is accentuated by the undulating sloped lawn in the foreground and ‘other’ grand residences in the distance that allude to the extent and elegance of a country estate. Similarly, the inclusion of Italianate trees to frame the view and a pair of apparently polite and leisurely gentleman before the main building is more typical of views of aristocratic residences than manufactories. The allusion to well-established traditional aesthetic qualities in relation to the Soho premises is reiterated in an extensive verse by Bisset that accompanied his Magnificent Guide. In ‘A poetic survey round Birmingham’ the author reiterates the foundry’s originally pastoral setting, which he suggests is improved by the manufactory: On Yonder gentle slope; which shrubs adorn, Where grew, of late, ‘rank weeds,’ gorse, ling, and thorn, Now pendant woods, and shady groves are seen, And nature there assumes a nobler mien. There verdant lawns, cool grots, and peaceful bow’rs, Luxuriant, now, are strew’d with sweetest flow’rs Reflected by the lake, which spreads below, All Nature smiles around – there stands SOHO! SOHO! – where GENIUS and the ARTS preside, EUROPA’S wonder and BRITANNIA’S pride; THY matchless works have rais’d Old England’s fame, … Whilst Art and Science reign, they’ll still proclaim THINE! ever blended, with a BOULTON’S name.22

As well as being interleaved, and therefore integrated with, the wider projects of street or trade directories, advertisements for industrial premises could also be found at the rear of, or even illustrating, the increasingly popular tourist guides and road books.23 In themselves, these guides to specific cities are evidence of growing public interest in industrial and commercial towns, their ‘characters’, and ‘contributions’. Guides that were designed as much for the education of the

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42  ‘View of Matthew Boulton’s Soho Manufactory and Royal Mint Offices in Handsworth near Birmingham’, in Bisset’s Magnificent Guide (1808).

remote library reader as for the urban visitor were extremely popular, as their frequent reprints throughout the following decades testify. Although towns like Manchester supposedly had relatively little to offer by way of historical monuments or as cultural tourist destinations, this deficiency was of diminishing importance to their prominence in urban guides and ‘tours’. Gazetteers and guidebooks would often pay lip service to a town’s Roman or Saxon origins, but antiquarian entries were increasingly abbreviated or even abandoned in light of a district’s more remarkable recent history. Publications like John Hodgson’s Picture of Newcastle upon Tyne (1807) concentrated upon a city whose significance in the national and international consciousness was relatively new.24 If, as John Vaughan has noted in his history of the English guidebook, the existence of such material testifies to a belief that the place in question is ‘of sufficient interest to be visited by the stranger’, then the augmentation of literature and imagery pertaining to industrial and commercial centres testifies to a shift in what commentators and readers considered worthy of enquiry and appreciation.25 By the late eighteenth century, the authors of general urban guides had begun to prioritise the commercial success of manufacturing and market towns over their antiquity; the statistics quoted most frequently being those relating to size, manufacturing output and population. Some authors even advertised this change of focus. In his Description of Manchester (1783), J. Ogden promised 128

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‘to be more particular on the course of trade and modern improvements’.26 Nevertheless, in the late eighteenth century celebratory industrial imagery in guidebooks was most usually limited to occasional advertisements, which were relatively unrelated to the literary content of the guide itself. By the middle of the nineteenth century, there are instances of views of specific industrial premises being integrated into tours as urban attractions in their own right. In 1855, Cornish’s Stranger’s Guide to Birmingham provided its readers with a verbal tour of that town, punctuated with illustrations of some of the most striking manufactories.27 Like Ogden’s account of Manchester half a century before, it proclaimed its emphasis on the town’s manufactures on its title page. Conventional advertisements were incorporated but interspersed with the main text are a number of full-page illustrations that depict premises like ‘Cope and Son’s spoon and fork manufactory’, each accompanied by a description of the respective site and the products manufactured there.28 As this publication demonstrates, manufactories could be represented to the reading and viewing public as ‘sights’ worthy of appraisal, additional spectacles for tourists and consumers alike. The visual appeal of these new spectacular sights was reiterated by the synonyms awarded to a number of towns. Rather than minimising their industrial associations, names such as ‘Cottonopolis’, the ‘Toyshop of the World’ and ‘Steel City’ or the ‘City of Soot’ reiterated and celebrated the dramatic scale and novelty of these striking environments.29 Notwithstanding this shift towards emphasising a town’s manufacturing, the move did not erase or overwrite pre-existing urban values. The distinct and novel appearance of commercial buildings, as opposed to ancient monuments and historic architecture, certainly claimed an increasing percentage of guidebook and gazetteer authors’ attention. However, the apparent conflict created by these two distinct features of the townscape should be considered in terms of degrees, and in some cases they functioned more in harmony than in contrast. The flaw in any attempt to position historical prestige as an opponent of commercial expansion in the early nineteenth century is made apparent by the value placed upon historic commercial identity. In the eighteenth century, when a town enjoyed a prosperous commercial history these two themes could be favourably combined. As early as 1726 Daniel Defoe noted of Manchester: ‘as for the antiquity of the place, the antiquity of its manufacture indeed is what is of the most consideration’.30 Similarly, in 1788 J. Aikin noted that ‘Bristol, in wealth, trade, and population, has long been reakoned [sic] second to London within this Kingdom’.31 As Aikin’s comment demonstrates, one consequence of ‘ranking’ towns by their commercial status was that towns and cities were frequently attributed the title of the ‘second city in England’, or even of a specific region, in reference to their extensive levels of production, trade, or shipping, as opposed to the possession of historic charters or antiquarian monuments.32 ‘From a small fishing village’, wrote the author of Liverpool As It Is in 1854, ‘has this town progressed to possess, next to London, greater splendour and importance than any other town in the empire’.33 129

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43  Advertisement for ‘Henry Clay, Japanner’, in Bisset’s Magnificent Guide (1808).

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The extent to which this form of commercial comparison penetrated popular perceptions of provincial towns is evident in Jane Harvey’s Sentimental Tour Through Newcastle of 1794, in which she proclaimed, ‘Newcastle may justly rank with the first in England … I say that the spirits of ingenuity and industry, which characterise our nation, are no where more conspicuous than in the inhabitants of Newcastle’.34 Advertisements and other images of manufactories and commercial premises also suggest that far from being perceived as a threat to urban prestige, a large, employed population and extensive manufacturing continued to be recognised as desirable urban traits, rooted in the same ideological basis as admiration for scenic beauty and antiquarian heritage. This harmonious relationship between commercial, civic, and cultural character that was so applauded by eighteenth-century commentators, continues to be evident in many advertisements and directories produced in the early decades of the nineteenth century. In a full-page advertisement for the Birmingham japanner, Henry Clay, the contrasting elements of what might be deemed antiquarian iconography and modern technology are brought together (see Figure 43). Here the connotations of good taste and historical awareness are expressed by a series of motifs which include a semi-ruined temple, an Etruscan-style vase, and a classically inspired plaque. However, directly below this assortment of historical motifs is an almost technical diagram of one of the many new canal locks that served the town of Birmingham and, it is fair to speculate, the firm of Henry Clay itself. As this pairing of images demonstrate, while well-established aesthetic values continued to be represented in commercially motivated imagery, it was increasingly difficult to reconcile such values with the emerging qualities of large-scale production and inter-regional, even international, exchange. While images and rhetoric as ambitious as those of Eginton and Bisset are not uncommon, other forms of pictorial advertising were more modest in scale. Throughout the period, trade cards, bills of trade, and advertising almanacks were among the most ubiquitous forms of printed advertisement.35 The role of the trade card in commercial promotion was firmly established in the early eighteenth century when their visual content was predominantly decorative.36 Standard ‘stock’ decorative tropes, including floral motifs and scrolls, were often combined with elaborate script. Occasionally trade symbols were incorporated, but the inclusion of specifically designed imagery was rare. During the latter half of the eighteenth century, this cartouche model was slowly superseded by a preference for more figurative imagery, including individual premises and products.37 These images suited other forms of advertising, including stationery. As a result, by the early nineteenth century, bills of trade, formal correspondence, and even share certificates were frequently headed with images of particular premises or occasionally even an entire townscape.38 Various explanations have been proffered as to why entire townscapes were incorporated into advertisements. Julie Anne Lambert has suggested that some proprietors may have thought a general view more attractive than their 131

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44  Bill of trade for George Davey, Printseller, 1 Broad Street (1843).

own premises.39 Certainly, the visual impact gained by appropriating the wider townscape to advertise a specific business or product is evident in an 1843 bill of trade for the Bristol printseller and publisher of Picturesque Antiquities of Bristol, George Davey (see Figure 44). Here, as well as demonstrating the level of the engraver’s skill in the fine quality of the imagery and range of scripts, a pair of vignette views reflects two concurrent facets of Bristol’s identity. The city’s reputation as an elegant historic city, nestled in a rural setting, has been conflated with the qualities of commercial order and employment provided by its industrial expansion. The picturesque view and the image of the Clifton Suspension Bridge, still under construction at this time, serve to unite the binary associations of antiquity and industrial progress within that city. This duality is reiterated in written accounts such as Hunt and Company’s Directory for the city from 1848, which describes Bristol as ‘a happy combination of aristocratical grandeur and commercial activity’.40 In this fashion, and in addition to recommending private interests, the decision to incorporate broader townscapes within promotional imagery may have arisen also from a civic-minded desire to raise the profile of specific towns, or even from an aspiration to associate a business with the grander artistic genre of landscape painting. In other instances, the nature of the business advertised lent itself to an expansive view. In an advertisement published in 1836 for the Birmingham auctioneer, land agent, and estate surveyor, James Harrison, a distant view of the town appears at the foot of the page as a setting upon which to illustrate the process of land surveying itself.41 Whatever the motivation, by the turn of the nineteenth century, views of individual premises and industrialised townscapes littered commercial advertising.

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The vignette view During the early decades of the nineteenth century, the manufactories and wares of manufacturing and commercial towns were presented to the public through the various modes of advertising already outlined. The companies advertised range from large cotton manufacturers to glassware merchants, and from comparatively large-scale steel foundries to individual edge-tool grinders.42 Both the range of companies represented and the large number of extant printed advertisements that survive in guidebooks and directories make it difficult to trace the development of any trend in the manner in which manufacturing and commercial concerns were promoted. In order to comprehend the evolution of pictorial advertising and its contribution to provincial urban identity throughout this period, it is helpful to concentrate upon a particular industry and a limited number of locations. The metal-ware trade of Sheffield and Birmingham is ideal for this purpose as, unlike the cotton-processing manufactories of Manchester and Lancashire, small independent metal-ware manufacturers continued to operate alongside larger, centralised manufactories throughout the century.43 Although the town of Sheffield was dominated by metal-ware trades, the range of products and manufacturing processes was enormous. Small-scale blade grinding took place alongside other light trades such as bone carving, as well as industrial-scale steel rolling or machine manufacture.44 Yet, the advertisements that represent this diverse assortment of goods and services are far less varied in format than the trades they promote and, in general, conform to the pictorial conventions of guide-book illustrations.45 In such images individual buildings and works are depicted in isolation, with the tone and orientation of the view emphasising the front aspect of premises. In most cases this elevation privileged administrative buildings rather than manufacturing sheds and the pictorial references to production are more subtle and implicit. For example, in the advertisement for Thomas Hunt, ‘manufacturer of fine scissors and scissor knives’, published in Blackwell’s Sheffield Directory in 1828, the neat and tidy front courtyard, sparsely populated by a single labourer and a dog suggests the influence of traditional pictorial formulae and conscious aesthetic arrangement on even modest promotional imagery (see Figure 45). The blank windows of the grinding sheds serve more as motifs or abstract symbols of commercial premises than as representations of hot and humid manufactories. Other examples include an advertisement for George Wilkin’s Palmerston Works (c.1850) and a bill of trade for Chadburn and Company, manufacturers of ‘spectacles, telescopes, opera glasses etc.’ (c.1825), which both depict these respective manufactories as indistinguishable from a townhouse or high street retailer.46 Over the following century a number of new, more sophisticated, forms of printed advertisement would emerge, but this vignette model continued to be used well into the 1860s.47 In Sheffield and Birmingham, the expansion of manufacturing did not automatically equate to the immediate arrival of large-scale mechanisation and factory production. In both towns a large number of manufacturers operated 133

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45  Advertisement for Thomas Hunt, manufacturer of fine scissors and scissor knives, in Blackwell’s Sheffield Directory (1828).

on a very small, often individual basis. This was compounded after 1814 when an Act of Parliament meant that the Sheffield Company of Cutlers lost control over the industry, making it relatively simple to acquire the title of ‘manufacturer’.48 Furthermore, the adoption of these pictorial conventions in the representation of urban manufactories should not be misunderstood as an attempt to deny a town’s commercial activity. The emphasis upon the façade of a building, in reality and in representations, merely reflects a general trend in urban development during this period. As Peter Borsay has noted, during a period of increasing demand for urban real estate ‘it was natural that the façade should become the special focus for any decorative show, and that this should be relatively elaborate to compensate for the restricted space available’.49 So, although in many cases vignette advertisements resulted in the concealment of 134

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overtly industrial features and the aggrandisement of premises, these images should be interpreted as the result of a positive and integrated approach to urban design. This aesthetic harmony between manufactories and the wider townscape was even more significant where the historic fabric of a town had been defined by manufacturing. Prior to large-scale urbanisation, Sheffield had enjoyed a distinguished, albeit smaller, manufacturing heritage, which provided a form of antiquarian justification for the town’s industrial commercial identity. In 1751 Stephen Whatley’s England’s Gazetteer observed: This town has been noted several hundred years, for cutlers and smiths manufactures which were encouraged and advanced by the neighbouring mines of iron, particularly for files, and knives, or whittles; for the last of which, especially, it has been a staple for above 300 years.50

