Sneinton and Me 3 - Graft on the Corporation and Spatial Expansion

 

Burgesses control the land surrounding Nottingham - prevent the outward expansion of the town in order to profit from land values in the town - leads to congestion and squalor - housing starts to appear in parishes at a distance and in Sneinton Parish where it abuts the town for a short distance.

White's Directory for 1832 says that,

'... the population has, during the last 30 years, nearly doubled itself, and the increase would have been much greater if the 12000 acres of burgess pasture land which nearly encompasses the town could have been sold or leased for building purposes. Within the last ten years almost every vacant piece of land that was suitable ... has been built upon.' (1)

Nottingham's open fields remained unenclosed until 1845, in which year the opposition to enclosure by the dominant Whig group on the corporation was broken by the efforts of an enclosure movement led by the Nottingham waterworks engineer Thomas Hawksley (2). Opposition to enclosure was due, in Hawksley's opinion, to the fact that, 

'... several influential members of the corporation are extensive owners of the small houses inhabited by the working classes in the worst conditions districts, [sic] and have repeatedly avowed their hostility to the principles of enclosure under ... the ... impression that their property would sustain permanent injury by the erection of better, more healthy, and more comfortable dwellings on the enclosed lands' (3)

There were two results of this failure to enclose. First, land values in the town rocketed as land became scarce. With the increasing demand for accommodation, congestion in Nottingham reached a point which prompted an investigator of the Health of Towns Commission in 1844 to describe Nottingham's housing situation as the worst in the country. (4) Second, the spatial expansion of the town was arrested, leading to the appearance of new developments outside Nottingham and beyond the fields, as the more prosperous artisans and middle classes sought better conditions in which to live. 

Evidence exists of these effects of the pressure of demand for building land before the turn of the nineteenth century. The Nottingham Journal in 1789 reported a case indicating the lengths to which developers would sometimes go in order to profit from the situation: 

'Within the last few years past, entire lands about this place being very scarce and difficult to obtain, and general increase of inhabitants holding forth a prospect of advantage ... to builders ... some of the closes immediately contiguous to the town have been bought at a very high price, and the purchasers ... have taken the opportunity of building several homes thereupon ... ' (5) 

Prompt retaliation in the form of a committee for the 'vindication of Burgess' rights ensured the demolition of these houses, and no further spatial expansion of the town took place until after enclosure.

In 1796, Benjamin Darker, a needle maker, built a row of thirteen back-to-back houses on the land made available by the Lenton enclosure act of that year, at Sion Hill (now Canning Circus) beyond the Sandfield and in the parish of Radford (6). In the boom years of the 'twenties and 'thirties of the next century, satellite communities grew up at New Radford, New Lenton, Carrington, Hyson Green and New Sneinton. 

Fig.1

New Sneinton differs, however, from the others, and it is perhaps inaccurate to describe it as a satellite community. The other places were satellite communities in that they centred upon villages some distance away from the town and beyond the open fields. White describes the open fields as 'nearly encompassing the town'; the fields did not completely encompass the town because on its eastern side the town bordered upon part of the enclosed land of Sneinton. 

Wood's 'Gas Bill' Map of 1841 (Fig.1) shows very well the  restricting effect of the Nottingham fields, shaded in yellow, and the consequent developments in adjacent parishes.

This situation makes the early development of Sneinton somewhat different from the early development of Hyson Green and the rest.

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Notes

1/ p.75

2/ For more about Mr Hawksley see:

https://whyshistory.blogspot.com/2016/05/whats-your-poison.html?m=0

3/ Quoted by Chapman, op.cit p.156 (Revision)

4 / J R Martin, Second Report of the Health of Towns Commission, appendix, part 2, pp. 249 -257.     quoted ibid p.153)

5/ Sept. 26 1789

6/ Chapman op.cit p.76 (1961)

Wood's Gas Bill Map, 1841: Nottingham City Library, Local Studies Dept.