Welsh Journals

OF TIME, SPACE AND A BRIDGE: CENTRAL PLACES IN NORTH-WEST WALES, c. 1795 c. 1860. GWYN ROWLEY Rowley, Gwyn. 1985: Of Time, Space and A Bridge: Central Places in North-West Wales, c. 1795 c. 1860. Cambria, Vol. 12(1) pp. 73 to pp. 96. Part I of: Davies, W.K.D. (ed) Human Geography from Wales: Proceedings of the E.G. Bowen Memorial Conference. ISSN 0306- 9796. A systematic view derived from a dynamized central-place theoretical viewpoint facilitates a comprehension of the processes of competition and interaction evident within a part of N.W. Wales between c. 1795 and c. 1860. The ascent of Llangefni and the decline of Beaumaris are considered against the backcloth of the opening of the Menai Bridge in 1826 and related changing accessibilities. It is change rather than stability that must be accounted for. The notion of homeostatis is seen to reduce change to mechanical oscillation about a position of stability posited by central place concepts. The 'developmental pathway' is thus reduced to a form of repetition. It is not structure per se that is of particular interest but the code: the rules that govern possibilities. Gwyn Rowley, Dept. of Geography, University of Sheffìeld, Sheffield, England. S10 2TN. This paper considers the development and evolution of central places through time in North-West Wales between c. 1795 and c. 1860. Attention is focused not simply upon pattern but also upon structures and process. The general notions of temporal change considered here strive to demonstrate the behavioural as opposed to a singular concern with the spatial dimension of the economic-geographic process in an endeavour to illustrate that ostensibly 'unique' events are translated over time, through growth and decline, into a further logic. The approach renders further credence and importance to central place theory, not simply as a deductive base from which to understand central place regularities in space but also as providing a set of theoretical postulates from which to study and comprehend process through time. So this essay provides a small contribution towards a dynamic geographic-location theory. The study of interacting spatial processes, it is believed, looks to the development of a geographic location theory as opposed to an economic location theory that in turn contributes to the interpretation of the real, physically existent spatial structure (Pred 1967; Beavon 1977). Of course this present study must be set into the overall context of the progressive development of North-West Wales from about the mid-eighteenth century. The fundamental base to a fuller understanding is the dialectic process of extending capitalism,