Industrialisation and Urban Growth in North-East England

Abstract

The twin processes of industrialisation and urbanisation lie at the heart of the evolution of modern British society, in North-East England as in other areas of large scale industrial development. Despite the cardinal importance of the interaction between these two processes the relationship is only very imperfectly understood; this weakness is in part due to the limited amount of investigation which has taken place, in part to serious deficiencies in the surviving evidence, and in part to the inherent complexity of the subject. As yet, for example, we have no adequate studies of the major industries of the region, including coal-mining and shipbuilding, while our knowledge of the development of urban communities is very far from complete. In addition much of the archaeological evidence for the older parts of the industrial communities has disappeared, or is disappearing, often without adequate study or record. In these circumstances an essay on the relationship between industrialisation and urbanisation in North-East England must be tentative and limited, and should be seen as an attempt to bring together some of the available material rather than one which offers an explanatory model.