A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



were four mills for spinning flax and one for spinning worsted. Darlington 

 prospered by the decay of Barnard Castle's industries. Up to about 1760 

 there was a flourishing worsted manufacturer at this town, but competition 

 tempted the manufacturers to undersell each other at the risk of producing 

 an increasingly inferior article. The result was that they offended their 

 customers and lost the trade. The workmen migrated to Durham, Darling- 

 ton, and elsewhere. 



Probably the decrease in Durham's activity as a manufacturing county 

 has been more apparent than real, as Gateshead, South Shields, Sunderland, 

 Hartlepool, and even Darlington and Stockton, have made large gains in 

 wealth and population during the last century. The failure of inland towns 

 and villages to retain manufactures is largely due to a question of transport. 

 The mediaeval roads that survived to the eighteenth century are described in 

 caustic terms by Arthur Young.^ The first Durham turnpike road dates from 

 1742.^ Between that date and 1751 the principal Durham roads were made, 

 but little was done after 175 i until 1789, when road-making recommenced. 

 Financially the turnpikes were a success, but the gradients in many parts of 

 the county are still very steep. The materials used for repairing the roads are 

 whinstone, limestone, river gravel and freestone, the first being preferred 

 whenever available. Brindley surveyed the Tees valley in 1768 for a canal 

 to link up Darlington and Stockton. Nothing came of it, as it was super- 

 seded by the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825. Canals never came 

 into favour in Durham except so far as the Tyne, Wear, and Tees were all 

 canalized or straightened during the nineteenth century. The favourite 

 method of transport is now the railway, with which Durham is well served. 



Sir John Eden in 1797, Bailey in 18 10, and Mackenzie in 1833, supply a 

 chain of interesting information as to the state of the working classes down to 

 the reform of the Poor Law. The population of Durham increased from about 

 97,000 in 1730 to 135,000 in 1750.* The census of 1801 gives us the first 

 authentic figures, 160,361. In 1821 and 1831 the figures were 207,673 

 and 253,910 respectively. The increase was in the commercial, manufactur- 

 ing, and mining districts. Bailey* points out with glee that in the purely 

 agricultural parishes the population was either stationary or decreasing except 

 where inclosures and improved methods of cultivation were to be found. 

 In the decaying parishes much arable land had been laid under permanent 

 pasture. 



Durham's method in dealing with the indigent and pauper class was no 

 better than that of other counties. The industrial revolution had created an 

 unemployed question in Durham as elsewhere, and unfortunately the character 

 of the justices of the peace was not calculated to produce originality or 

 resource in a difficult situation. Spearman's view is, of course, a prejudiced 

 one and at the most only refers to those of the early eighteenth century, but 

 the clerical and tradesmen justices against whose ignorance and folly he 

 inveighs ^ were to be found after Spearman's time. The Elizabethan Poor 

 Law broke down from sheer maladministration, and it is possible that laziness 



' Bailey says that even in l8io the township or by roads were much neglected and blames the system of 

 statute labour for it. Bailey, Gen. View of Agric. of Dur. 274. 



' From Durham to Yarm and Catterick Bridge. ' Mackenzie and Ross, Hist, of Dur. i, Ixxvii. 



* Op. cit. 333. ^Inquiry, 103. 



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