Tag: industry
-
The turnpike towns: did the turnpike make the town grow?
England’s 1,245 turnpike trusts were founded in a rush in the 1750s and 1760s, and 10,927 of their milestones and toll houses are still recorded. But did the towns on the turnpikes grow faster? Not that I can see.
-
Britain’s earthquakes since 1382: the big ones, the coalfield quakes and the biggest near you
I mapped all 7,032 earthquakes in the British Geological Survey’s catalogues since 1382. Britain has a magnitude 4 about every 3 years, and its busiest modern earthquake zones were coalfields.
-
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.
-
Captain Swing: did the riots follow the machines?
In 1830 English farm labourers smashed threshing machines. Using Caprettini and Voth’s open data I mapped 3,117 Swing incidents: parishes with a recorded machine were twice as likely to riot, but 90% of riotous parishes had no machine at all.
-
Market towns that failed: what became of the medieval markets of England and Wales?
Medieval kings licensed markets in their thousands, each a bet that a village would become a town. I followed all 2,173 market places in England and Wales to today: 665 are towns, 1,168 are villages, and a few are fields or sea.
