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LOCATIONAL PATTERNS OF HIGH STATUS GROUPS IN AN EMERGING INDUSTRIAL TOWN: NEWPORT (GWENT), 1850 1880. C. ROY LEWIS Lewis, C. Roy, 1985: Locational Patterns of High Status Groups in An Emerging Industrial Town: Newport (Gwent), 1850-1880. Cambria, Vol. 12(1), pp. 131 to pp. 147. Part I of: Davies, W.K.D. (ed) Human Geography from Wales: Proceedings of the E.G. Bowen Memorial Conference. ISSN 0306 9796. Rate books and directories are used to identify the location of high status groups in Newport (Gwent) in 1850 and 1880. At mid-century the growing commercial centre and port still retained the typical pre- industrial pattern, with the highest social groups living in the centre, or rather, the newly emerging commercial areas of the town, and in a set of new high class terraces. By 1880 a new scatter of suburban villas had been added to this pattern, with the beginning of the loss of such groups from the central areas. C. Roy Lewis, Dept. of Geography, Llandinam Building, University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, Dyfed, Wales. U.K. SY23 3DB. "The landscape of any old town may be compared to a very ancient manuscript which has been written over on several occasions. Such a manuscript is called a palimpsest.With great care we can lift off the markings that survive from the various epochs of the past.and attempt from what survives to reconstruct the townscape of past ages." (Bowen 1968 p. 2-3). One of the major objectives of the study of urban social geography of is to identify the changes in the locational patterns of different social groups through time. In recent years a lot of attention has been paid to the so-called 'gentrification' process, the trend for high status professional and managerial groups to occupy inner city areas, a trend which is often viewed as a new and unique manifestation of contemporary urban life. Yet it is salutary to remember that this central city concentration of high status people is nothing new. In an historical context it is probably one of the most basic and enduring characteristics of the social geography of cities, right up to the middle of the industrial period. Not until the mid-nineteenth century in most British cities did large enough numbers of the higher income groups leave the inner areas of cities to establish themselves