Tag: Census 2021
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Did the Pits Closing Still Show?
196 deep mines were working in Britain at the start of 1984, and 167 had closed by 1994. Forty years on, the pit towns of England and Wales have 2.0 points more adults long-term sick than similar towns, whenever their pit closed.
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Did Beeching Kill Your Town?
3,331 railway stations closed in Britain between 1955 and 1975, and 643 towns in England and Wales lost every one. Size for size, they are a little poorer and more car-bound today, but they did not fall off a cliff.
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Great Fires: Did the Towns That Burned Rebuild Bigger?
I read every fire in Wikipedia’s town articles and found 102 great town fires, 63% of them in the 1600s and 1700s. Three centuries on, the towns that burned are neither clearly bigger nor richer.
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Rotten Boroughs: Where Are They Now?
Before 1832 Gatton had 7 voters and two MPs while Manchester had none. I mapped all 56 boroughs the Reform Act abolished: today 25 are villages, a hamlet or an empty hill.
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Canal Mania: Did the Canal Towns Boom, and Do They Still Lead?
England’s canal towns grew about 4.0 times over between 1801 and 1861. But they were rising before the canals came, and today they are bigger, not richer.
