THE SOCIAL AI\JD ECONOMIC HISTORY OF BANBURY BETWEEN 1830 Ai\iD 1880 Barrie Stuart ...

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THE SOCIAL AI\JD ECONOMIC HISTORY OF BANBURY BETWEEN 1830 Ai\iD 1880
Barrie Stuart Trinder
Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University
of Leicester, 1980.
UMI Number: U314466
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CUNTENTS ii
Acknowledgements iii
Illustrations iv
Abbreviations v
1. A Mature Market Town. 1
2. Civic Pride and Parochial Squalor: Banbury and
Neithrop 1830-50. 20
3. The Local Economy before the Railways. 39
4. Two Distinct Camps: the Churches in Banbury
1830-51. 84
5. The Politics of Reform, 1830-50. 109
6. A Habit of Spontaneous Action. 153
7. A Market Town during the Great Victorian Boom. 181
8. Public Authority and Private Enterprise 1830-80. 219
9. Names, Sects and Parties: the Churches in
Banbury 1849-80. 250
10. A Borough of Great Independence of Action,
1850-68. 269
11. A Market Town Culture. 306
12. Going Downhill: Market Town Society in the
1870s. 339
13. Reconsiderations. 346
Statistical Tables. j>60
Bibliography. 373
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii
I am most grateful for the help and encouragement I have received over
many years from the Banbury Historical Society, and in particular from
Jeremy Gibson, who kindly loaned me a family heirloom without which it
would have been much more difficult to work on the history of an
Oxfordshire town while living in Shropshire. I wish also to record
my thanks to my employers, the Shropshire County Council for their
assistance. Like all historians I am deeply indebted to many librarians
and archivists, and in particular to the staff of the Bodleian Library,
the Oxfordshire and Northampton/Record Offices, the Public Record
Office and the Newspaper Library at Colindale, all of whom at various
times have accorded me help beyond the mere obligations of duty.
Like all teachers, I owe much to my students, and would like to record
my thanks to all of those varied groups with whom at different times
I have discussed the characteristics of nineteenth century market
towns, and in particular to the Rewley House Summer School class
of 1979.
My greatest debts however are to Professor Alan Everitt who has given
me unstinted and stimulating assistance since I first broached this
project with him, to my parents who have answered many teasing problems
about Banbury's past from their own knowledge, and to my wife, without
whose encouragement this thesis would never have been written.
Shrewsbury,
October 1980 Barrie Trinder
IV
ILLUSTRATIONS
r-iAPS Facing page
1. The Boundary of the Borough of Banbury. 24
.
2 Building developments in Banbury 1830-50. 29
3. Banbury and its hinterland. 41
4. Turnpike Roads passing through Banbury. 48
5. Banbury’s Railheads and Railways 1838-53. 53
.
6 Building developments in Banbury 1850-80. 228
7. The Growth of Grimsbury 1850-80. 232
The Gillett family's development in Bath Road
1855-80. 235
'I'he- Parish and af bory {'n iToirer fOocKet.
Tje Borough Banbury in . tTie^ co>/er ypffffA
TABLES
1. A Comparison of some Midlands Market Towns. 3bO
2. The Population of Banbury and the Banbury Union
in the Nineteenth Century. 36l
3. Banbury: Occupational Structure in 1851. 362
4. Migration into Banbury from the hinterland, 1851
and 1871. 363
5. Attendances at Church Services in Banbury, 30
March 1851. 365
6. Immigration into Banbury. 366
7. Dates of foundation of Voluntary Societies active
in Banbury between 1830 and 1850. 367
8. Occupations of Children in Banbury in 1851 and 1871. 369
9. Banbury: Occupational Structure in 1871. 37^
10. Numbers of Sunday School Children...1880. 371
11. Results of Parliamentary Elections in Banbury 1868-80. 372
ABBREVIATIONS
BA Banbury Advertiser
BCR Banbury Co-operative Record
BG Banbury Guardian
BH Banbury Herald
BHS Banbury Historical Society
Bod.Lib. Bodleian Library
B of H rtLns. Minutes of Banbury Board of Health
BPL Banbury Public Library
BPLC Mins. Minutes of Banbury Paving and Lighting Commissioners
BPP British Parliamentary Papers
Bra Mins. Minutes of Banbury Reform Association
C & CH Cake and Cockhorse
JOJ Jackson's Oxford Journal
JR/iSE Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England
MI Mins. Minutes of Banbury Mechanics' Institute
NH Northampton Herald
ÜC & cc Oxford City and County Chronicle
OH Oxford Herald
ORO Oxfordshire Record Office
OHS Oxfordshire Records Society
PC Potts Collection
Pol.Corres.(1832) Political Correspondence (1832)
PRO Public Record Office
RC Rusher Collection
VCH Victoria County History
VI
'..••those less marked vicissitudes which are constantly shifting
the boundaries of social intercourse and begetting nev/ consciousness
of interdependence. Some slipped a little downward, some got higher
footing: people denied aspirates, gained wealth, and fastidious
gentlemen stood for boroughs; some were caught in political currents,
some in ecclesiastical, and perhaps found themselves surprisingly
grouped in consequence; while a fev; personages or families that stood
with rock firmness amid all this fluctuation were slowly presenting
new aspects in spite of solidity, and altering with the double change
of self and beholder. Municipal town and rural parish gradually made
fresh threads of connection - gradually, as the old stocking gave way
to the savings-bank,....Settlers, too came from distant counties,
some with an alarming novelty of skill, others with an offensive
advantage in cunning'.
