Railways and Rural Development in England and Wales, 1850-1914

Robert M. Schwartz

Mount Holyoke College

South Hadley, Massachusetts

U.S.A.

In a recent presentation on the Sardinian cadastre of 1730, André Palluel-Guillard encouraged historians and historical geographers to apply the methods of Geographic Information Systems (système informatique géographique) to study the oldest land survey of its kind in Europe. With the powerful combination of computer-assisted cartography and data analysis in GIS (SIG), scholars could systematically interrogate known but sometimes neglected sources to yield new, important answers. The sources and technology are in place, he added, all we need now are researchers to begin the work in earnest.[1]

It seems fitting to honor my friend and colleague by responding to his appeal. Although I cannot speak about the Sardinian cadastre and the alpine communities it so richly documents, I can illustrate how GIS methods aid the study of geographic patterns in the past. The patterns to be examined here concern the relationship between the extension of the railway system and the evolution of rural communities in Victorian England. The essay is a report on work in progress, so exploration and initial results, as opposed to full conclusions, will predominate.

To begin the exploration, we shall look first at an example in rural Burgundy. Here the coming of the railway breathed new life into the remote village of Thenissey over several decades, illustrating changes that occurred in many villages where the services and commercial opportunities of an expanding rail system became more or less close at hand. With this micro history as a point of departure, we shall then journey across the channel to consider how the railways of “the first industrial nation” fostered economic development in rural areas of Victorian England and Wales. The shift to England and Wales permits a shift in methods and scale, for GIS (SIG) methods make it is possible to explore patterns of change that affected not one or several but thousands of rural communities in the age of the railway. In this way, we can test the common notion that coming of railways in the countryside hastened the decline of rural communities by breaking open local markets to ruinous national competition and by accelerating a rural exodus in turn. To test this idea we shall examine the alternative possibility, namely that the expansion of rail service into rural areas, by stimulating new commerce and employment, served to hold people in revitalized rural regions. Where these changes took hold the pace of rural out migration diminished. Such revitalization, of course, did not occur in every rural district, just as it did not continue indefinitely, so our aim is to gauge both the geographical and the temporal extent of the inter-relationship between railways and rural development.

Thenissey: Two decades of revitalization in rural Burgundy

In the mid 1840s, news spread among the 500 residents of Thenissey that a rail line linking Paris to Lyon was going to pass through their village. Soon surveyors appeared, followed by hundreds of workmen who prepared the rail bed and laid the track. In June of 1851 the line linking Paris and Dijon was opened in an impressive ceremony in Dijon. The principle honored guest was none other than the new President of the Republic, Louis Napoleon, who came to cut the ribbon and salute the first trains to pass by.[2] Meanwhile, remote and sleepy Thenissey had been transformed. The population grew by 1/3 when the rail workers were there, and even after they left, the village bustled with new business. Women took over the running of farms, freeing their husbands to take up various kinds of commerce, ranging from inn keeping to the sale of hardware brought from elsewhere by rail. As more sons and daughters found work in Thenissey and vicinity, the population grew smartly, a change from the stagnation evident in the late 1840s. All this continued for two decades. Then, a different story began to unfold. Cheap wines from the South of France flooded the market, undercutting Thenissey’s mediocre vintages and setting in motion local economic decline. After the population had reached a peak in 1871, it fell steadily. The cycle of revitalization and decline was completing itself. [3]

England and Wales in the Age of the Railway

How often did this story repeat itself in rural England and Wales? The GIS I have created for to study railways and population change in Victorian England can help provide an answer. It has two components. The first consists of spatial information that describes the rail system at four different dates (1845, 1854, 1876, and 1914) and all census registration districts for each decennial census year from 1851 to 1911.[4] The second component is a database containing non-spatial information about the above geographic features. For each of some 630 registration districts, these attributes—to cite two examples—include the density of rail lines at different dates and the amount of population loss or gain attributable to net migration from one census to another.[5] The joining of the spatial information and the attribute data constitutes the GIS. The analysis can then proceed with the aim of identifying patterns in space and time. To begin let me set the scene and the context.