Eight decades later, in 1837, the significance of a perceived link between antiquarian and contemporary commercial greatness was reiterated in John Holland’s Tour of the River Don. In sections dedicated to the history and trades of Sheffield and its vicinity the author reasoned: The banks of the Don at this place are too redolent of past times, too crowded with passing associations, not to compel the individual … to linger awhile for congratulation, reflection, or review … Surely, the individual who, living, amidst the changes of a great and growing town, feels no anxiety to learn something of its past history – no veneration for its time-honoured monuments, must be made of strange stuff indeed.51

Rather than operating as mutually exclusive values, a combination of commercial heritage and contemporary commercial success usually constituted the most desirable urban reputation in the earlier half of the century. This is evident in the proliferation of literary guides, accounts, and histories pertaining to British cities during this period, which generally adhered to a formula of antiquarian and geographical description followed by a section outlining the contemporary manufactures or trades of a town. This structure is outlined in the sub-title of Mathews’s Bristol Guide of 1815, which, in line with the convention, proclaimed itself to be ‘a complete ancient and modern history of the city of Bristol’. In such guidebooks, the towns that received the highest acclaim were those that could be appreciated for their contribution to what Lewis Mumford described as the ‘new industrial regime’, in addition to a prestigious civic and commercial history.52 For towns like Sheffield and Bristol, which enjoyed the associations of a commercial heritage, the pictorial continuity displayed in vignette advertisements served to reassert a historical precedent for their manufacturing industries. This interpretation of the vignette advertisement as evidence of a continuing positive attitude to active urban industry is further confirmed in images that depict commercial and human exchange between the contrasting environments of street and manufactory. Rather than representing industry as confined within

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46 Advertisement for L. G. Reed and Company, Sheffield (c.1840).

the boundaries of the manufactory, many examples depict open gates and doorways, with products, customers, and workers moving from urban street to industrial warehouse or foundry. In one advertisement for the Sheffield timber and slate merchants L. G. Reed and Company, c.1840, a labourer occupies the pavement as well as a fashionable couple, as large qualities of timber pass from the yard into the smart thoroughfare (see Figure 46). Here again, as with the Thomas Hunt advertisement, the industrial features of the premises are apparent but they do not dominate the scene. Although contained within the works’ boundary wall, it seems clear that industrial premises were understood and appreciated as integral to the urban structure. This supports Penelope Corfield’s assertion that the structure and development of manufacturing towns did not necessarily ‘represent a sudden forgetfulness of earlier good planning practice’.53 Manufactories and commercial premises were visually, as well as economically and socially, integrated into the urban fabric. The positive associations of integrating commercial premises into the wider townscape are suggested further by the scale and elevation of these views. The close vantage point, taken from the far side of the street, replicates the enclosed, foreshortened visual range permitted by the urban environment. As Bisset’s Guide testifies, the compatibility of private enterprise and urban prestige had long been represented in advertisements for repositories and other urban outlets for consumer goods. Similarly, it has been 136

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47  Advertisement for John Traies, Boot and Shoe Manufacturer, in Birmingham and its Vicinity as a Manufacturing and Commercial District (1836).

widely accepted that even sometimes contentious large-scale complexes, like water-works and pump houses were, for the main part, accepted as necessary features within the urban street-scene.54 The recognition of the urban manufactory as an integral feature of the urban infrastructure, and therefore urban prosperity and prestige, is reiterated in a pictorial advertisement taken from another Birmingham directory. The advertisement for ‘John Traies, Boot and Shoe Manufacturer’ appeared in William Hawkes Smith’s Birmingham and its Vicinity as a Manufacturing and Commercial District (1836) (see Figure 47).55 It occupies an entire page of the publication and is divided into two main sections, the smaller of which shows the firm’s Newcastle-upon-Tyne premises, indicated by the inclusion of a ship in the right-hand corner. The larger image depicts Traies’s premises on Market Street, Birmingham, where the shoes and boots were manufactured as well as retailed. The scene is one of smart prosperity, indicated not only by the well-dressed figures that populate the scene, but also by the well-stocked shop front. Although the manufacturing process is concealed from the viewer, the function of the building as both shop and manufactory is reiterated in both the shop sign and 137

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the advertisement text. It is obvious that tradesmen would not wish to conceal the nature of their business in a commercial advertisement. Nevertheless, it is suggestive that the manufacturing aspect of this trade is emphasised so explicitly. Rather than being ‘managed’ as a contentious force, at odds with civicminded ambitions for urban aggrandisement, some of the most positive images of provincial towns were those that incorporated manufacturing premises. By demonstrating manufactories’ integration into the urban environment, such advertisements reveal the perceived compatibility of civic-minded attempts at urban promotion and the economic motivations that necessitated urban manufacturing. Even commentators who were vehemently critical of the physical impact of urban manufactories often tempered their criticisms with acknowledgements of the material benefits of industrialisation, a concession illustrated by Alexis de Tocqueville who, on a visit to Manchester observed, ‘from this filthy sewer pure gold flows’.56 Similarly, although strongly critical of the condition of labourers, Thomas Carlyle demonstrates a comparable degree of ambivalence towards to the visual impact of urban industry. In his famous tract Chartism he challenges the reader to disassociate the worst visual and physical consequences of manufacturing from the implicit values of labour and commercial advancement: ‘Manchester, with its cotton-fuz, its smoke and dust, its tumult and contentious squalor, is hideous to thee? Think not so … soot and despair are not the essence of it; they are divisible from it.’57 In the sense that their prosperity and population relied upon manufacturing, large conurbations like Manchester and Birmingham were certainly understood as ‘commercial’ or ‘industrial’ towns. However, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, the architecture, mammoth scale, and pollution that would later be so closely associated with industrial towns had not yet come to dominate visual representations of the provincial urban environment. Manufacturing was not only spatially and physically integrated into the urban infrastructure, but also, and perhaps even more importantly, there was a perceived synthesis of purpose between civic and commercial promotion. ‘The works’ and the town The image of urban manufactories as integrated with, and complementary to, the wider streetscape continued to be employed by many proprietors throughout the nineteenth century. However, by the 1840s, this model was challenged by reality. The form of traditional pictorial advertisements was now irreconcilable with the size of urban manufactories. Although the ancestry of a particular local trade continued to be celebrated in guidebooks and directories, the new virtues of mass production and centralisation of manufacture superseded more traditional qualities as indicators of commercial prestige.58 In towns such as Manchester, in which most warehouses and manufactories were relatively new constructions, the challenge of presenting such vast premises without dwarfing the surrounding

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48  Advertisement for Stanley, Bellamy and Co., Ironfounders, Midland Works, Savile Street, Sheffield (1858).

streets had always posed a challenge to artists. But, as the century progressed, even towns like Sheffield and Birmingham became home to larger and larger premises that could no longer be accommodated by conventional street-scene vignettes. Although most metal wares continued to be produced in small workshops and passed between individual tradesmen, a growing number of these trades began to centralise processes within one large site.59 One advertisement for Stanley, Bellamy and Company, depicting their Midland Works illustrates the beginnings of a gradual shift away from the street vignette model (see Figure 48). Here, the street is still apparent and the works are moderate in size, but the viewer is now afforded a bird’s-eye view that reveals a complex of the works behind an urban façade. Small concessions are made to earlier aesthetic models as trees are included on the periphery and the landscape behind the works recedes to rolling rural hills. Industry is no longer concealed, but it remains contained. Nevertheless, the manufactory and its industrial character now dominate the scene to the almost complete exclusion of all other urban features. In the later decades of the nineteenth century, the scale and influence of urban manufactories over their surrounding streets and the population who inhabited them necessitated a complete departure from the inherited models of

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representation. As Robert Morris observed, ‘there was more to the organisation of space in the manufacturing towns than housing, the by-law street, and the middle-class residential suburb. Dominating these industrial towns was a new form of organization of space, often called simply “the works”’.60 As early as 1842, Horace Heartwell’s serialised account of Manchester in the North of England Magazine contained a description of the town’s factories as ‘immense piles of buildings’ which appeared ‘not as isolated structures but in groups, or spreading out through long streets’.61 In response to this change in scale, a new model of advertising emerged that celebrated explicitly the occupation of larger and larger geographical areas by manufactories and warehouses. An image of Davy Brothers Ltd.’s Park Iron Works in Sheffield from 1879 illustrates both the physical change that this shift wrought upon the urban landscape, and also the changes it necessitated in the representation of urban manufacturing (see Figure 49). By virtue of its extent, layout, and location, the works depicted here cannot be appreciated from the human vantage point, nor even from the relatively low bird’s-eye view employed in the Midlands Works advertisement of 1858. Instead, here they are viewed from some distance, across the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal, thus treating the works as a conurbation in its own right. By adopting this vantage point the premises are attributed the same qualities of autonomy, importance, and commercial consequence that had been previously attributed to entire townscapes. Unlike images produced just fifty years earlier, here there is little evidence of the town’s wider civic and social character. Rather than being a component of a wider urban environment, industrial premises were evolving and being represented, independent of their urban situation. Simon Gunn has suggested that after 1840 ‘the cities were viewed pre-eminently as the embodiment of the “factory system”’.62 However, it is perhaps more accurate to say that manufactories were evolving into complex and expansive superstructures in their own right, essentially self-contained factoryscapes. Manufacturing, and the premises within which it took place, became the dominant feature of many towns, and one that some proprietors were keen to elevate and commemorate in decorative mementoes and display pieces as well as ‘low status’ printed images. Ceramics, as well as paintings and high-quality ‘exhibition pieces’ all provided a base for promotional imagery, both of whole towns and individual businesses. Promotional objects From the earliest emergence of advertising as a distinct representational genre, pictorial advertisements performed the secondary function of visual entertainment. Early printed vignettes conformed to a number of existing pictorial formulae while more elaborate promotional imagery, like Eginton’s view of Boulton’s Soho Foundry, could be easily mistaken as belonging to a more prestigious class of prints, which included views of country estates and sites of antiquarian interest. As such, it required only a short period of transition

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49  Advertisement for Davy Brothers Ltd., Engineers, Park Iron Works, Sheffield (1879).

before advertisements became a source of amusement in themselves, and another brief period of development for advertising to permeate the wider sphere of material culture. At the simplest level, pictorial advertisements that depicted manufacturing or retail premises were incorporated into trade-related ephemera. These were sometimes practical objects, as with one example, produced by Greaves and Sons to advertise their Sheaf Works, in which an inch measure is introduced into a relatively standard trade-card advertisement (c.1830) (see Figure 50). The card incorporates a stylised view of the premises, with its distinctive bottle furnaces and sheds, the address of the firm, and a small inch gauge. In the years prior to the standardisation of measurements and gauges, each manufacturer operated a slightly different scale of measurement. By producing this small, disposable measure for customers, Greaves and Sons provided the customer with a combined, visual, verbal, and practical signifier of their trade as well as ensuring that purchasers had a tool to enable them to place accurate orders. The impact of such a condensed referent to a business was clearly a powerful tool in the marketplace and, throughout the nineteenth century, the role and form of promotional objects diversified immensely.63 In addition to printed ephemera, companies produced ever more elaborate objects to promote and commemorate their trades. The fashion for topographical imagery on porcelain was well established by the early nineteenth century. The Italianate landscapes that recurred so frequently in paintings and engravings were popular themes for the porcelain painters in the factories like Worcester and Derby. In fact, many of the views that appear on hand-painted porcelain were copied from pre-existing prints and paintings and

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50  Advertisement for William Greaves and Sons, Sheaf Works, Cadman Street and Maltravers Street Sheaf Works, Sheffield (c.1830).

it was not only the larger porcelain factories that decorated their ceramics with urban imagery. In Liverpool the local pottery firm, Herculaneum, produced a series of cream-wares decorated with views taken from the popular Lancashire Illustrated.64 Images of the town’s finest buildings, squares, harbour, and even warehouses were reproduced in an array of transfer-printed crockery ranging from small side plates to large tureens and meat platters.65 However, decorative and commemorative ceramics that incorporate views of industrial premises are relatively rare.66 The first customers for expensive hand-painted ceramics tended to come from the higher strata of society and would often commission pieces that 142

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incorporated views of their own country houses and estates. Alternatively this level of customer could order from a pre-designed list of views, famous houses and sights like Chatsworth House, and Matlock in Derbyshire, both of which became popular subjects. 67 Where manufactories and mills do appear, they are most commonly incorporated into a wider townscape. In the early 1880s a topographical service was produced for the Prime Minister, William Gladstone, which depicted scenes from throughout the country, both ancient and modern. In addition to views of ruins and landscapes like Pickering Tor, the service included a plate depicting the Old Silk Mill, Derby.68 In contrast to the rural views that constituted the most common form of topographical imagery on high-quality ceramics, in this instance the view is explicitly urban, incorporating the spires of the town, the River Derwent, and the mill building itself. Nevertheless, the scene is one of inactivity and the mill appears as merely another element of a wider, static scene. Another means of translating industrial premises into acceptable subjects for fine-quality porcelain was to incorporate them into an otherwise traditional landscape format. A ‘picturesque’ treatment of industrial premises in ceramic decoration is evident in a piece of porcelain upon which is painted a view of the Derby porcelain factory itself. This view, which decorates what has come to be known as the Bloor Documentary Cup (c.1870), was painted by the famous porcelain artist, Robert Brewer, and is dominated by pastoral motifs.69 Yet, despite this apparent adherence to artistic convention, the representation of the manufactory of origin on a piece of Derby ware constitutes a form of advertisement; the boundary between commercial advertisement, personal souvenir, and expression of civic pride was frequently blurred. These two techniques, of either ruralising an industrial scene or incorporating it into a static townscape, were the most common means of representing industrial premises and landscapes on porcelain. Although industrial scenes were incorporated into even the grandest services, including Wedgwood’s famous Frog Service for Catherine the Great (1773–74), the majority of views represented more traditional scenes.70 As the Gladstone service demonstrates, this continued to be the case for large services produced throughout the century, as well as for individual pieces, so long as the customers came from within the established landed classes. However, as manufacturers themselves began to account for an increasingly large percentage of the market for these high-value ceramics, they too commissioned ceramics to commemorate their property. In these instances, the property depicted might just as likely be manufactories and warehouses as country estates. Few examples of such pieces survive. However, one notable piece exists in the form of a rare fine porcelain ‘Porter’, or ‘Quart toast’ mug, manufactured and hand-painted in the Derby factory (c.1820) (see Figure 51). Unusual in its final decorative state, the mug itself was a standard Derby form, comprising a relatively short body with a flat D-shaped handle and simple mouldings that defined the edges of decorative panels to be filled by the artist. Never intended for use at the dinner table, these mugs were wholly decorative in 143

