AD 1750-1900 The Industrial Age

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries AD, the agrarian (farming) revolution affected the countryside. Land enclosure, fertilisers and the introduction of machinery made farmers rich but labourers poor. Attempts by agricultural labourers to combine against this were crushed. Six men from the Dorset village of Tolpuddle who formed a union in 1834 (the ‘Tolpuddle martyrs’) were sentenced to 7 years’ transportation.

Bristol, the largest town after London, grew rich on the Atlantic slave trade and the sugar and tobacco industries associated with it. Always turbulent, it experienced rioting in 1831 when the Reform Bill was rejected by the House of Lords. 31 people were sentenced to death, although only 5 were executed. Bristol lost its supremacy as a port to Liverpool in the 1830s, but it became an important terminus in the 1830s and 1840s helped by Brunel’s Great Western Railway. New docks at Avonmouth in 1868 boosted trade.

In the 18th century, Bath had been at the height of its fame as a spa and a centre of fashion. The coastal towns of the South West benefited from the expansion of the Navy and smuggling. In the 19th century railways and better roads brought holidaymakers to their picturesque settings. Brunel’s bridge (1857-9) over the River Tamar at Saltash opened up Cornwall to the holiday industry.