The Growth of the Rail System

The growth of the rail system in England and Wales was an evocative example of the conquest of space during the industrial era. In the early years of the railway era, contemporaries were awestruck by speeding through the landscape at 25 miles per hours, two or three times the pace of the swiftest horse drawn coach. Writing of his first train journey in 1830, the Reverend Edward Stanley recalled the elation he and his companions felt.

No words can convey an adequate notion of the magnificence ( I cannot use a smaller word ) of our progress. At first it was comparatively slow; but soon we felt that we were GOING, and then it was that every person to whom the conveyance was new, must have been sensible that the adaptation of locomotive power was establishing a fresh era in the state of society.…

The most intense curiosity and excitement prevailed... and ... enormous masses of densely packed people lined the road, shouting and waving hats and handkerchiefs as we flew by them. What with the sight and sound of these cheering multitudes and the tremendous velocity with which we were borne past them, my spirits rose to true champagne height.[6]

As the years wore on and the rail system grew rapidly, many Victorians saw in the railroad the reflected image of the technical and moral progress they so cherished. Samuel Smiles was one notable example. A self-educated man, his many books celebrated the feats of civil and mechanical engineers, and the Victorian virtues their stories embodied. Writing in 1859, he described the railway locomotive, one of their great feats, as nothing less than a moral force for good.

The iron rail proved a magicians' road. The locomotive gave a new celerity to time. It virtually reduced England to a sixth of its size. It brought the country nearer to the town and the town to the country. . . . It energized punctuality, discipline, and attention; and proved a moral teacher by the influence of example.[7]

Not everyone shared such sentiments. Others saw something menacing in the changes ushered in by the iron roads and smoky locomotives. Such were the thoughts of the great poet, William Wordsworth, when he marshaled verse to protect Nature. One year after being named Poet Laureate of England, he campaigned to stop the opening of a line from Kendall to Windermere, at the heart his beloved Lakes District. Dreading the inflow of careless tourists and the noise and smoke of locomotives, he denounced the scheme in a sonnet that appeared in The Morning Post, on October 16, 1844.[8]

Is then no nook of English ground secure

From rash assault? Schemes of retirement sown

In youth, and 'mid the busy world kept pure

As when their earliest flowers of hope were blown,

Must perish;--how can they this blight endure?

And must he too the ruthless change bemoan

Who scorns a false utilitarian lure

'Mid his paternal fields at random thrown?

Baffle the threat, bright Scene, from Orresthead

Given to the pausing traveler’s rapturous glance:

Plead for thy peace, thou beautiful romance

Of nature; and, if human hearts be dead,

Speak, passing winds; ye torrents, with your strong

And constant voice, protest against the wrong.

As with the coming of the industrial age generally, so with the railway, Victorians reacted strongly to the transformation that was occurring around them. But no matter how elegant the protest, the growth of the rail system from the 1840s quickened its pace. The locomotive, powered by capitalism and the relentless search for profitable investments, proved virtually unstoppable.

The pace of growth can be seen in the following figures for nine decades, beginning in 1832. A surge of rail construction in the 1840s ended in the 1850s as many companies went bankrupt and feverish investment all but stopped. After a pause in the early and mid 1850s, construction rose sharply again in the late 1850s and 1860s, continuing thereafter at a gradually slowing rate to the eve of World War I. In the early years railway companies were surprised by the strong but unanticipated growth of passenger traffic because they expected that freight would be the chief source of revenues and profits. As the receipts show, revenue from freight pulled ahead of passenger traffic in 1850s, but both kinds of receipts continued to climb thereafter without interruption.