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51  Porter mug depicting the engineering works of Peel, Williams & Peel, Manchester (c.1820).

their purpose. Many examples of this style of mug survive, decorated with birds, flowers, and the kind of traditional landscapes already described.71 However, the main body of the Manchester mug is decorated with a wholly unconventional subject for high-quality decorative ceramics. The painted panels that dominate the body of the mug are decorated with two scenes, each of which represents one of the two foundries of the Mancunian engineering firm, Peel, Williams and Peel. Both the Phoenix and Soho foundries were situated within the boundary of Manchester, and therefore constituted urban manufactories. No record of the piece survives in the Derby factory’s archives, but it might reasonably be assumed that the mug was commissioned by one of the owners of the firm, its function being primarily that of a personal memento or remembrancer. However, there are a number of components of the imagery, if not the piece itself, that link it with the kinds of printed advertisements described above. The existence of engraved versions of the views suggests that these images were published in some form, either as stand-alone prints or as a form of advertisement at some point during the nineteenth century. The local artist, Joseph Parry, who had moved from Liverpool to make his career in Manchester, produced the original images as monochrome watercolours c.1812, but they were later engraved by Thomas Slack (c.1818) (see Figure 52).72 In a similar fashion to the majority of advertisements, and contrary to the majority of traditional topographical imagery, both the subject and the images originated within the town. There is also evidence within the images themselves of their 144

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52  T. Slack after J. Parry, Phoenix Foundry and Soho Foundry, Manchester (c.1818).

application as commercial advertisements. Rather than depicting the works as idle motifs within a wider landscape, smoke bellows from the chimney and industrious figures are depicted carrying the heavy wares of the foundries. In a similar fashion to the views that comprise Bisset’s extensive Guide and the 145

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Thomas Hunt advertisement, here the wares of the firm are on display in the courtyards and delineated with a level of detail that suggests a trade catalogue. If further confirmation of the role of these images as commercial advertisements were required, both premises are labelled with the names of the firm and the respective foundry. The composition of the views, which both exclude the wider townscape and emphasise the facilities of the foundries, also alludes to the kind of pictorial formula evident throughout early nineteenth-century promotional imagery. Yet, what is so significant about the Peel and Williams porter mug is that this kind of industrial imagery, heavily loaded with commercial iconography, was deemed by the owner to be a suitable subject for fine, decorative porcelain. Rather than being confined to the sphere of commercial advertising, positive and promotional representations of urban manufactories were being integrated into the canon of topographical imagery and the decorative arts. Industrial expansion was not only tolerated, it was represented in increasingly diverse forms as an admirable and aesthetically pleasing trait of the modern townscape. As we have seen, contrary to received historical wisdom, representations of urban manufactories in pictorial advertisements and promotional objects led to an image of towns like Sheffield, Birmingham, and Manchester that was anything but bleak and demonic. Even as the scale of urban manufacturing grew, advertisements suggest that the changing form of the urban manufactory was perceived to herald neither the universal improvement nor the complete destruction of the urban environment. Instead, pictorial advertisements reflect a transition from a notion of manufacturing as an integral urban feature, and one that enjoyed equal status and prominence alongside other urban structures and values, to a more focused view of manufacturing cities as dominated by their industrial character. In a country which, throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, underwent massive technological, social, and urban flux, historical achievements offered nothing new to prompt a town’s ascent or descent on the scale of urban admiration. Whereas a site’s antiquities and historical prestige were inherited, industrial success and prosperity could be stimulated, created and lost. Consequently, it is both more profitable and accurate to approach the long nineteenth century as a period in which there were qualitative changes in how commercial and manufacturing towns were evaluated, than to continue to rely upon over-simplistic polarities that position the manufactory as a negative feature within the provincial urban scene. Well into the nineteenth century, representations of towns continued to respond to eighteenth-century urban values and relied upon visual formulae that presented manufactories as integral to the urban fabric. However, the manner in which the values of urban trade and industry were represented evolved in sympathy with their increasing importance and dominance within the townscape. Urban manufacturing redefined the dominant image of the towns affected and those buildings and developments that indicated a town’s commercial potential became increasingly significant to a town’s national and international identity. The result was a shift away from images of the town as a 146

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centre of balanced production and consumption, to one in which the urban realm was visualised primarily in terms of its productive capacity. Yet, notwithstanding this reorganisation of the urban environment, provincial urban manufacturing continued to be represented as a fundamental and desirable urban value; one to celebrated in print as much as at stock exchange. Notes  1 G. Head, A Home Tour Through the Manufacturing Districts of England in the Summer of 1835 (London, 1836), pp. 6–7.  2 G. A. Cranfield, The Development of the Provincial Newspaper 1700–1760 (Oxford, 1962), pp. 207–23; and J. P. Wood, The Story of Advertising (New York, 1958), pp. 31–44.  3 B. Clarke, From Grub Street to Fleet Street: an illustrated history of English newspapers to 1899 (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 139–63, 153–7. See also L. Davidoff and C. Hall, Family Fortunes: men and women of the English middle class 1780–1850 (London, 1987), p. 241; and M. J. Turner, Reform and Respectability: the making of a middle-class Liberalism in early nineteenth-century Manchester (Manchester, 1995), pp. 59–103. For an example of a non-commercial illustrated advertisement see a notice for an astronomy lecture at the Manchester Royal Exchange headed by a vignette depicting the solar system, Manchester Guardian, 27 February 1830.  4 B. Lake, British Newspapers: a history and guide for collectors (London, 1984), p. 163.  5 See The Commentator, Political, Moral and Religious, 3 May 1828, 4.  6 See advertisements for Unwin and Rodgers Rockingham Works, Sheffield, and Samuel Laycock and Sons and Spear and Jackson, in W. White, White’s Gazetteer and General Directory of Sheffield (Sheffield, 1852).  7 G. Curtis, ‘Dickens in the visual market’, in J. O. Jordan and R. L. Patten (eds), Literature in the Marketplace, pp. 213–49 (p. 226).  8 L. Nead, Victorian Babylon: people, streets and images in nineteenth-century London (New Haven, CT, 2000), p. 58.  9 Liverpool General Advertiser; or, the commercial register, 19 September 1766, 2 and Williamson’s Liverpool Advertiser and Mercantile Chronicle, 8 January 1779, 3. For a detailed account of advertising in early London newspapers throughout this period see R. B. Walker, ‘Advertising in London newspapers 1650–1750’, Business History, 15:2 (1975), 112–30. 10 Advertisement for F. and C. Osler, Birmingham Glassware Manufacturer, Art Journal, (January 1850), xiii. 11 P. J. Corfield and S. Kelly, ‘Giving directions to the town: the early town directories’, Urban History Yearbook (1984), 22–35; and J. E. Norton, ‘Guide to the national and provincial directories of England and Wales, excluding London, published before 1856’, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 5 (London, 1950), 1–13. 12 Although Bisset’s Magnificent Guide; or grand copper plate directory for the town of Birmingham was first published in 1800, it was reissued with a number of additional plates in 1808 and it is this complete edition that is referred to here. 13 ‘High Street, Birmingham’, in J. Bisset, Bisset’s Magnificent Guide (Birmingham, 1808). 14 ‘Inns, hotels and taverns and Swinney’s Type Foundry in Birmingham’, in J. Bisset, Bisset’s Magnificent Guide.

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15 M. R. Hunt, The Middling Sort: commerce, gender and the family in England 1680–1780 (Los Angeles, CA and London, 1996), p. 188. 16 A. Hyatt Mayor, Prints and People: a social history of printed pictures (Princeton, NJ, 1971), pp. 556–61. 17 For a case study of provincial urban consumption during the late eighteenth century see H. Berry, ‘Prudent luxury: the metropolitan tastes of Judith Baker, Durham gentlewoman’, in R. Sweet and P. Lane (eds), Women and Urban Life in Eighteenth-Century England (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 131–55. See also L. Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain 1660–1760 (London, 1996); and N. McKendrick, J. Brewer, and J. H. Plumb (eds), The Birth of a Consumer Society: the commercialisation of eighteenth-century England (London, 1982). 18 ‘Richard’s Magazine’, in J. Bisset, Bisset’s Magnificent Guide. 19 ‘Miscellaneous Professions’, in J. Bisset, Bisset’s Magnificent Guide. 20 M. Andrews, Landscape and Western Art (Oxford, 1999), p. 70. For examples see J. P. Neale, Views of the Seats of Noblemen and Gentlemen, in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland (London, 1822), and ‘View of Drayton House, Northamptonshire’, Lady’s Magazine, 21 (1790), 120. 21 See ‘View of the seat of Admiral Keppel at Bagshot in Surrey’ and ‘View of the seat of the late David Garrick Esq. at Hampton, with the Temple of Shakespeare’, in G. A. Walpoole, The New Complete British Traveller: or a complete display of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1784). 22 ‘A poetic survey round Birmingham’, in J. Bisset, Bisset’s Magnificent Guide 23 B. Love, Manchester As It Is (Manchester, 1839), frontispiece. 24 J. Hodgson, Picture of Newcastle upon Tyne (Newcastle, 1807). 25 J. Vaughan, The English Guide Book c.1780–1870: an illustrated history (London, 1974), p. 13. 26 J. Ogden, A Description of Manchester by a Native of the Town (Manchester, 1783), p. 6. 27 J. Cornish, Cornish’s Stranger’s Guide Through Birmingham: being an account of all the public buildings, religious, educational, and charitable foundations, literary and scientific institutions, and manufactories (Birmingham, 1855). 28 J. Cornish, Cornish’s Stranger’s Guide Through Birmingham, p. 117. 29 Northern Star and Leeds General Advertiser, 9 September 1843, 3. 30 D. Defoe, A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain [1724–26] (Harmondsworth, 1971), p. 546. 31 J. Aikin, England Delineated; or, a geographical description of every county in England and Wales, 2nd edn (London, 1788), pp. 314–15. 32 J. Holland, A Picture of Sheffield, or an historic and descriptive view of the town of Sheffield (Sheffield, 1824), p. 11. 33 See Stranger’s Complete Guide; or Liverpool as it is (Liverpool, 1854), p. 1. 34 J. Harvey, A Sentimental Tour Through Newcastle by a young lady (Newcastle, 1794), pp. 11–12. 35 R. Hyde, London Displayed: headpieces from the Stationers’ Almanack (London, 2010). 36 C. Walsh, ‘The advertising and marketing of consumer goods in eighteenth-century London’, in C. Wischermann and E. Shore (eds), Advertising and the European City: historical perspectives (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 79–95 (pp. 87–9); and J. P. Wood, The Story of Advertising (New York, 1958), pp. 18–29. 37 For this history of trade cards I am indebted to the work of Julie Anne Lambert at the John Johnson Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford. In particular, J. A. Lambert, A

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38 39 40 41 42 43

44 45 46

47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

Nation of Shopkeepers: trade ephemera from 1654 to the 1860s in the John Johnson Collection (Oxford, 2001), pp. 42–52. Herculaneum Pottery share certificate engraved by George Codling (1806). NML; and a bill of trade for Robert King, engraver, Surrey Works, Number 121 Granville Street (1850). SLSL, s09926. J. A. Lambert, A Nation of Shopkeepers, p. 76. E. Hunt, Hunt & Co.’s Directory & Court Guide for the cities of Bath, Bristol, & Wells. (Bristol, 1848), p. 8. Advertisement, James Harrison, Auctioneer and Sworn Appraiser, Birmingham, in W. H. Smith, Birmingham and its Vicinity as a Manufacturing and Commercial District (London and Birmingham, 1836). Advertisement, Samuel Laycock and Sons, manufacturers of hair-seating and curled hair, Porto-bello Place, in W. White, White’s Gazetteer and General Directory of Sheffield (Sheffield, 1852). R. Samuel, ‘Workshop of the world: steam power and hand technology in midVictorian Britain’, History Workshop Journal, 3 (1977), 6–72 (39–45); G. Tweedale, Steel City: entrepreneurship, strategy, and technology in Sheffield 1743–1993 (Oxford, 1995); C. Binfield, D. Martin, R. Childs et al., The History of the City of Sheffield 1843– 1993 (Sheffield, 1993); E. Hopkins, Birmingham: the first manufacturing town in the world 1760–1840 (London, 1989); and A. C. Marshall and H. Newbould, The History of the Firth’s 1842–1918 (Sheffield, 1924), pp. 1–16. M. Jones, The Making of Sheffield (Barnsley, 2004), pp. 68–112. See section on the depiction of cultural institutions in guidebooks in Chapter 3. Advertisement for George Wilkin, Sheffield (c.1850). SLSL s09854. Bill of Trade for Chadburn and Company, Sheffield (c.1825). SLSL s10079. For an introduction to bills of trade in Sheffield collection as well as a brief history of these and other premises see M. Chesworth, Bought Of: nineteenth-century Sheffield through its billheads & related documents (Sheffield, 1984). See also K. Layton-Jones, ‘The synthesis of town and trade: visualising provincial urban identity 1800–1858’, Urban History 35:1 (2008), 72–95. For an example see the advertisement ‘S. Hirst’s Eldon Street Foundry, Sheffield’, in W. White, White’s Gazetteer and General Directory of Sheffield. An Act to repeal certain parts of an Act passed in the 33rd year of his present majesty, for the better regulation and government of the Company of Cutlers within the liberty of Hallamshire in the County of York, and to alter and amend the said Act, 17 June 1814. P. Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: culture and society in the provincial town 1660– 1770 (Oxford, 1989), pp. 53–4. S. Whatley, England’s Gazetteer; or an accurate description of all the cities, towns, and villages of the kingdom, 3 vols (London, 1751), I, 478. J. Holland, The Tour of the River Don: a series of extempore sketches made during a pedestrian ramble along the banks of that river and its principal tributaries (Sheffield, 1837), pp. 218–19. L. Mumford, The City in History (London, 1961), p. 463. P. J. Corfield, The Impact of English Towns 1700–1800 (Oxford, 1982), p. 179. ‘A View of the Corporation Water-Works, Berry Street’, in T. Troughton, The History of Liverpool (Liverpool, 1810), p. 362. W. H. Smith, Birmingham and its Vicinity.

