English Counties And Public Building 1650–1830 9781472599599, 9781852851538

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English Counties and Public Building, 1650-1830

£2,000,000 in the decade, or about £200,000 a year. All public building in the provinces may have cost £800,000 annually. The special buildings of London erected on relatively dear sites may have cost £2,000,000 in the decade or £200,000 a year. There were further charges to the public funds of over £1,000,000 for work on the largely residential Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle in 1825-30. 5 As this book has shown, justices, gentry and later clergy initiated county work and oversaw the course of construction. They were advised by leading surveyors, sometimes in the case of the most important buildings by architects of national repute. Well-established local firms were given contracts, supplemented in the Home Counties by London builders. County building outside die biggest towns boosted employment in a wide area. Sudden demand was met by the temporary migration of carpenters, bricklayers, masons and other craftsmen and labourers from twenty or thirty miles, who were taken on by local contractors. The effect may be imagined of building the gaol and shire hall at Stafford in the later 1780s and 1790s, with a population of 3892 in 1801. Craftsmen from the Black Country and the Potteries had to supplement those from neighbouring rural parishes and Lichfield. Most public building was done in years when house construction was at a high level, so that it largely failed to help in years of poor employment for building workers. It is also possible to estimate approximately the county proportion of expenditure on all bridges between 1800 and 1830. Shire charges totalled £2,238,434. According to Dr Ginarlis, aggregate bridge construction cost £5,122,105, so that counties paid for between one-third and a half. Much of the rest was spent on four London company bridges. Unlike shire prisons and halls, county bridges gave useful work when other building was at a low ebb, as in the early 1780s and later 1790s.6 County construction reached a peak by the 1820s. Sessions works were among the most important public structures, symbolising contemporary social and economic changes. Although the judicial and administrative authority of sessions continued to grow until the 1870s, Victorian nonresidential building was mostly financed by other institutions and private sources.

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J.M. Crook and M.H. Port, The History of the King's Works, vi, 1782-1851 (1973), pp. 664-65. 6 J.E. Ginarlis, 'Road and Waterway Investment in Britain, 1750-1850' (unpublished Sheffield University Ph.D. thesis, 1970), p. 279.

A Note on Sources

County quarter sessions o r d e r or m i n u t e books before 1830 used in this study begin at the following dates: Devon 1592 Yorkshire, North Riding c. 1603 Somerset 1607 Hampshire 1607 Nottinghamshire c. 1607 Hertfordshire 1619 Durham 1620 Staffordshire 1620 Kent (West) 1625 Warwickshire 1625 Wiltshire 1627 Dorset 1663 (earlier 1625-39) Lancashire 1631 Yorkshire, West Riding 1638 Middlesex 1639 Suffolk 1640 (gap 1652-58) Sussex 1640 Norfolk 1650 Essex 1652 Kent (East) 1653 Surrey 1659 Cambridgeshire 1660 Cheshire 1660 Herefordshire 1665 Lincolnshire (Lindsey) 1665 Westmorland 1669 Gloucestershire 1672 (gap 1692-1701) Lincolnshire (Kesteven) 1674 (gap 1704-24) Buckinghamshire 1678 Leicestershire 1678 Northamptonshire 1679 Northumberland 1680 Derbyshire 1682 Lincolnshire (Holland) 1684

Index Hampden, Thomas, 36 Hampshire, 38, 50, 59, 69, 74-75; asylum, 202-3; bridges, 94, 108, 110-11, 113, 118,120-22,130,216,218,220; courthouse, 138; prisons, 154, 158-59, 167-68, 176,179, 184, 187-88; records, 211 Handbills, 78-79 Hanging, 153, 161, 165; see also Executions Hanwell, asylum, 203-4 Harbours, 1, 3, 14, 23, 26, 74, 86, 164 Harraby Bridge, 126 Harrison, Thomas, 140, 196 Hartford Bridge, 106 Harvests, effect of, 38, 48 Haymarket Opera House, 6 Hedge, Charles, 191 Helmsley, courthouse, 134 Hereford, 65; cathedral, 74; shire hall, 142, 144; prison, 154, 168 Herefordshire, 49, 60, 62, 65, 71, 74; bridges, 95, 104-5, 108, 130; prison, 154, 168, 176, 179; records, 211; shire hall, 142, 144-45 Hertford, 90; prison, 157, 160, 163, 167; shire hall, 139, 141, 145 Hertfordshire, 27, 31, 39, 44, 46-47, 52-53, 72-73, 77, 79; bridges, 94, 97, 104, 108, 122, 125, 128, 130; prisons, 157-58, 160, 163, 166-67, 188; records, 211; shire hall, 139, 141 Hewick Bridge, 93, 107 Hexham Bridge, 115, 118 Hicks Hall, sessions house, 135 High Bridge, 125-26 High (also chief) constables, 34, 49, 58, 68-69, 100 High Peak, hundred, 103 Highways, see Roads Hiorns, William, 160 Hitchin, house of correction, 188 Hoare, Samuel, 183 Holland, Lincolnshire, 64, 66 Holland, Henry, 33 Holroyd.John, 79 Home Counties, 88,164, 210 Home Secretary, 42, 183 Honiton, house of correction, 153 Hookey, George, 75 Hopwas Bridge, 87, 126 Hornby Bridge, 111 Horse bridges, 97, 99, 102-3, 105, 107, 111, 114,119

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Horse displays, 17 Horse Guards, London, 5 Horses, 40, 49, 121 Horsham, 80; prisons, 151-52, 157, 159, 163, 166,169, 172, 187 Horsley, Gloucestershire, house of correction, 167 Hosiery, 194 Hospitals (for the ill), 1, 3-4, 6-7, 12-13, 17,20,24-25,51,199 Hospitals, Royal (for pensioners), 4 Hotham, Baron, 136 Houghton Bridge, 91 House building, 1, 24, 85-87, 90, 146, 164, 173, 177, 181 Howard, John, 42, 89, 149-50, 160, 165-66, 169, 171, 191 Howsham Bridge, 126 Huddersfield, cloth hall, 9 Hull, 10, 86-87; docks, 23; exchange, 9; river, 87; workhouse, 7 Hull Advertiser, 87 Humanitarianism, 25, 36, 199-200, 202, 206, 208 Hundreds, 33-34, 51, 58-59, 153, 196; bridges, 96-97, 99-100, 103, 106 Huntingdonshire, bridges, 94, 108, 130; prison, 184 Hutton, Charles, 115 Ilchester, prison, 73, 168, 187 Ilford, house of correction, 188 Ilkley Bridge, 107 Illness, in prisons, 165, 174; see also Diseases Imprisonment, 41-2, 48, 53, 58, 149-97 Income tax, 60 Individuals, as bridge owners, 96, 98, 100, 119, 122-23, 129; as owners of shire halls, 133-34, 142 Infirmaries, 70, 166, 174, 176, 185, 189, 191, 195; see also Hospitals; Prisons Inflation, 14, 17, 43, 55 Inns, 10, 28-29, 79, 193 Inns of Court, 2, 33 Insanity, 199-206; see also Asylums; Lunatics Inspection, prison, 160, 175, 178, 183, 193, 196 Insurance companies, 66 Interest, rates of, 63-65 Invalides, Paris, 5 Ipswich, 62; courthouse, 137; division, 78; prisons, 157, 168,171, 184, 187-88, 191