Table 1. Growth of the Rail System in England and Wales

YEAR	Miles of rail lines open	Passengers Conveyed	Revenue from Passenger traffic in 000s £	Revenue from Freight traffic in 000s £
1832	166
1841	1775
1851	6802
1861	7821	145797	11246	12775
1871	10850	328553	17450	22392
1881	12807	558676	23346	30994
1891	14156	747862	29907	36765
1901	15303	1021179	39609	44895
1911	16200	1188204	46309	53921

Source: adopted from Jack Simmons, The railway in England and Wales, 1830-1914 (Leicester: Leicester University Press,1978), pp. 276-77.

So much for the aggregate trends. What about the geography of rail service as the system expanded on the national scale? And when did rail service become widespread in rural areas?

In its first decades of development, the expanding rail system connected major urban centers and the sites of natural resources required by industrialization. Then, from the late 1860s on, the iron roads began to reach more and more rural districts, as can be seen in Table 2.[9] Composed of data from a five percent random sample of the population in 1861, it displays representative examples of the national pattern. In the rural district of Alton (Hampshire country), for instance, the expansion of the rail network is evident in 1854, 1876, and 1914. A more typical case is that of Rochford in Essex county where the railway arrived in the 1860s and expanded on a modest scale in the decades that followed. By 1876, all rural districts in the sample had some measure of rail service.

Table 2. Railway Development in Sample Registration Districts

Registration District	County	Region	Population 1881	Persons /Km² 1881	Kilometers of rail lines per 1000 Km² area				Rail Stations 1876
Registration District	County	Region	Population 1881	Persons /Km² 1881	1845	1854	1876	1914	Rail Stations 1876
Lexden	Essex	East	21775	72	55	85	103	137	3
Rochford	Essex	East	24406	65	0	0	39	97	2
Forehoe	Norfolk	East	11971	77	0	166	166	166	3
St. Giles	London	London	45382	46295	641	738	738	762	0
Lutterworth	Leicestershire	Midlands	13356	56	65	74	76	132	4
Stamford	Lincolnshire	Midlands	18344	85	0	108	243	260	8
Thrapston	Northamptonshire	Midlands	15115	67	0	56	81	87	5
Wolverhampton	Staffordshire	Midlands	145470	638	24	143	168	168	9
Haltwhistle	Northumberland	Northeast	7902	20	45	90	90	90	7
Northwich	Cheshire	Northwest	44046	174	93	94	189	215	9
Bootle	Cumberland	Northwest	12225	31	0	62	90	90	5
Cockermouth	Cumberland	Northwest	56789	82	15	29	101	113	18
Barton Upon Irwell	Lancashire	Northwest	72815	730	82	174	328	547	13
Haslingden	Lancashire	Northwest	95293	860	0	108	108	167	8
Knaresborough	West Riding	Northwest	22635	137	0	364	177	177	6
Alton	Hampshire	South	15198	60	0	4	61	161	3
Christchurch	Hampshire	South	29455	229	0	48	121	129	3
Ringwood	Hampshire	South	5488	37	0	109	162	158	2
Newton Abbot	Devon	Southwest	74996	154	0	59	102	119	9
Okehampton	Devon	Southwest	16962	32	0	0	53	75	5
Plymouth	Devon	Southwest	73863	14618	0	469	1214	810	1
South Molton	Devon	Southwest	16818	29	0	9	49	57	7
Shaftesbury	Dorset	Southwest	12662	85	0	0	56	63	1
Pwllheli	Carnarvonshire	Wales	22911	60	0	0	43	43	5
Dolgelley	Merionethshire	Wales	15180	24	0	0	86	89	10
Machynlleth	Montgomeryshire	Wales	12517	24	0	0	114	127	12
Cheltenham	Gloucestershire	West	55505	515	14	13	13	234	1
Winchcomb	Gloucestershire	West	9533	41	0	0	11	102	2
Hatfield	Hertfordshire	West	8802	72	0	80	214	214	2
Oswestry	Shropshire	West	27073	81	0	71	149	165	10
Warminster	Wiltshire	West	13840	58	0	9	77	77	3

Source: The Victorian Railway GIS

Mapping the rail lines at four different dates displays the larger patterns of spatial and temporal change for the whole country in a more dramatic way than the table. (See Map 1.) The geography of the system in 1845 and 1854 shows a network that linked major cities, areas rich in coal and iron, and the centers of industrial production such as Manchester and Birmingham. The rise in construction during the 1860s and early 1870s enlarged the network considerably and reached increasingly into hitherto neglected rural areas. By 1876, as the sample figures suggested, there were relatively few rural districts in the whole of England and Wales that lacked a rail connection.