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56 ‘External appearance of Manchester, 2nd July 1835’, in A. de Tocqueville, Journeys to England and Ireland [1833–35 ], trans. by G. Lawrence and J. P. Mayer and ed. by J. P. Mayer (London, 1958), p. 108. 57 T. Carlyle, Chartism (London, 1840), p. 83. 58 W. Cornish, Birmingham Illustrated: Cornish’s stranger’s guide through Birmingham (Birmingham, 1849), p. 112. 59 For a more detailed account of industrial centralisation in Sheffield see M. Jones, The Making of Sheffield (Barnsley, 2004) pp. 81–2. 60 R. J. Morris, ‘The industrial town’, in P. Waller (ed.), The English Urban Landscape (Oxford, 2000), pp. 175–208 (p. 191). 61 H. Heartwell, ‘Characteristics of Manchester: in a series of letters to the Editor’, North of England Magazine, July 1842, 345. 62 S. Gunn, The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class: ritual and authority and the English industrial city (Manchester, 2000), p. 36. 63 See the account of these ‘metamorphic’ advertisements in M. Rickards, The Encyclopaedia of Ephemera (London, 2000), pp. 8–9. 64 T. Allen, Lancashire Illustrated: with a series of views by S. Austin, Harwood and Pyne (London, 1832); P. Hyland, The Herculaneum Pottery: Liverpool’s forgotten glory (Liverpool, 2005), pp. 196–216 (pp. 213 and 216); A. Smith, The Illustrated Guide to Liverpool Herculaneum Pottery 1796–1840 (London, 1970); and A. Smith, ‘The Herculaneum china and earthenware manufactory, Toxteth, Liverpool’, Transactions of the English Ceramic Circle, 7 (1968), 16–38 (24). 65 Cream-ware meat platter manufactured by the Herculaneum Factory Liverpool (1833–36). NML, S2005.00240. 66 C. Wharf and F. Wharf, ‘A mug for the porter’, Derby Porcelain International Society Newsletter, 36 (1996), 27–33 (28). 67 A. W. Coysh, ‘The cult of the picturesque’, in J. Twitchett and H. Sandon (eds), Landscapes on Derby and Worcester Porcelain (Henley on Thames, 1984), p. 10. See also H. Young, English Porcelain 1745–95: its makers, design, marketing and consumption (London, 1999), pp. 178–96. 68 Collection of the Royal Crown Derby Museum, Derby Museum and Art Gallery. 69 Porcelain cup, R. Brewer, Bloor Documentary Cup, manufactured by Royal Derby (c.1870). Royal Crown Derby Museum, Derby. 70 M. Raeburn, ‘The Frog service and its sources’, in H. Young (ed.), The Genius of Wedgwood (London, 1995), pp. 134–48 (p. 142). 71 G. Bradley, Derby Porcelain 1750–1798 (London, 1990), p. 145; and J. Twitchett, Derby Porcelain (London, 1980), pp. 255–6. 72 J. Parry, Peel and Williams’ Soho Foundry and Peel and Williams’ Phoenix Foundry (1812). Watercolours. MOSI, YA2003.26.

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On our political railroad we are under deepest obligations to the Manchester stokers; but Heaven forbid that we should be compelled to make them our sole engineers.1

Such were the remarks of the journalist Samuel Sidney upon leaving Manchester to continue his Rides on Railways in 1851. This metaphor of the new provincial urban giants as engines, furnaces, and even locomotives, became common throughout the nineteenth century. Defined, as many provincial towns increasingly were, by manufacturing and technology, it is easy to identify the origins of this analogy. However, Sidney’s entreaty reveals the extent to which this association with machinery penetrated the social and political reputation of such towns. The perceived connection between economic processes, urban growth, and the social and political temperament of urban populations is now a well-rehearsed point of debate for a generation familiar with Le Corbusier’s concept of ‘machines for living in’.2 However, the notion that such factors shaped not only the topography of a town, but also the social make-up and political disposition of its populace, clearly informed a number of commentators and artists at least a century before the publication of Vers une architecture (1923). The attention of these earlier observers was attracted especially by urban events that were politically radical in motivation and physically radical in their consequences. In contrast to Le Corbusier’s vision, the early nineteenthcentury urban ‘machine’ was frequently represented as a mechanism of violence, conflagration, and ruin. The unprecedented growth of both the population and the geographical size of commercial or manufacturing centres, such as Liverpool and Birmingham, throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, won them their now familiar status as sites of social, political, and economic influence. During these centuries the urban hierarchy was reshuffled and its defining values reassessed, as previously ‘minor’ provincial market towns were transformed into vast sites of production, trade and influence.3 Yet, as late as the 1830s, this new urban order,

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presided over by an unprecedented class of prosperous provincial conurbations, remained unofficial. Newcastle became a city in 1882, Leeds and Sheffield in 1893, and Birmingham not until 1896.4 One of the earliest chroniclers of the political imbalance that resulted from provincial urbanisation was Daniel Defoe. In his famous Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, undertaken between 1724 and 1726, Defoe noted the impact of industry upon townscapes and the discrepancy between the status of expanding industrial towns and ancient cities that had traditionally enjoyed a more prestigious reputation: [we have] Plymouth, Portsmouth, and others in the west, and towns of Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Birmingham, Hull, and several others in the north, that are much larger, richer and more populous than Rochester, Peterborough, Carlisle, Bath, and even York itself, and yet these retain but the name of towns, nay even of villages.5

Much financial and vocal support for parliamentary reform hailed from the provinces and a large number of tracts and pamphlets campaigning for reform were authored, published or funded within expanding provincial towns. Publishers such as Abel and John Heywood in Manchester, as well as their radical cousin James Heywood, challenged the cultural, political, and economic dominance of the old order.6 Explicitly, vehement language and demands for royal intervention characterised many of these publications, while implicitly they encouraged readers to shift their attention away from London and to transform their own towns and cities into sites of political consequence. These characteristics of the provincial urban ‘voice’ are typified by the Glaswegian Donald Cameron in his allegory of social decline titled Thaumaturgus; or the wonders of the Magic Lantern, in which he appealed, ‘Let the people meet in their counties, in their cities, in their towns and villages, and with one voice demand a radical and effectual reform in the representation of the people in their own house of legislature’.7 As Cameron’s call to action illustrates, by the 1820s the expansion of provincial manufacturing and trading towns could be contextualised as a cause of political flux and social disturbance. In 1831 the implications of this perceived connection between the physical growth of the urban provinces and political and social unrest prompted one anonymous correspondent to advise Earl Grey to apply his ‘earliest exertions’ to discover ‘by what fatal policy, by what madness of misconduct, Great Britain has been brought into this extraordinary and unnatural position’.8 This notion of the political character of the industrial urban giant as ‘unnatural’ is revealing and suggests a tacit appreciation of the chasm that lay between the ‘natural’ products of agriculture and the ‘unnatural’ products of industrial manufacture. The urban population could thus be supposed ‘unnatural’ and even perhaps ‘manufactured’ in a similar manner to the wares they toiled to produce. Some critics of urbanisation believed the solution lay in the physical condition of the towns and so combined statistics on the condition of the urban poor with an emotive call for political and social attention.9 Others perceived the cause of the imbalance in the ‘social, educational, and religious state’ of the urban dweller.10

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These two approaches were sometimes combined as in John Know’s The Masses Without! A pamphlet for the times, wherein provincial church attendance figures were presented as an index of destitution and urban decay.11 As with many other consequences of urbanisation, the opposing attitudes of celebration and despair were clearly present within nineteenth-century debates surrounding social and political reform and the actions that let to its realisation. Yet, again, these two positions merely defined the poles of public response. Despite Mark Harrison’s assertion that ‘it was the observers and reporters, not the crowd members, who held the monopoly on the final presentation of the crowd’, there was little consensus among either group.12 Even when views were expressed vehemently in newspapers and engravings, neither critics nor advocates controlled entirely the way in which the political characters of provincial towns were evaluated and appreciated by the wider public. Rather, such impressions emerged gradually in sympathy with, or reaction against, specific events. Recurrent triggers, including Chartism, food shortages, and unemployment provoked actions which were subsequently transcribed into pictorial commentaries. These commentaries may have fed anxieties about the agency and capabilities of urban populations in general, but they also helped to fashion impressions of specific towns. It is surprising then that historians have traditionally demonstrated a preference for treating the civil unrest that accompanied urbanisation in general, and Chartism in particular, from a national perspective. The Birmingham Reform Rally (1819), Peterloo Massacre (1819), and the Bristol Riots (1831), as well as many other protests, both peaceful and violent, are customarily interpreted as local expressions of wider grievances; their particularity dismissed as relatively inconsequential in comparison to the national political picture. Specifically, some have argued that the events were significant primarily for their role within a wider reform movement that relied on peripatetic speakers and inter-urban collaboration. For example, David Collings asserts that because the reform movement ‘did not seek to displace the state but to defy it through the display of its contrary power, it adopted a strategy of signification, attempting to represent the national body’.13 Even if such a policy was successful in the radical press or on the hustings rostrum, it is not so evident in visual imagery. Yet, this assumption that the significance of the local was subordinate to the national narrative has served to obfuscate the contribution made by visual images to the reputation of particular towns. There already exists some notable opposition to Collings’ assumption. In his influential study of crowds, George Rudé argued that Chartism was ‘deeply rooted in local tradition and local grievance and therefore inclined to resort to its own forms of action’.14 Acknowledging this local specificity is crucial to interpreting images of civil unrest from the period. Rather than representing a ‘national body’, the images of these events depict bodies of local men, women, and children. In some instances the subjects are literally bodies; individual corpses identifiable among the crowd. In other examples, they are components of the wider body of ‘the people’ but a local, urban people nonetheless. 153

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Just what or who constituted ‘the People’ in the years preceding the Reform Act of 1832 was the subject of much deliberation by commentators and polemicists. Definitions ranged from William Hazlitt’s rousing depiction of Millions of men, like you, with hearts beating in their bosoms, with thoughts stirring in their minds, with blood circulating in their veins, with wants and appetites, with passions and anxious cares, with busy purposes and affections for others and a respect for themselves, and a desire of happiness, and a right to freedom, and a will to be free

to the pathetic ‘People all tatter’d and torn’ of Hone’s The Political House that Jack Built (1819) and George Cruikshank’s A Free Born Englishman (1819).15 Images of Peterloo and similarly urban events suggest yet another definition as here ‘the People’ are not merely an abstract, political body united in the pursuit of suffrage, but are also particular urban populations. Depending on the political allegiances of the artist, they may also represent the hearty heroes of Hazlitt’s vision, the starving victims of Hone’s satire, or indeed, the violent infatuated ‘mob’ despised by the Ipswich Journal, but they are never hollow vehicles.16 It is important to acknowledge that images were not always the most common means by which news of civic violence spread. In one of the few studies to discuss visual depictions of Peterloo, Diana Donald concedes that ‘cheap periodicals and pamphlets far exceeded in volume and importance the visual images of Peterloo’.17 Certainly, radical polemic could be expressed in a more nuanced manner in prose. Nevertheless, the representation of such events and the human cost they claimed was accomplished most affectingly and effectively in visual imagery; the visions they presented endured long after newspapers and pamphlets had been shelved or discarded. In their depiction of the people of Manchester, the glut of prints produced in the aftermath of the Peterloo Massacre fall broadly into two categories. The first, usually a close-up of the action, represents the crowds as a series of identifiable characters: mothers with babes in arms, poor, unskilled, and probably unemployed labourers in tattered clothes, and operatives in slightly smarter attire who face the yeomanry as equals. Some of each group lies dead or dying on the ground, literally and figuratively crushed beneath the oppressive force of authority and conforming to what Donald has dubbed the ‘synoptic image’ set out by George Cruikshank in The Manchester Yeomanry Cavalry … 1819 (1819) and Manchester Heroes (1819).18 Richard Carlile’s famous and much reproduced engraving is representative of this category (see Figure 53).19 Here, the social types and faces of the urban population are as distinct and engaging as those of Henry Hunt and his companions on the platform. The cast of characters, both victims and perpetrators, originate from Manchester and the itinerant speakers are essentially static onlookers. The authenticity of the scene and the portraits therein was reinforced by virtue of Carlile having been present at the event, along with representatives from The Times, the Leeds Mercury and the Liverpool Mercury. Diana Donald has argued persuasively of a lineage between this particular genre

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53  After R. Carlile, ‘Peterloo Massacre’, All the Year Round, 8 June 1867.

of imagery and contemporary nineteenth-century history painting and most views of Peterloo certainly contain both action and allegory.20 However, the very subject of these scenes was at odds with the exclusive production and consumption of high art. The individuals that comprise the crowd are not historicised classical figures or ‘noble savages’, but rather, modern, urban activists, employers, and employees. The social diversity among what we might call the ‘Peterloo People’ is apparent in another print, far less accomplished than Carlile’s, but one which also delineates distinct characters among the crushed crowds (see Figure 54). In Atkins’ fold-out engraving ‘Recent Events at Manchester’ that appeared in Disturbances at Manchester (1819) there are again familiar characters on display. Figurative depiction and symbolism elide as women and children are trodden into the ground, along with ‘Liberty’ in the form of a crumpled banner. The crowd contains identifiable representatives from across the social spectrum. To the left of the image a man is captured raising the banner for ‘Freedom and Peace’

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54  Atkins, ‘Recent Events at Manchester’, in Disturbances at Manchester (1819).

just before he is attacked. He is smartly attired in a hat, breeches, and a waistcoat. A character in a similar ‘uniform’ of the middling sorts lies crushed beneath a horse. Donald has attributed variations in the depiction of these ‘victims’ to the place in which prints were produced, with the prints made in London presenting the protestors as more ‘ragged and poverty stricken’ than those produced by Manchester artists.21 However, there is too much variety in images produced by both groups to rely solely on such a distinction. What unites these men with the dishevelled workers and pleading mothers is not their social rank or gender, but rather their political objectives; objectives born of the economic and political character of their commercial town. In these images, their common identity is defined by locality as much as by political ideology, as the viewer’s recognition of their status as Chartists is predicated upon recognising their identity as provincial urbanites. This characterisation of urban protestors is reiterated in the second category of images of civil unrest. In these images, it is the crowd rather than the individual that conveys to the viewer the social and political character of the town. Pictorial paraphrasing is critical to the visual mechanics of this category of imagery as demonstrated by some of the most famous images of Peterloo. A View of St Peter’s Place (1819) (see figure 55), produced and published by the editor of the 156

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55  J. Wroe, A View of St Peter’s Place (Manchester, 1819).