George Eliot,
Middlemarch.
1
Chapter One.
A tiature Market Town.
'The old market place ... is ... all alive with the busy hum
of traffic, the agricultural wealth and the agricultural pop­
ulation of the district. Prom the poor farmer with his load
of corn, up to the rich mealman and the great proprietor, all
the "landed interest" is there, mixed with jobbers and chapmen
of every description, cattle dealers, millers, brewers, maltsters,
justices going to the Bench, constables and shopmen, apprentices,
gentlemen's servants, and gentlemen in their own persons,
mixed with all the riff-raff of the town, and all the sturdy
beggars of the country, and all the noisy urchins of both'.^^^
The nineteenth century market town was a place of rendez­
vous and exchange, the venue for the circuit meeting, the
synod or the camp meeting, for an aristocratic assembly or
bourgeois soirée, a gathering-place for ardent Protestants or
Protectionists, a point of convergence for carriers' carts, a
place of muster for volunteer riflemen or dissident radicals.
By the cattle pens in the market place or at the linen draper's
counter, the amorphous abstractions of Victorian society took
the form of real individuals. The 'landed interest' was a group
of red-faced farmers sipping spirits at the principal inn, or
a baronet passing in his carriage from the railway station to
his country seat. Manufacturing interests were embodied by the
representatives of Manchester textile houses, or local foundry-
masters. The dark forces of Democracy were symbolised by
Baptist shoemakers or free-thinking coal-heavers. At the
(l) Mary Russell Mitford, 'Belford Regis, or Sketches of a
Country Town', Chambers's Edinburgh Review, IV, 1836, p. 170.
2
wharves and warehouses of the market town calicoes and fustians
from the Miltons and the Coketowns were unloaded, to pass
through the hands of drapers, tailors and dressmakers, to
"become the apparel of townspeople and agriculturalists. Pigs
of iron and wrought-iron rods from Shutt End, Blaenavon or
Old Park passed to foundrymen and millwrights who transformed
them into chaff-cutters or threshing machines for the innovating
agriculturalists of the district and for a wider world. In
the market town rural labourers being shepherded by a hard-
headed incumbent towards an emigrant ship, might pass the
ascending spiralists of Victorian society, the representatives
of firms making bottled stout or artificial manure, the itin­
erant lecturer making his living from discoursing on Slavery,
teetotallism or Andrew Marvell, or the prosperous retailer,
respected as a deacon, churchwarden or treasurer of a society
for clothing the poor. It was in the market town that most of
the consumer goods of mid-Victorian England were manufactured.
As parliamentary constituencies such towns decided the composition
of governments. In most market towns it was possible to
observe every shade of the complex spectrum of English religion.
In the majority a profusion of voluntary associations provided
enlightenment, sustenance or amusement. The Victorian market
town has not received from historians the attention that has
been given to the urban metropolis, the manufacturing town or
the countryside, yet a study of such a town is capable of
illuminating the whole range of English society, both urban
and rural, both Liberal and Conservative, both Dissenting and
Anglican, both puritan and libertarian.
For some English market towns the mid-nineteenth century
was a period of unusual prosperity and communal self-confidence.
During the previous century the larger market towns, particularly