The Railway Mapping of British Towns

Abstract

The coming of the railways was the greatest instrument of change in the layout and nature of the British nineteenth-century town, not least due to its unusual privilege of being able to acquire property by compulsory purchase. Once a railway proposal had been approved by Parliament, the railway company had a statutory power to purchase any land which lay on its chosen line, subject only to 'limits of deviation' defining the margins of development allowed. Thus, railway companies were in a uniquely privileged position to redraw the map of British townscapes. Although maps of British towns from the middle decades of the nineteenth century all portray railway facilities to a greater or lesser extent, many of them were specifically designed to emphasise the relationship between the development of the railway infrastructure and the town. Much can be learned about railway development and its impact on the townscape from the combined study of maps relating specifically to components of the town railway infrastructure and of large-scale town maps which successively portray transport developments within the urban landscape.