Manchester Observer and member of the Patriotic Union Society, James Wroe, is a typical example. Although the immediate foreground is populated by sketched portraits of the same character types depicted by Carlile and Atkins, here the impact of the image relies upon the swarming congregation of indistinct figures whose mass is divided only by a snaking line of yeomanry. The raised blades of those on horseback is suggestive of a vast, articulated machine, and in so being is perhaps indicative of another generalisation made about provincial urban society. However, the armed yeomanry is greatly outnumbered by the largely faceless mass of Manchester protestors. Although anonymous, these individuals are identifiable by one, distinct signifier – the ubiquitous black top hat of the urban commercial man. To the right of Wroe’s view, these hats are so densely packed as to appear like tiles on a slate roof, while on the left they gradually diffuse into individual figures fleeing the violence on foot. Although less laborious than drawing individual figures, the inclusion of this sea of hats is the result of more than a desire to expedite the artistic process. The effect was actually described by 157

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eye witnesses, one of which exclaimed that the people were so tightly packed that ‘their hats seemed to touch’.22 Although the crowd comprises mainly anonymous figures, their reduction to the symbol of the top hat ensures that their identity as commercial, urban, and, to some extent, respectable men is retained. In his influential book of 1976, Print and the People 1819–1851, Louis James recounts the story that during his escape from the violence, Richard Carlile endeavoured to recover his beaver hat because it was the ‘badge of respectability’.23 Even when depicted as a swarming crowd, the collective identity of the Peterloo protestors is that of a ‘Manchester crowd’; their character is defined by their location as much as by their actions. They are not merely ‘the People’, but specifically ‘the People of Manchester’ and their delineation in visual imagery was informed by, and in turn shaped, their reputation and identity beyond the events of August 1819. The efficacy of this form of visual abbreviation for describing an urban population is evidenced by the fact that a similar technique is used in images that depict peaceful, less dissentient urban crowds. A small vignette illustrating the nomination of Isaac Wigney and George Pecell as MPs for Brighton in 1841 applies the same visual paraphrasing to the population of that town (see Figure 56). Here the hats swell up the steps of the town hall and onto the orators’ balcony, indicating that the speakers and the crowds comprise members of the same politically minded group. A few women’s bonnets punctuate the sea of black hats, but otherwise the mass is uniformly masculine. Flags demanding ‘Liberty’ and ‘Reform’ convey to the viewer the group’s political character. The

56  T. George, Town Hall, Brighton (1841).

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town depicted may be from a different branch of the urban system and was, like Bristol, surrendering its former elevated position to the expanding industrial cities of the north. However, it is here represented as politically progressive and so ‘modern’. In this sense, the crowd depicted here is comparable to those seen in inages of corn exchanges, cotton exchanges, and Non-Conformist meetings. The growing use of this kind of ‘swarm’ imagery to depict urban populations engaged in religious worship and commercial activities, as well as political action, indicates the extent to which artistic decisions informed the evolving image of urban Britain and its people. The effect of images such as these was to homogenise an urban population into one recognisable, distinctive, but inclusive, socio-political type; a type to be found in large and growing numbers throughout the nineteenth century. Thus, this form of visual abbreviation contributed to the emergence of a visual stereotype of the provincial nineteenth-century urban resident as male, commercial, and politically active. This gradual emblematising of urban populations had the potential to introduce confusion as to the particular subject of an image. However, where a population was represented in a very abbreviated or standardised form, the significance of locality was often reinstated through the provision of some geographic and architectural context. Wroe’s view and many like it relied upon distinctive and identifiable buildings on the periphery of St Peter’s Place, as well as captions, to reiterate the locality. The surroundings may have been sketched with economy, but they were far from a generic background. The plain fronts of the three-storey town houses on Mount Street, from which the magistrates directed the action against the protestors, was a particularly popular referent and appears in Carlile’s engraving as well as wider views of the site. One of the most famous of these was a narrative print by John Sudlow after Thomas Whaite. A View of St Peter’s Plain Manchester on the Memorable 16th of August 1819 was published shortly after the event.24 This relatively expensive intaglio print was much copied and cheap imitations appeared as well as grander pieces. This latter category includes the face of a commemorative longcase clock produced by W. Stancliffe of Barkisland near Halifax (see Figure 57). The corners of the face itself contain portraits of the radical activists Henry Hunt, Major John Cartwright, William Cobbett, and Thomas Wooler, but it is the scene above their heads that attracts the viewer’s attention. In this image, the buildings serve not only to signify the location but also as urban characters in themselves, corralling the protestors and hemming them in. By 1819, such key structures, depicted alongside mean urban dwellings topped by signature smoking chimneys, provided all the necessary indicators to identify the location as Manchester. If such visual clues did not suffice, the provision of a key and map with many prints, publications, and souvenirs guaranteed clarity.25 The now famous handkerchief designed by J. Slack to commemorate Peterloo identifies, among other buildings, the Society of Friends School, St Peter’s Church, Messrs Pickford and Co.’s warehouse, and the Windmill public house.26 Many commemorative wares were manufactured in neighbouring towns and regions. For example, the handkerchiefs came from 159

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Lancashire and the majority of ceramics were manufactured in the Herculaneum Pottery in neighbouring Liverpool, thus reiterating further the significance of geography to the massacre and its iconography.27 In many pieces, including the handkerchief, the word ‘Manchester’ is incorporated into the design via a banner or cartouche. This is particularly common on commemorative pieces, such as the popular transfer-printed lustreware jugs that flooded the market throughout the 1820s.28 The efficacy of such references increased rather than decreased over the years as the area of St Peter’s Fields became encircled more fully by the town proper. As Charles Dickens noted in 1867, by that time the areas was ‘nearly in the centre of that great metropolis of industry … The Free-Trade Hall stands on its site, and a theatre, a museum, and numerous palatial warehouses skirt the ground’.29 Manchester was not the only conurbation to experience protests and urban violence in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Many towns witnessed strikes and demonstrations motivated by a variety of injustices and frustrations as well as religious friction.30 Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Preston, and Sheffield all suffered significant disturbances, but none had greater impact on the physical condition of a city than the Bristol riots of 1831.31 Known also as the Queen Square riots, the violence and destruction that occurred in Bristol falls under the banner of Chartist activity, motivated as it was by the House of Lords’ rejection of the second Reform Bill. However, as had occurred at Manchester, the focus of the action was local. On 29 October, the opening of the new Assize Courts by the local Tory Sir Charles Wetherell, a vocal opponent of Reform, prompted three days of rioting in the city during which key buildings were razed and homes looted. In a repeat of the Manchester magistrates’ actions, the cavalry

57  Decorative panel after J. Sudlow and T. Whaite, A View of St. Peter’s Plain Manchester on the Memorable 16th of August 1819. Longcase clock (c.1840–50).

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were ordered to control the crowds, but in contrast to the events of 1819, their more measured response failed to quash the violence. By the conclusion of the riot, the centre of Bristol had been transformed by fire. In common with all outbreaks of urban violence, the events in Bristol were quickly committed to paper by artists and publishers. However, unlike the glut of images of Peterloo, prints of the Bristol incident were generally more critical of the demonstrators. A few presented images that were reminiscent of those produced by Peterloo sympathisers. Most notably, T. L. Rowbotham and W. J. Müller’s Charge of the 3rd Dragoon Guards upon the Rioters in Queen Square, Bristol, at 6 o’clock on the morning of Monday, October 31st, 1831 (1831) plagiarises the composition of the civilian victim prone beneath an aggressive military force (see Figure 58). However, the prolonged violence and looting perpetrated by some rioters fuelled more critical caricatures of drunken revelry. In contrast to the respectable activists of Peterloo, the Bristol crowds were frequently identified as the proverbial urban ‘mob’.32 In addition to his collaborative work with Rowbotham, Müller also produced a view of the rioters on the previous evening, apparently bent on destruction and drink (see Figure 59). Despite these apparently contradictory stances towards the Bristol rioters, both images matched the demographic reality of the urban

58  L. Hague after T. L. Rowbotham and W. J. Müller, Charge of the 3rd Dragoon Guards upon the Rioters in Queen Square, Bristol (1831).

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population. As Jeremy N. Caple and other historians have since established, those tried after the event were ‘overwhelmingly male, and quite young, with the average age of twenty-five years. A significant percentage of the younger males were unemployed and when they were employed they occupied unskilled, manual laboring jobs, sometimes as servants’.33 They were thus typical urban ‘types’ and precursors of the ‘British rough’ that would be demonised by the popular press in later decades.34 The almost theatrical tableau presented by the Bristol rioters was prominent in written accounts also, and the literary legacy of the action was long-lasting. Fifteen years later, authors of guidebooks continued to recount the scene to their readers: Meanwhile the centre of the Square presented a spectacle not easily to be pourtrayed [sic]. Here were profligates of both sexes, collected from the lowest haunts of infamy; the bully, the furious and besotted drunkard, and the swearer. Some were tossing firebrands into the houses, stealing wine and provisions, plate and furniture, and wantonly destroying far more. Others were fearlessly and openly insulting and robbing the persons whom they had burned out of their houses … Others, with characteristic indifference to the future, were taking their miserable enjoyment of the present hour.35

Drink and debauchery were plainly in evidence. However, if there was one dominant feature of the Bristol riots of 1831 it was fire. This perhaps explains the production of far more topographical imagery than had been the case for other outbreaks of urban violence. As with more conventional forms of topographical

59  W. J. Müller, Queen’s Square on the Night of October 30th, 1831 (c.1832).

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views, these often fell into existing sub-genres and depicted individual buildings, streets and squares, or wide vistas. The objectives of the demonstrators could consequently be lost among the conventions of topographical image-making. For example, on a political and social level the prisons and the Bishop’s Palace were specifically chosen by the rioters as targets for symbolic and violent acts of dissent. However, within the wider narrative of urban destruction, observers were just as likely to speak in general terms of fires in Bristol or the burning of the city. This notion of a city aflame, both physically and politically, was reinforced by many artists who favoured existing, popular vantage points from which to view and record the fires. As well as ensuring a productive night’s work, the choice of a familiar vantage point ensured that their customers could draw direct comparisons with the peaceful scenes of urban prosperity presented to them by the likes of W. H. Bartlett or Heath and Bird. One such image became arguably the most iconic view of the violence of 1831 and is certainly the image with the most extant examples. In View of the City of Bristol, T. L. Rowbotham selected a position to the south west of the city, on the popular viewing spot of Pile Hill (see Figure 60). From this location a visitor could ‘take in’ the diversity of Bristol’s skyline including the masts of the shipping, St Mary’s Redcliffe, and Bedminster Bridge. The visibility of such landmarks was critical to the impact of catastrophe imagery as the image’s capacity to engage and shock the viewer relied upon their recognising the specific town concerned. In this instance, the publisher left nothing to chance and a detailed description beneath the view provides a key to identifiable buildings: the NEW PRISON and TWO TOLL HOUSES, seen on the left of the Picture, the BISHOP’S PALACE near the Cathedral in the centre; The MANSION HOUSE, CUSTOM HOUSE, EXCISE OFFICE, and nearly FIFTY DWELLING and WARE HOUSES in QUEEN SQUARE and Streets adjacent occupying the distance beyond Redcliffe Church on the right … were plundered and burnt.36

A similarly inventorying approach was adopted by Samuel Jackson in his view of the city aflame (1832).37 The popularity of such annotation certainly challenges Samuel Smiles’ assertion that ‘topography was always prone to dismissive criticism from academicians and connoisseurs who valued art precisely insofar as it had the power to avoid the particular’.38 There was clearly demand among even the most elevated members of society for this format. Rowbotham’s view and many others like it went some way to straddling the division between ‘high’ painting and topographical art. The principles of the sublime as delineated by Edmund Burke can be found in both schools of image-making.39 Here, the fires serve to backlight the city, throwing many key features into silhouette and thereby reiterating both the real location and the fantastic scale of the conflagration. In later years, the engraver of this image, Louis Hague, came to specialise both in images of destruction and topographical imagery and his ability to create theatricality

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60  L. Hague after T. L. Rowbotham, View of the City of Bristol from Pile Hill, During the Riots of October 30, 1831 (c.1831).

by contrasting the luminosity of flames against the night sky must surely have increased the popularity of this particular engraving.40 There were of course alternative approaches to representing scenes as iconic as Bristol’s riot fires. Despite labelling the burning buildings, Samuel Jackson’s View of Bristol from Clifton Wood (1832) presents a relatively subtle interpretation of the scene, in which the smoke of the bottle furnaces mingles with the smoke from the rioter’s fires (see Figure 61). The pastoral foreground remains undisturbed by the scenes of destruction beyond, although the contented cattle are fewer in number than in Jackson’s original watercolour sketch.41 The comparative harmony of the image is due in part to the ambiguity of the light source. Unlike other views, here the flames are not delineated clearly but rather evoke the smoke of the productive chimneys praised frequently in conventional topographical imagery. The buildings of Bristol are bathed in light as opposed to clearly consumed by fire. Although in no way a celebration of the event, the view from Clifton Wood utilises the fires as a visual device rather than succumbing to visual hyperbole. Here, the aesthetic appeal of atmospheric effect occludes any clear political or social narrative. 164

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61  S. Jackson, View of Bristol from Clifton Wood (1832).

