A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE 



industry in the making up of the foreign plaits into hats and bonnets, and 

 this has — though with some difference of incidence — more than supplied 

 the place of the local plaiting. The pillow-lace industry had already, before 

 the 19th century opened, been crippled by the introduction of machine- 

 made lace ; but during the first half of the century it continued to occupy 

 many villages; and though it now scarcely deserves to count as a local 

 industry, it still lingers in many places. One institution to which it gave 

 rise in its prosperity was of worse than doubtful advantage to the people. 

 The so-called ' Lace Schools ' gave to the children a miserable minimum of 

 genuine school education, but, on the other hand, kept them from early 

 infancy straining over their lace-pillows for many hours each day, generally 

 in small ill-ventilated rooms. Even had the decline of the lace industry not 

 made those schools unnecessary, the schools would have been suppressed or 

 radically modified under our improved educational and sanitary regulations. 



Very conspicuous improvement took place during the century, and 

 especially during the second half of it, in the housing of the people in the 

 villages. There remain a few good specimens of cottages dating from the 

 17th, and even in part from the i6th centuries ; but many of those that 

 were in use at the end of the i8th and beginning of the 19th were small 

 unhealthy erections of 'wattle and daub,' and some of these may yet be 

 found. In the northern part of the county, where the oolite crops out, 

 building stone is available ; but almost everywhere else brick is used. Im- 

 provements in cottage-building were begun in the latter part of the 1 8th 

 century by such men as the Dukes of Bedford, the Whitbreads, John 

 Howard (the philanthropist), and others ; but most of the better cottages 

 belong to the second half of the 19th century. The decrease in the rural 

 population has in many villages prevented compulsory over-crowding, and 

 has here and there left good dwellings vacant ; but there are even now 

 villages to be found in which the accommodation, though good in quality, 

 is deficient in quantity, and the young people are thereby either driven away 

 or prevented from marrying for lack of house accommodation. Slums, 

 unfortunately, are not altogether unknown in villages, and though small in 

 extent are in some cases quite as objectionable as any to be found in towns. 



There was little left for the 19th century to supply in the matter of 

 high-roads, and that little has long since been supplied. The midland situa- 

 tion of the county makes it a thoroughfare from London to the north, and 

 from the eastern counties to the western; thus good roads are a necessity for 

 much more than local convenience. The completion of the Grand Junction 

 Canal, a little more than a century ago, was of considerable advantage to the 

 western parts of the county, until the railway superseded water traffic ; and 

 the Ouse continued far into the century to be the great highway along which 

 coal and other heavy merchandise was brought through the ports of Lynn 

 and Yarmouth. 



In agriculture, the county has kept well abreast of the times, and has 

 made more progress than has been made during the same period by some 

 other counties. The great landowners have generally been men of public 

 spirit and intelligence, in some cases exceptionally so, and their efforts to 

 encourage progressive methods of husbandry have been well seconded by a 

 good number of enterprising and experienced tenant farmers. Agricultural 



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