Exploring British Villages

Page 5 of 7

• 1. What is a Village?
• 2. The Medieval Village
• 3. Village Change in the Post-Medieval Period
• 4. Planned & Estate Villages
• 5. 'Industrial' Villages
• 6. Become a Village Detective
• 7. Find out more
• Print entire article

'Industrial' Villages

Industrial villages are villages in every sense of the word, but are not necessarily rural or agricultural. They are centred on one or other industries such as fishing, mining or quarrying, and tend to have been influenced by the arrival of turnpike roads, canals, or the railway. For example, Etruria in Staffordshire was established by Josiah Wedgwood as the location for his ceramics business and workers village as it was at the junction of the canal and turnpike road for easy delivery of clay and coal.

Even the most rural villages had some industrial units within them (think of the corn mill, the blacksmith's forge, the clog-maker's workshop, the charcoal burners who coppiced the woods), but industrial villages are those that tend to be dominated by one industry, and most developed their essential character in the 19th century with the advent of mass production and mechanised agriculture.

Many industrial villages were developments of existing communities, and a few were newly established villages built specifically for particular mills, factories or mines. These new villages tend to share the characteristics of more 'complex' villages that have developed organically over the centuries, as by the 18th century it was recognised that successful communities were those that had good local communal facilities.

Tiny hamlets blossomed into large villages with the advent of the railway and the ease of transportation of goods. The Industrial Revolution was fuelled by coal, so coal-mining villages sprung up around Britain wherever viable coal seams were found. Slates became the universal roofing material in the late 19th century, and as the hardest slate is found in North Wales, villages grew around the quarries that produced these roof tiles. Sometimes housing was built by speculative developers, but in several cases the mine quarry or factory owners built the accommodation themselves and then rented it to their worker tenants. In these circumstances the industrial entrepreneurs controlled their staff inside and outside the workplace.

Most planned industrial villages had their heyday in the period 1850-1900. A famous example is Saltaire on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors where Sir Titus Salt established a community around a massive mill. This novel village follows a grid pattern and had a church, chapel, almshouses, a communal laundry as well as school and dining rooms for the workers. It didn't have any public houses or pawnshops, and thus Sir Titus Salt (who vainly named the village after himself – it sits on the River Aire) felt he was controlling the physical and moral well-being of his workers. It was Saltaire that inspired the famous model village of Bourneville built by the Cadbury family, and Port Sunlight built by Lever Brothers on Merseyside.

Examples of industrial 'villages'

• Saltaire in Yorkshire
• Cwmystwyth (lead mining) in Ceredigion
• Newlyn (fishing) in Cornwall
• Rocester in Staffordshire
• Etruria in Staffordshire

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