The third of the city’s popular viewing destinations, Brandon Hill, was also employed in the production of a number of visual accounts of the riots and the resulting fires including Bristol, as Seen from Brandon Hill, During the Fire, October 30, 1831 published by T. Bedford in Bristol.42 In this instance, the fires were more clearly delineated than in Jackson’s ambiguous portrayal. Individual blazes are identifiable across the skyline of the city and the cause could in no way be confused with industrial process or the domestic fires of contented residents. However, pictorial conventions were again employed as the viewing models discussed in Chapter 1 are present in the form of spectators flooding out of the burning city. Some were rendered in silhouette, while others face the viewer as they continue en route to a higher, and presumably safer, vantage point. Far from appearing distressed, and thus reiterating the human tragedy unfolding, these figures demonstrate the extent to which this model of imagery reduced the riots to a dramatic spectacle. Agents of both sides are obscured beneath the smoke 165

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screen. Another image ‘taken’ from the same location also includes a group of viewing models in the foreground, although in this instance they are running and gesturing violently in alarm or amazement. Arguably, the most stylised image of the fires, the engraving The City of Bristol as it Appeared generally on Sunday night was ‘taken’ after a sketch by C. H. Walters (see Figure 62). Unlike the other views discussed, here the flames and vast swirling plumes of smoke dwarf the city beneath. Nevertheless, the effect remains conspicuously theatrical. Cinders and sparks appear almost as stars against the darkest clouds as the winds blow the flames dramatically across the historic skyline. The image reflects an account of the scene that was to appear over a decade later in Chicott’s guide to the city: The view of the fires from Clifton, Bedminster, and several miles around was awfully grand. The night was dark and cloudy, and rainy besides. Very mercifully the wind was low, and the flames were not furiously borne along; but they rose high, in spiral wavy columns, and often threw around a shower of brilliant sparks. The thick smoke hung over the city, like a broad curtain, in massy folds, which glared with a peculiar tinge of dark red, passing into clouds of dun, and brown, and black, the canopy of a great conflagration.43

Each of these views, and many more like them, evoke earlier images of the fires and smoke of industrialisation and this comparison was surely not overlooked by contemporary observers. The most famous exemplar of industrial sublime, Philip James de Loutherbourg’s Coalbrookdale by Night (1801), exhibits many key features to be found three decades later in images of the Bristol riots.44

62  After C. H. Walters, The City of Bristol as it Appeared Generally on Sunday Night (c.1831).

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The views of Bristol, looking towards the fire from the relative safety of the ruralised foreground, granted the remote viewer the same detachment, while permitting them to decipher the location and experience the spectacle vicariously. Although not positive images per se, they do suggest a degree of fascination with the subject that was not entirely unpleasant. The violence and its physical consequences certainly attracted the public’s attention back to the city and its history. Morgan’s New Guide to Bristol from 1851 comments revealingly that from 1684 onwards, ‘no local event of any interest, except the lamentable Bridge Riots of 1793, occurred to excite the curiosity or require the pen of the historian, until the year 1831’.45 The scene of the city burning excited the curiosity of observers from across the country. However, the similarities between these images and de Loutherbourg’s extend beyond mere theatrical effect. In Coalbrookdale, the fires of the forges signified a wider industrial and economic revolution while, in the images of Bristol, the flames deputised for a social and political firestorm in which the symbols of the old order burned at the behest of the new. In the words of one observer, the city had become ‘a beacon of sedition’.46 In a real, physical way, the streets were undergoing a permanent transformation as they were re-forged by fire. Bristol was being remade in flames akin to those that were restructuring the British economy. Thus, both de Loutherbourg’s painting and distant views of the Bristol fires confronted viewers with radical transformative processes captured at the moment of alchemy. Images that combined the long-established conventions of topographical engravings with such a powerful iconography of destruction confronted viewers with the physical as well as socio-political instability of their cities; towns were being transformed from bastions into crucibles. New ruins [The Bishop’s Palace] represents the most ruinous appearance. Nothing remains but the bare walls and smoking ruins.47 few events will prove so memorable, in the annals of its history, as the riots, which reduced our city to a partial ruin.48

One of the consequences of the political riots and civil disobedience that peppered the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was a watershed in the manner in which the political and social character of British towns was characterised. Accounts of cities and their histories were increasingly divided into that which had gone before 1832 and that which occurred after. For example, Chilcott’s report of the Bristol riots marks the conclusion in that guidebook of the passage on ‘Ancient Bristol’ and the start of the ‘Modern Bristol’ section.49 Although not ‘ancient’ history in the true sense, such accounts and the images that accompanied them, presented the events of the first three decades of the nineteenth century as the final days of the old urban order, before parliamentary representation for the new urban giants transformed the civic landscape. In the case of Bristol, rather than obscuring or camouflaging the burnt-out shells of some of the city’s most 167

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63  S. Jackson, Views of the Fires in Bristol (c.1832).

distinguished ancient buildings, many artists chose instead to focus on these defeated structures. In some instances they were cloaked in a mantle of gothic ivy and reinvented as picturesque compositions, such as John Prout’s sketch of the chapel in the Bishop’s Palace.50 However, in other instances, their derelict condition was presented far more starkly. Samuel Jackson’s Views of the Fires in Bristol (c.1832) focus explicitly on the ruinous state of the buildings as the fires still rage beyond them (see Figure 63). Today’s viewers are unavoidably preconditioned to interpret these images through the lens of twentieth-century warfare, and particularly the countless photographs and films of the Blitz. They had an equally powerful but different resonance among nineteenth-century contemporaries. By emphasising the city’s burnt-out buildings, Jackson presented Bristol as a city of ruins, the result of a modern political agenda which sought to displace what had gone before. Yet, 168

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ironically, the iconography of ruins he invoked served to reinstate allusions to antiquity. The fragmented buildings and towering columns of stone were reminiscent of the many views of ancient ruined monasteries, castles, megaliths, and standing stones that served an expanding market for images of British antiquities since the previous century. The view of the ruined Mansion House is particularly reminiscent of depictions of ancient megaliths as the unsupported chimney stacks tower into the sky. Similarly, one of the Toll Houses is depicted in the guise of a ruined keep by the water’s edge. Rowbotham and Müller’s Charge of the 3rd Dragoon Guards is also ‘staged’ within a theatre of destruction, framed not only by burning buildings, but also redundant classical columns. In this sense, viewing the aftermath of riots, and particularly the ruins of buildings, may have served a similar social and psychological purpose to that of viewing more ancient ruins. Moreover, the function of these images of destruction and tragedy is suggestive. Were they primarily journalistic or commemorative? If the latter, it is worth considering what they were commemorating and whether it was merely the loss of life and property or more broadly, the destruction of ancient tacit contracts between provincial Britain and the capital city; the government and its people. Although the destruction caused by the civil unrest of the early nineteenth century was not on the scale of the Reformation, it too served as a physical symbol of social and political change. In relation to that earlier period of destruction, Rosemary Sweet has argued that: The destruction consequent upon the Dissolution of the Monasteries created a radical discontinuity, a fault line in the passage of history. The monastic ruin and the Gothic architecture in which it was built therefore became emblematic of that past age. The ruins were a reminder of the disjuncture of the past with the present.51

A similar conclusion can be drawn from the desire to record and represent the riot ruins of Bristol and other moments of destructive transformation in provincial cities across the country. Compounding this association with earlier ruins and their perceived value was the form in which Jackson’s images were produced and consumed. Lithographic versions of his monochrome watercolours were printed together by C. H. Hullmandel in groups of five, with four street-level views surrounding a larger image of the wider vista, including a slightly modified version of Jackson’s view from Clifton Wood. The images are all relatively small. This particular size and format of print was produced primarily to illustrate guidebooks or gazetteers and book purchasers could elect to have them bound permanently into a text or simply paste them in themselves. Jackson’s views might therefore sit alongside more traditional subjects, which in the case of guidebooks and histories would include Stonehenge, Avebury and, in some instances, the ruins of Tintern and Hailes Abbeys.52 Furthermore, Bristol’s relative proximity to the antiquities of Wiltshire meant that many domestic tourists would combine visits to both within one itinerary, heightening the appeal of such imagery among

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that particular group of print consumers. For that city, the foundations for a comparison with ancient ruins had already been laid by numerous authors of gazetteers and guidebooks who drew comparisons between the city’s position and that of Rome. As Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary described Bristol in 1831, ‘from the circumstances of many of the houses being built on the acclivities of the hills, and for its circular form, [Bristol] has been thought to bear a striking resemblance to ancient Rome’.53 In addition, glass furnaces continue to appear in visual representations of the city throughout the nineteenth century but in an increasingly ruinous condition. By 1830, when C. Mottram executed the General View of Bristol after W. H. Bartlett, the distinctive signature of Bristolian glass manufacture retains its central position but in a semi-ruinous state, transformed from a symbol of dynamic productivity to a picturesque motif.54 In idleness, the redundant urban furnace was transformed into a quasi-antiquarian monument.55 In contrast to journalistic images that would be viewed one day and disposed of the next, these images would be kept and viewed over years, preserving the image of a ruined Bristol decades after the city had been rebuilt. Rather than denigrating the city’s reputation, it was increasingly recounted as a colourful if regrettable episode, which testified ultimately to the resilience of the port town. The city was mutable, but this merely enhanced its dignity as the scars of violence created a topographical patina that was appreciated by print buyers and commentators alike. Such apparently paradoxical representations of townscapes are a recurrent trait of early nineteenth-century responses to urban expansion, industrialisation, and the reorganisation of the urban hierarchy. In his reappraisal of eighteenthcentury aesthetic theory, Walter John Hipple interpreted the picturesque as an essentially transitionary aesthetic and this transition continued well into the nineteenth century.56 Rather than a purely reflexive reaction to the physical appearance of provincial towns, such ambivalence was the result of fluidity and conflict within the system of urban values used to appraise them. These nuanced values allowed for, and in some cases relied upon, visual paradoxes. Returning to Birmingham Town Hall, the choice of Joseph Hansom’s Roman-inspired ‘temple’ clearly reflected the Liberal and reforming character of the Birmingham Street Commissioners responsible for the project. In the early 1830s they were led by the prominent Liberal and banker, Paul Moon James and, as Frank Salmon observes, they deemed the design to be ‘an appropriate architectural image around which their developing town could continue to grow’.57 The symbolism of the building was swiftly taken up and utilised by artists. The inclusion of the distinctive structure in images as famous as Henry Harris’s lithograph depicting the mass Chartist meetings held on New Hall Hill in May 1832, ensured that such progressive and radical movements were attributed greater authority by being associated with the ancients.58 Although it is possible to identify a dichotomy between the most extreme critics and vindicators of urban Britain, for the most part, judgements were founded upon complex and contradictory responses. Similarly, artists and engravers were necessarily concerned with the aesthetic 170

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appeal of their images even when the changing scale and form of provincial towns demanded conflicting visual schemes through which to be represented. Images of the Bristol fires and the ruins that resulted bridged the gap between the picturesque imagery that punctuated antiquarian studies and guidebooks throughout the eighteenth century, and the fanciful images and descriptions of urban and moral ruin that would come to preoccupy the British public in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. The latter included such famous examples as Gustave Doré’s ‘New Zealander’ in London: A Pilgrimage (1872), Max Nordau’s Degeneration (1892), and H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds (1897). Both the earlier and later forms essentially romanticised the ruin, although the function of the imagery shifted from one of reassurance to the expression of a deeply rooted social anxiety. In the middle of the nineteenth century, both functions operated alongside one another, resulting in contradictory and unstable interpretations of changing townscapes. The Bristol images might be portentous, but they do not yet exhibit the unmitigated anxiety that suffused fin-de-siècle imagery. From Manchester to Bristol, Birmingham to Preston, images of urban crowds, protests, riots, and the ruins they produced, delivered a nuanced image of provincial urban Britain. Engravings of a razed Bishop’s Palace in Bristol or violent atrocities in Manchester not only helped to construct popular impressions of specific events, but also drew upon the pre-existing reputation of manufacturing and commercial towns as the social and political fireboxes of the nation. When presented in this manner, the towns concerned were understood not merely to have descended into chaos, but to have manufactured it, to have brought together the necessary components and exported their social and political product across the nation. This analogy of the city as forge is apparent, not only in the images of fire, but also in images of the urban masses. The congregation of large numbers of people was a requirement for both large-scale manufacture and for effective and/ or destructive collective action. Although used to differing extents and purposes in relation to different conurbations, notions of the ‘productive populace’ and the ‘destructive populace’ relied upon the same preconceptions and caricatures of provincial urban populations; that they were essentially dynamic, unified by purpose, and, when organised, invincible. For those who recoiled from this new urban reality, there was little option but to seek solace and reassurance in the aesthetic continuity of the new ruin, which, albeit a symbol of a fading order, was at least presented in the visual vocabulary of that dwindling regime. Notes  1 Samuel Solomon writing as S. Sidney, Rides on Railways, leading to the lake & mountain districts of Cumberland, North Wales (London, 1851), p. 188.  2 C-É. Jeanneret-Gris, Vers une architecture (Paris, 1923).  3 J. M. Ellis, The Georgian Town 1680–1840 (Basingstoke, 2001), pp. 10–16.  4 A. Elton, ‘Becoming a city: Leeds, 1893’, Publications of the Thorseby Society (Leeds, 1993), pp. 67–80.

