N. ENGLAND GROUP
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The North of England Group covers the counties of Cumberland, Durham, Lancashire, Northumberland, Westmorland, and Yorkshire. The Industrial Revolution had a major impact on some regions in this area. The counties of Lancashire, Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland with their coal, steel and cotton industries. Between 1841 and 1881 the populations of these counties increased dramatically as workers moved in to obtain jobs in new industries. In Durham it nearly trebled and it doubled in Lancashire and Yorkshire. The importance of the Lancashire cotton industry to not only Lancashire but to the whole British economy can not be over estimated. For about 150 years the industry thrived and expanded with the most spectacular growth. It was Britain's primary industry and enabled it to become the world's first industrial power. The industry was one of the first to embrace new technologies, to use machinery and mechanical power. While the cotton industry thrived so did the rest of the British economy. When the American Civil War caused a depression in the Lancashire cotton industry it spread to the whole of Britain. It was not only the cotton industry that expanded at an amazing rate in Lancashire. The Wigan Coal and Iron Company was the largest coal producer in Lancashire and it employed 47% of all the workers in the coal industry in the county. It was the largest joint stock company in Britain with the exception of the railways. Not only did the company mine in Lancashire but also in Nottinghamshire. They expanded into other areas like the massive iron and coke works it owned at Kirkless, which was the second largest in Britain. The company developed its own private railways and national transport system and became involved in building locomotives, canal boats, wagons, mining equipment and foundry plant. Extensive interests were developed in limestone quarrying, haematic mining and in Russia in the Caucasian Manganese Syndicate. The foundations of the modern mining industry were laid with the development of deep mining techniques. All this enormous industrial growth came at a cost. At time when there was no worker's compensation schemes, unemployment benefits or pensions of any sort, there were large numbers of industrial accidents. Occupational health and safety was an alien concept. During the 1860's a series of mining disasters occurred leaving many widows and fatherless children. In a lot of cases these industrial accidents resulted in the miners families having to live in workhouses. It was a result of the huge of expansion of industries in the north of England that the canal system developed in England. It developed because carting goods in the north of England was a hazardous affair particularly through the Pennines area where the mountains are to 600 metres high. It just so happened of course that this was the perfect area for the major industries to develop. The relatively humid climate was perfect for the spinning of textiles. Fast flowing Pennine streams provided the power for the early cotton mills to operate and the soft water was perfect for the washing and bleaching of cotton. Later the huge coal resources were used instead of the streams for power. Add to all this, the readily available local salts used to produce the chemicals needed in the mills it was inevitable that this area was to become the most important industrial area, in Britain during the eighteenth century. Without the development of the canal system the country would almost certainly not have become the dominant European industrial power that it did in the eighteenth century. Many Irish migrated to England following the failure of potato crops in the 1840s and a large percentage of these immigrants moved to the northern industrial towns. In 1851 25 % of Liverpool's population was Irish. One of the darker sides of the expansion in the north was the growth of the slave trade. Until the late 17th century Liverpool was a little known port in the north-west of England. It was the increase in the commercial trade with America and the West Indies that led to its expansion. In 1715 the first wet dock in Great Britain was constructed in Liverpool and the city became a rich metropolis thriving on the slave trade and privateering and one of the busiest slave-trading ports on the Atlantic. In other words it was built upon slave labour.
NORTH OF ENGLAND WEB SITES CUMBERLAND DURHAM LANCASHIRE MANCHESTER NEWCASTLE ON TYNE
WESTMORLAND YORKSHIRE COAL MINING INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION RAILWAYS AND CANALS |