Welsh Journals

SOME ASPECTS OF THE SPATIAL STRUCTURE OF TWO GLAMORGAN TOWNS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY* THIS paper is derived from research in progress on the spatial structure of Welsh towns in the nineteenth century. Some work has been completed, but studies of a number of towns contrasted in size and functional character are still being carried out. Although a wide range of documentary sources is available, the centre-piece of all these investigations is the census material which, after 1841, provides for the first time rich point data which is superior in precise loca- tional detail even to that available from contemporary censuses. The paper begins with a brief introduction to the data and methods of analysis. This is followed by an outline of standard generalizations as to the structure of pre-industrial and industrial towns. Two contrasted Welsh industrial towns, Neath and Merthyr Tydfil, are then used to explore the process by which change from pre-industrial to industrial structuring took place during the nineteenth century. A final section seeks to isolate the critical factors in the shaping of that change. 1. Data description and analysis It is largely within the last decade that the value of the unprinted nineteenth-century enumerators' schedules has been recognised as a major data source.2 The origin and nature of these enumerators' schedules have been described extensively elsewhere3 so that a brief •This paper is based on a preliminary version read at a conference of the Institution of British Geographers, Historical Geography Group. The work on Merthyr Tydfil is supported by an S.S.R.C. grant. 1 P. E. Jones, 'Bangor: a study in urban morphology and social geography, 1801-1971' (unpublished University of Wales Ph.D. thesis, 1973). some of the works are R. Lawton, 'The population of Liverpool in the mid-nineteenth century', Trans. Hist. Soc. Lancs. and Cheshire, CVII (1955), 89-20; W. A. Armstrong, 'Social Structure from early census returns', in E. A. Wrigley (ed.), An Introduction to English Historical Demography (Cambridge, 1966); E. A. Wrigley (ed.), Nineteenth Century Society (Cambridge, 1972); W. A. Armstrong, Stability and change in an English county town (Cambridge, 1974); M. Anderson, Family Structure in nineteenth century Lancashire (Cambridge, 1971); W.T. R. Pryce, 'The Social and Economic Structure of North East Wales' (unpublished C.N.A.A. (Lanchester Polytechnic) Ph.D. Thesis, 1971); idem, 'The census as a major source for the study of Flintshire Society in the nineteenth century', Flints. Hist. Soc., XXVI (1974); idem, 'Manuscript Census Records for Denbighshire', Trans. Denbighshire Hist. Soc., XXII (1973), 166-98. The major study of an urban area is that just completed with S.S.R.C. support and directed by Professor R. Lawton and C. G. Pooley. So far a series of working papers have been issued of which No. 2, Methodological Problems in the Statistical Analysis of Small Area data, and No. 4, The Urban Dimensions of Nineteenth Century Liverpool, are very useful. In all the publications noted above n.2.