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 5 D. Defoe, A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain [1724–26] (Harmondsworth, 1971), p. 426.  6 For an example of typical provincially published political tracts see J. R. Coulthart, State of Large Towns and Populous Districts (Ashton-Under-Lyne, 1844).  7 D. Cameron, Thaumaturgus; or the wonders of the magic lantern, exhibiting at one view the distresses of the country (Glasgow, 1817), p. 31.  8 England in 1830; being a letter to Earl Grey, laying before him the condition of the people as described by themselves in their petitions to parliament (London, 1831), p. 19.  9 Exemplified by E. Chadwick’s The Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population (London, 1842). F. Driver, ‘Moral Geographies: social science and the urban environment in mid-nineteenth century England’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, new series, 13:3 (1988), 275–87. 10 J. Adshead, Distress in Manchester: evidence of the state of the labouring classes 1840– 18 (London, 1842); and E. Baines, The Social, Educational, and Religious State of the Manufacturing Districts (London, 1843). 11 J. Know, The Masses Without! A pamphlet for the times, on the sanitary, social, moral and heathen condition of the masses, who inhabit the alleys, courts, wynds, garrets, cellars, lodginghouses, dens, and hovels of Great Britain, with an appeal for open-air preaching (London, 1852). 12 M. Harrison, Crowds and History: mass phenomena in English towns, 1790–1835 (Cambridge, 1988), p. 166. 13 D. Collings, Monstrous Society: reciprocity, discipline, and the political uncanny, c.1780– 1848 (Lewisburg, PA, 2009), p. 232. 14 G. Rudé, The Crowd in History [1961] (London, 1995), p. 180. 15 W. Hazlitt, ‘What is the People?’, The Champion, October 1817, and then in the Yellow Dwarf, 7 March 1818; W. Hone, The Political House that Jack Built (London, 1819); G. Cruikshank, A Free Born Englishman (1819), BM 1865,1111.2136. 16 For a representative example of the newspaper’s coverage of Chartist violence see ‘Alarming Chartist riots at Newport’, Ipswich Journal, 9 November 1839. 17 D. Donald, ‘The power of print: graphic images of Peterloo’, Manchester Region History Review, 3:1 (1989), 21–30 (21). 18 D. Donald, The Age of Caricature: satirical prints in the reign of George III (New Haven, CT and London, 1996) p. 192. 19 The version illustrated here is from Charles Dickens, ‘Old stories retold: Peterloo’, All the Year Round, 8 June 1867, 559–65. 20 D. Donald, ‘The power of print’, 24 and The Age of Caricature, pp. 185 and 189–92. 21 D. Donald, ‘The power of print’, 25. 22 Lieutenant Jolliffe quoted in F. A. Bruton, ‘The story of Peterloo’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 5 (1919), 255–95 (288). 23 L. James, Print and the People 1819–1851 (London, 1976), p. 65. 24 J. Sudlow after T. Whaite. A View of St Peter’s Plain Manchester on the Memorable 16th of August 1819, MLSL m07592. 25 ‘Map of St Peter’s Field, Manchester, as it appeared on the 16th of August last’, in J. Wroe, Peterloo Massacre, containing a faithful narrative (Manchester, 1819). 26 Commemorative handkerchief of Peterloo (1819), MAG 1969.160. 27 Herculaneum Pottery, Peterloo jugs, MAG 1967.127 and 1958.17. See also C. Burgess, ‘The objects of Peterloo’, Manchester Region History Review, 23 (2012) 151–8. 28 C. Burgess, ‘The objects of Peterloo’. 172

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29 C. Dickens, ‘Old stories retold: Peterloo’, All the Year Round, 8 June 1867, 559–65 (561). 30 R. Morris, ‘Class and common interest’, History Today, 33:5 (1983), 31–6. 31 Birmingham Priestley Riots (1791), Glasgow Bread Riots (1848), Leeds Corn Price riots (1800 and 1811), Preston Plug Riots (1842), and Sheffield Food Riots (1812). 32 J. Chilcott, Chilcott’s Descriptive History of Bristol, Ancient and Modern (Bristol, 1846). 33 J. N. Caple, The Bristol Riots of 1831 and Social Reform in Britain (Lampeter, 1990), p. 135. 34 ‘The British Rough’, The Graphic, 26 June 1875. 35 J. Chilcott, Chilcott’s Descriptive History of Bristol, pp. 70–1. 36 T. L. Rowbotham, View of the City of Bristol as it appeared from Pile Hill during the dreadful riots (1831). BCMAG, M560. 37 S. Jackson, View of Bristol from Clifton Wood (1832) BCMAG, M1606. 38 S. Smiles, The Image of Antiquity: ancient Britain and the Romantic imagination (New Haven, CT and London, 1994), p. 172. 39 E. Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (London, 1757). 40 See L. Hague after D. Robert, The Destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD (1851). 41 S. Jackson, View of Bristol from Clifton Wood (1832) BCMAG, K2969/173. 42 T. Bedford, Bristol, as Seen from Brandon Hill, During the Fire, October 30, 1831 (1831). BCMAG, Mb6897. 43 J. Chilcott, Chilcott’s Descriptive History of Bristol, p. 71. 44 P. de Loutherbourg, Coalbrookdale by Night (1801). Science Museum, London. 45 J. Morgan, Morgan’s New Guide to Bristol, Clifton etc. (Bristol, 1851), p. 16. 46 J. Chilcott, Chilcott’s Descriptive History of Bristol, p. 71. 47 Bristol Mirror, 5 November 1831. 48 J. Chilcott, Chilcott’s Descriptive History of Bristol, p. 71. 49 J. Chilcott, Chilcott’s Descriptive History of Bristol. 50 C. J. Hullmandel after J. Prout, ‘Chapel in the Bishop’s Palace, destroyed by fire in the riots of 1831’, Picturesque Antiquities of Bristol (Bristol, 1834). 51 R. Sweet, Antiquaries: the discovery of the past in eighteenth-century Britain (London, 2004), p. 241. 52 For examples see T.H. Shepherd, Bath and Bristol with the Counties of Somerset and Gloucester displayed in a series of views from original drawings (London, 1829); and J. Britton, Topographical Sketches of North Wiltshire (London, 1826). 53 S. Lewis, ‘Bristol’, in S. Lewis, Topographical Dictionary of England (London, 1831). 54 C. Mottram after W. H. Bartlett, General View of Bristol (1830). BCBL, IV, 46. 55 C. Wheeden, ‘The Bristol glass industry: its rise and decline’, Glass Technology, 24 (1983), 241–58 (255). 56 J. W. Hipple, The Beautiful, the Sublime and the Picturesque in Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetic Theory (Binghamton, NY, 1857), p. 190. 57 F. Salmon, Building on Ruins (Aldershot, 2000), p. 163. 58 Hullmandel after H. Harris, The Gathering of the Unions: Three meetings organised by the Birmingham Political Union, held at New Hall Hill during May, maintain the pressure for electoral reform (1832).

173

Conclusion

Throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the reorganisation of the traditional urban hierarchy was mirrored by the evolution of a new visual vocabulary with which the urban scene was articulated. Views of provincial towns, their commercial, cultural, and architectural features, displayed a clear shift in the perceived form and function of these sites. As many towns expanded in size and population, rural views and vantage points were consumed by urbanisation, prompting artists and visitors to seek new locations from which to view, illustrate, and critique the townscape. Newly expanded manufactories required images executed on an ambitious scale to represent them in their entirety, while new docks and civic buildings obliterated traditional prospects, replacing them with new landmarks and viewing platforms for visitors and artists alike. Concurrently, new modes of representation were enabled by advancements in printing technology, which also helped to widen circulation. The expansion of the print trade provided a means through which public awareness of previously obscure, sometimes remote, towns was raised, while the growth and diversification of the urban scene enabled the emergence of new, discrete types of urban representation. The sub-genres that evolved included advertisements, railway guide vignettes, and depictions of inclusive cultural events, typified by the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition. Diverse and often dramatic in their composition or scale, these images articulated distinct, sometimes contradictory, attitudes to the changing urban environment. Exclusivity was displaced by the value of social inclusion, the importance of the local hinterland was overshadowed by calls for specially designed green spaces and small-scale workshops slowly gave way to large manufactories that centralised production. New pictorial genres not only recorded these changes, but also, and more importantly, helped to reshape expectations and attitudes towards them. Nevertheless, the establishment of new urban values, and their articulation through visual representations was slow and piecemeal.

174

Conclusion

In early views, produced in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, inherited urban values, such as historical status or social and economic harmony with the immediate hinterland, were married with inherited pictorial conventions. The towns best suited to such visual treatments were those whose architecture and overall shape conformed to the guidance given by authorities on aesthetics, such as William Gilpin. The inclusion of human figures enabled artists to flatter their audiences by endorsing the act of viewing the townscape, while also providing clues as to the location depicted and its acknowledged status. In addition, the use of picturesque tropes attributed the towns depicted the values of stability and continuity even as well-established vantage points were themselves lost to urban sprawl. Commerce and industry, although noted where appropriate and praised where successful, did not yet dominate urban views in the manner they would come to. While it is possible to identify a literal darkening of the townscape in many prints and ephemeral images produced in the 1840s, old values and pictorial formulae continued to coexist with new, sometimes radical, urban iconography. Dominated by inherited values and aesthetic models, the manner in which provincial towns were visualised did evolve, but at a slower rate, and in a less simplistic fashion than scholars have previously suggested. In large, inclusive prospects the visual impact of urban expansion and industrialisation was initially tempered by the inherited conventions of traditional picturesque views. Chimneys increasingly appeared alongside historic church spires, which had defined townscapes for centuries, but they did not immediately alter the overall shape of the urban scene. Throughout the period discussed here, the leitmotifs of chimneys, warehouses, and burial grounds were beautified and aggrandised in a similar manner to traditional topographical subjects. Thus, the early nineteenthcentury was not a watershed, but rather a period of conceptual and pictorial readjustment in the criteria of urban evaluation and the manner in which public and personal responses were visualised. As the century progressed, the new urban iconography of manufactories and sprawling streetscapes appeared in all forms of imagery, including panoramas and material produced to accompany exhibitions and international fairs. Some of these attractions appropriated the technologies of mechanised transport and manufacture to replicate the experience of travelling through or between conurbations. Conversely, the spectacle of the new landscapes of the Midlands and the north led to their being appraised for their visual appeal as ‘works of art’. In large industrial expositions like the Great Exhibition of 1851, the visual association between a town and its trades became firmly fixed. Images of towns, their populations, and topography served as signifiers for their dominant trades rather than vice versa. In 1862, the introduction of ‘trophy’ exhibits meant that towns were often presented as emporia, the purpose of which had become primarily, if not exclusively, commercial. Over time, local leaders sought to challenge this reductive stereotype and the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857 represents a divergence from former models of exhibition, both 175

Beyond the metropolis

provincial and metropolitan. The image of this new model was circulated widely in souvenirs and the pictorial press, enabling Manchester to make some claim to a cultural reputation, but attempts to challenge prevailing stereotypes were often met with ambivalence, condescension, or blatant dismissal. Nevertheless, exhibitions continued to be understood as either signifiers of urban prestige or as arenas within which urban values could be actively redefined. By the 1830s and 1840s, it was already possible to present towns from myriad perspectives. Urban improvements in the form of new warehouses, civic buildings, and walks meant that towns that had enjoyed a prestigious historical status were forced to compete on new terms. Floating docks, cemeteries, and expansive squares became the subject of images in publications ranging from guidebooks to large commemorative prints. In the case of public parks, the reliance upon the visual and verbal language of private gardens and natural landscapes reveals the extent to which established aesthetic formulae informed even the most modern of urban features. Although altered in focus and form, the urban renaissance continued throughout the nineteenth century, resulting in the redefinition of individual townscapes and urbanisation in general. The popular perception of British provincial towns was not defined solely in terms of their physical form. Urban populations too found themselves the subject of scrutiny and caricature. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the perceived productivity and political zeal of provincial urban populations increasingly shaped their socio-political reputation. Towns were no longer perceived as mere locations, but instead as active agents that could shape events in Westminster as well as the local council chamber. Consequently, towns were frequently represented as political machines, the manufactures of which could be conflagration and ruin and/or emancipation and improvement. For critics, this mechanical metaphor became proof of the unnatural character of the provincial urban populace. For artists and engravers, there were choices to be made in the characterisation of urban protestors and most chose to depict them in one of two ways. The first option was to represent the urban citizenry through a series of individual stock types, anticipating Henry Mayhew’s, London Labour and the London Poor (1862) or even Havelock Ellis’s The Criminal (1890).1 The alternative was to represent the urban population collectively as a swarm, unified by purpose and urbanity and signified by features of dress, such as the top hat. Images of political protest and civil unrest were powerful and enduring, often retaining their currency years after tracts and newspaper reports had been forgotten. One compelling explanation for the longevity of these images is the recognition that the fire and destruction they wrought were permanently transformative. By invoking both the iconography of industrial manufacture in the form of flames, steam, and smoke, and the iconography of the antique in the form of ruins, images of protest and urban violence provided evidence that the new urban provinces were powerful agents for change, whose impact would displace former values and supplant them with a permanent and new urban hierarchy.

