The English urban renaissance: The development of provincial urban culturec.1680‐c. 17601

Abstract

The English provincial town in the century or so immediately preceding the Industrial Revolution has remained remarkably unexplored territory. Was it still in the grip of the economic and cultural malaise which many towns are believed to have suffered during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?2 Or was it undergoing some sort of change and revival that may have helped to lay the foundations for the transformation of England into an industrial urban society? Given the present paucity of research, any approach to answering these questions must be made with caution. However, allowing for this proviso, my essay presents a tentative thesis which I hope will help to disturb certain entrenched assumptions about post-Restoration urban society, as well as promote further investigation into the history of the town during this period. The pioneering work of Professor Everitt on the pre-industrial town, and Professor Plumb on the commercialization of leisure, has suggested a fruitful angle from which the problem of the post-Restoration town may be approached: that of the growth and changing nature of its cultural life.3 With this in mind, I have concentrated on the way in which two elements, leisure and luxury, influenced the development of provincial urban culture between the late seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries. In the first half of this essay I sketch in four areas of urban life where these influences were felt: leisure facilities, the economy, public amenities and architecture. This examination suggests that a transformation was occurring in the nature of provincial urban culture, which with some justice could be called an urban renaissance. In the second half of this essay some explanations are offered of why this renaissance took place, of what towns were most likely to benefit from it, and of what social function it fulfilled. I conclude by speculating on a number of ideas raised by this thesis.