AD 1750-1900 The Industrial Age

The appearance of central England completely changed during this period. Between AD 1760 and 1844 there were over 2500 Parliamentary Enclosure Acts, affecting this region more than any other. Large open fields and tracts of ‘waste’ land (heath or common) used for arable farming were divided into small, hedged fields suitable for grazing. In Leicestershire, the agricultural reformer Robert Bakewell experimented with sheep and cattle breeding.

Early industries were dotted about the country, near small settlements and water power. The introduction of steam power led to large-scale production. Matthew Boulton (a business partner of James Watt) started his Soho Works in the country outside Birmingham in 1765. Josiah Wedgwood’s Etruria pottery in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, opened in 1769. Also in the 1760s, Robert Arkwright’s first spinning mill appeared in Nottingham and the Coalbrookdale ironworks in Shropshire were enlarged.

In the 19th century mines, factories, and furnaces covered the landscape. The novelist Charles Dickens described it as a scene from hell, where “tall chimneys … poured out their plague of smoke, obscured the light, and made foul the melancholy air.” By the 1830s, Birmingham had over 2000 slum dwellings. In the second half of the 19th century, reforms to factory conditions and public health and education improved the workers’ lot, but the face of the landscape was changed forever.