176

Conclusion

Although urban imagery was subject to a degree of artistic licence, the plurality and diversity apparent in these visual representations does not so much indicate a falsification of the urban scene, as it is suggests a lack of collective purchase upon the character and value of provincial towns and cities. Each town presented the observer with a different range of features, qualities, and challenges, all of which were in a constant state of flux. In the new status quo, civic pride was as likely to be articulated by an image of a manufactory or a Chartist rally as it was by an athenaeum club or assembly rooms. As a result, the images of provincial towns found in prints, pictorial ceramics, and exhibition displays, indicate widespread ambivalence among nineteenth-century observers towards the changing roles and physical forms of provincial towns. Rather than a demonisation of the urban scene, images produced between 1780 and 1880 reflect the diversification of the physical reality, function, and perception of provincial British towns. Quantitative and qualitative changes to the urban realm prompted the development of new genres of topographical imagery, but in many instances these evolved out of existing pictorial conventions; the new urban order was frequently presented using the visual vocabulary of the old regime. Thus, images produced during these decades are characterised by varying degrees of conformity to previous models of urban evaluation and visualisation. This provided a necessary pictorial and conceptual bridge between the picturesque imagery of the eighteenth century and the fanciful Babylonian imagery of Gustave Doré and his counterparts in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s.2 Throughout the period covered here, artists and engravers were experimenting with novel ways to explore and exhibit the qualities and flaws of the new urban giants. However, the images that resulted supplemented rather than replaced previous pictorial models. ‘Towns’ were no longer only visualised and evaluated in one unified, inclusive ‘scene’, but more commonly, as a series of distinct, often contradictory ‘scenes’, which fragmented and isolated culture from commerce and the hinterland from the city centre. Instead of presenting a single, restrictive image of a provincial town, this process of fragmentation enabled towns to be visualised as simultaneously modern and historic, industrial and cultural, isolated and interconnected. For those who interrogate such imagery, the complex and contradictory picture that emerges affirms the long nineteenth century as one of the most crucial and influential periods in the development and depiction of British provincial towns. Notes 1 2

H. Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor: a cyclopaedia of the condition and earnings of those that will work, those that cannot work and those that will not work (London, 1862) and H. Ellis, The Criminal (London, 1890). B. Jerrold and G. Doré, London: A Pilgrimage (London, 1872).

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198

Index

Adshead, Joseph 2 advertising 9, 15, 17, 69, 82, 123–5, 136, 146   almanacs 131   bills of trade 122, 131, 132   newspaper advertising and ‘advertisers’ 107, 122   promotional objects 122, 140–1,146   trade cards 13, 122, 131, 141   see also exhibitions agriculture 33, 43, 45, 47, 93, 152 Aikin, John 25 Aire, river 34   see also Leeds America, trade with 69, 91 antiquarianism 21, 24–5, 32, 131, 135, 140, 169–71 architecture 10, 25, 30, 93, 140   civic 93, 108   classical influence 37, 101, 114, 170   industrial 93–6, 102 Arkwright, Richard 65, 93 assembly rooms 114, 170 Athenaeum 59, 83 Avon, river 91 Barker, Robert 58 Bartlett, William Henry 29, 92, 163, 170 Bath 31, 106, 152 Birkenhead 34 Birmingham 3, 5, 7, 9, 21, 25, 32–3, 37, 46, 61, 65, 124–5, 127, 129, 137, 139, 152

Birmingham Gazette 62 Court at Great Exhibition 62, 71 Reform Rally (1819) 153 Small Arms Trophy at London International Exhibition 70–1   Town Hall 37, 170 Bisset, James 124–7, 136 Blackwell 47,124 Borsay, Peter 10, 11, 45, 89, 134 botanic gardens 79, 98   see also gardens Boulton, Matthew 128 Boydell, John 14 Bradford 2, 44–5 Bristol 9, 27–9, 31–2, 90, 129, 132, 135, 159, 170   Atlantic trade 31, 91   Brandon Hill 97, 165   Bristol Journal 95   Clifton 132, 164, 166, 169   Floating Dock 91–2   riots (1832) 17, 153, 160–71   St Mary Redcliff 27, 92, 163   see also docks Britton, John 25, 29 Buck, Samuel and Nathaniel 21, 43 Builder, The 78, 110 Building News 110 burial grounds 98–9, 100–2        

canals 27, 48, 93, 140 Carlile, Richard 154, 158

199

Index

Carlyle, Thomas 1, 5, 138 cartography 7, 22, 30   see also maps cemeteries see burial grounds ceramics 9, 15, 36, 140–4, 146, 160 Chartism 1, 107, 138, 153, 156, 160, 170 Cheadle 80–1 chimneys 7, 24, 37–8, 40, 42, 44, 76, 81, 95–6, 122, 145, 159, 164 cholera 47, 104, 107   see also health churchyards see burial grounds civil unrest 152–3, 156, 160, 169   Bristol riots (1832) see Bristol   Peterloo Massacre (1819) see Manchester Coalbrookdale 166–7 Cobbett, William 159 Condition of England Question 1, 2 consumer revolution 11, 13, 15, 42, 61 Copper-Plate Magazine 31, 32 cotton 63, 65, 73, 91, 138 crowds 80–1, 153, 155–6, 158, 161, 171 culture and education 59, 73, 75, 79, 83, 106–11, 114, 116, 127 Craig, William 26, 103 Crystal Palace 62, 69   see also exhibitions culture and education 59, 73, 75, 79, 83, 106–11, 114, 116, 127 Daniell, William 35 Defoe, Daniel 129, 152 Dibdin, Charles 4 Dickens, Charles 1, 3, 42, 160 docks 31–2, 34–5, 37, 90–1 Don, river 47, 135   see also Sheffield Doré, Gustave 171, 177 Dyos, Harold James 3, 6 edge tools 62, 64–5, 68–9, 91, 133 Edinburgh 9, 25, 29–30, 58, 103–4 education see culture and education Engels, Frederick 2, 5 English urban renaissance 10–11 engraving 9, 15, 38, 40   copper-plate 13, 16, 38, 111

  steel 13, 38, 40, 111   wood 12, 40, 65, 80, 112, 115 exhibitions 15, 70–3   Birmingham (Bingley Hall) Exposition (1849) 61   Great Exhibition (1851) 61, 62–70   London International Exhibition (1862) 70   Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition (1857) 16, 73–84   trophies 16, 70   see also panoramas factory see manufactory Fairbairn, Thomas 73 Fairbairn, William 73, 93–7 fine art 70, 73–4,123 fire 161, 163–7 foundries see manufactory gardens 98, 101–2   see also parks Gilpin, William 22, 25–6, 30   see also picturesque Glasgow 3, 9, 22, 32, 90   Fir Park (later the Necropolis) 98–100 glass manufacture 31, 124, 170 government, local and national 10, 73, 105 grangerise 112–3 graveyard see burial grounds Great Exhibition (1851) see exhibitions guides 1, 3, 11, 16–17, 36, 41, 61, 79, 108, 112–16, 127, 166, 171   directories 11, 12, 17, 47, 69, 110, 124– 6, 131–2, 137–8   gazetteer 3, 21–2, 128–9, 135, 169–70   railway guides 11, 13–14, 51, 59   urban histories 3, 11, 14, 24, 35, 135, 167 Hague, Louis 163 Harvey, Jane 131 Hazlitt, William 154 Head, George 72 health 42, 93–4 Heartwell, Horace 72, 107, 140 heritage 24, 43, 52, 74, 96, 125, 135 Heywood, Abel 14, 79, 152 200

Index

Heywood, James 152 Heywood, John 14, 76, 152 hinterland 6, 21, 26, 32, 45, 47, 50–1, 90, 97–8, 100, 103–4 Hole, James 35, 107 Holland, John 47, 135 hospitals 114 Hunt, Henry 154, 159 Illustrated Exhibitor 63–4, 70–1 Illustrated London News 24, 38, 70, 75, 78–81, 105, 108 Illustrated Times 78, 81 industry 3–5, 32, 45, 47, 61–5, 93, 95, 135–6, 138, 146, 152 Ipswich Journal 154 iron 21, 62, 76, 125, 135, 140 Irwell, river 49   see also Manchester and Salford Jackson, Samuel 163–4, 168 japanning 131 Kaye, Thomas 72, 111, 115 Kelly, Thomas 22, 32 Knight’s Cyclopaedia 64–5 knives see edge tools Lacey, Henry 13, 22 Lancashire Illustrated 90, 142 Land We Live In, The 40, 42–4, 97 Leeds 2, 24, 27, 45, 152   Leeds Mercury 154 libraries 15, 75, 111–12 Liverpool 9, 22, 28, 59, 101–15, 129   Cosmorama of Liverpool (1825) 57   docks 34–7, 90–1   Herculaneum pottery 142, 160   Liverpool Mercury 70, 109, 154   Liverpool General Advertiser 124   Manchester and Liverpool Padorama (1834) 59–60   St George’s Hall 36, 108, 111   St James’s Cemetery and Walk 101–2   Toxteth Park 50, 98, 101   Trophy at London International Exhibition 70

  Williamson’s Liverpool Advertiser and Mercantile Chronicle 124 London 1, 8, 9, 22, 41, 107 Loutherbourg, Philip James de 166 Love, Benjamin 1, 95, 114 Manchester 2–5, 9, 25–8, 37, 42–3, 45, 48–9, 59, 81, 93–7, 107, 114, 129, 138, 140   Athenaeum Club 93, 110   Art Treasures Exhibition 16, 72–84   Botanical Gardens 79   Free Trade Hall 160   Kersal Moor, Manchester from 98   Manchester and Liverpool Padorama (1834) 59–60   Manchester Guardian 75, 81–2   Manchester Herald 48   Manchester Observer 157   Manchester Weekly Advertiser 74   manufacturing 63, 65   New Bailey Bridge 49   Old Trafford 31, 76, 79–80   Peel and Williams 144, 146   Peterloo Massacre (1819) 17, 153–9   politics 151–2, 156   Royal Manchester Institution 72, 106, 110   Town Hall 48 manufactory 7, 4, 21, 31, 44, 46, 64–5, 69, 75, 109, 122, 127, 129, 136–9 maps 13, 22, 48, 111–12   see also cartography McKellar, Elizabeth 3, 8, 22, 100 Mechanics’ Institutes 106, 111 Medlock, river 48   see also Manchester Mersey, river 34–5, 50, 91   see also Liverpool metalwares 62, 133, 139   see also edgetools Microcosm 27 Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction 101 Morris, Robert 24, 106, 140 Müller, William James 161, 169

201

Index

Nead, Lynda 3, 7, 115 Necropolis see burial grounds and Glasgow Newcastle 128, 131, 137, 152 newspapers 16–17, 75–6, 81, 83, 107–8, 110, 116, 123 Non-conformism 159 Norfolk Knife 65, 68–9 North of England Magazine 31, 107 Nottingham 40, 63 novels 3–4, 42 Oldham 63   Oldham Advertiser 81 pamphlets 16, 39, 153–4 panorama 16, 51, 57–61   see also exhibitions parks 98, 105   Select Committee on Public Walks (1833) 97, 101   see also gardens Payne–Knight, Richard 25 Paxton, Joseph 62, 105 Peterloo Massacre (1819) see Manchester picturesque 10, 14, 24–5, 27, 30–1, 37, 45, 97, 101–2, 110, 112, 115, 143, 168, 170 pleasure gardens see gardens Pocket Magazine 31, 39 pollution 7, 94, 101, 138 ports 90 Preston 160, 171 print industry 11–14 Prout, John 168 Prout, Samuel 27 public health see health and cholera Pugin, Augustus 2 railways 3, 14, 58, 60   Grand Junction 48, 51   Great Western 91   Liverpool and Manchester 13, 36, 51, 59–60   London and North Western 42 Reform Act (1832) 4, 154, 160 riots see civil unrest rivers 34–6, 48–9, 90–1 roads 11, 16, 32–3, 89, 98, 101, 140 Rock and Company 14, 39, 110

Rome, comparisons with 170 Rowbotham, T.L. 161, 163, 169 Royal family 9, 34, 37, 73, 75, 80–3 Rudé, George 153 ruins 25, 167–71 Salford 25, 48–9 Sheffield 9, 32, 38–9, 47, 133–41, 152   at the Great Exhibition (1851) 63–4   Company of Cutlers 134   Rodgers and Son 63, 65, 69   Sheffield Free Press 63   Sheffield Mercury 47   Sheffield and Rotherham Independent 74, 78 Shepherd, T.H. 8, 29 shipping 31, 36 Sidney, Samuel 37, 151 Smiles, Samuel 163 Smith, William Hawkes 46, 137 smoke 2, 42, 45, 94–5, 101, 105, 138, 145, 164   see also pollution Southey, Robert 107 Speed, John 21 Stockport 63 Swansea 65 Sweet, Rosemary 25, 169 telescopic views 3, 9 topography 1, 6–7, 9, 11, 13–14, ch1 passim, 61, 64, 98, 162–3 Tocqueville, Alexis de 138 tourism 11, 14, 27, 110, 115, 129, 169 town hall 37, 48, 95, 114, 158   see also Birmingham and Manchester Turner, Joseph Mallord William 25, 32, 45, 48 urbanisation 1–7, 38, 42, 51, 83, 89, 92, 94–5, 100, 103, 105, 116, 152 vantage point 28, 30–3, 43, 50–1, 79, 97, 100, 136, 163, 165 walks 97–9, 101   see also parks warehouses 7, 35, 37, 72, 75, 81, 102, 138 Westall, William 38, 49

202

Index

Wolverhampton 21, 24, 105 woodcuts 9, 12–13 works see manufactory Wright, Joseph 65 Wroe, James 157, 159

York 14, 152

203