Map 1. Railways in Rural England and Wales, 1854 and 1876

Railways and the Rural Economy

Although there were pockets of resistance to railways in the countryside at the outset, resistance soon gave way to enthusiastic approval. By the 1860s landowners, farmers, and the owners and workers in rural industry found themselves competing to secure new lines and stations for their localities, eager to reap the benefits that the railways afforded. In the development of rural industry, rail transport opened new opportunities to mine natural resources in areas that were previously undeveloped owing to the high cost of transport in remote locations. The stone quarries of Leicestershire, the slate quarries of northern Wales, and the lead mines of Shropshire are three examples.[10] In the eastern Midlands, railways revitalized the mining of iron ore and led to the establishment of smaller centers of iron production in rural Northampton as the larger and older sites in Staffordshire and Derbyshire declined due to the exhaustion of local ores.[11]

In agrarian regions, railways revitalized local agriculture by opening up distant markets and stimulating local production. By the 1870s, thanks to the speed and lowered cost of rail transport, the trade in perishable food was rapidly expanding into new and distant regions to meet the rising demand in growing cities. Fresh vegetables such as peas from Essex and strawberries from Hampshire found there way to eager London tables, as did meat from as far away as Scotland. Railways benefited stock raising by making improved animal feed readily available, and it benefited farming by bringing fertilizing night soil from large cities to farms beyond the limits of horse-drawn carting. In addition, railways fostered viable alternatives to grain growing when the steep fall in grain prices beginning in late 1870s ended the golden age of wheat farming and ushered in an agrarian depression of long duration. The depressed state of arable farming worsened in the 1880s, and the recovery in wheat farming—the sector most affected—made little headway until the first years of the twentieth century.[12] The growth in stock raising and the dead meat trade marked the successful adaptation to new market conditions by some farmers, while others moved into dairy farming to meet the rising urban demand for butter and especially fresh milk. By the late 1870s, a decade or so before modern refrigeration came into general use, milk from Wiltshire and Somerset helped supply the booming London market, and by the turn of the century dairy farms in the West Country (Dorset, Devon, and Gloucestershire), made famous in Thomas Hardy’s novels, and farms in western Wales were also large suppliers of milk for London. Similarly in the North, railways enabled Yorkshire farmers to sale their milk in Leeds, Newcastle, and Liverpool.[13]

If these positive developments helped keep people in rural communities, there were other changes that hastened rural depopulation. The decline of rural isolation through the improved postal service and expanded circulation of newspapers, which the railways did much to advance, meant that rural inhabitants were increasingly aware of the opportunities in towns for employment, higher salaries, and a chance at upward social mobility. Acting on this knowledge and deciding to leave occurred more often among the children of agricultural laborers, for after 1850 the gradual introduction of mechanized reaping, hay making, and threshing reduced the number of jobs for agricultural workers. As farmers responded to falling grain prices by converting arable land to pasture and other expedients, the demand for hired labor was further reduced. Hence, after reaching a peak in 1850, the agricultural labor force fell steadily, declining by 20 to 60 percent or more depending on the area.[14]

Another effect of changing economic markets was a geographic simplification in farming that began in the 1880s, with grazing dominant in the west and grain growing in the east. So as grain prices remained low until the turn of the century, the drift from the land in the eastern counties of Norfolk, Essex, Suffolk, and Lincolnshire was quite extensive.[15] Meanwhile, in the midland and western counties, the widespread shift to grazing encouraged migration also because of the reduced labor requirements in dairy farming and stock raising.

Although the drift from the land in rural districts as a whole was continuous throughout the period from 1851 to 1911, the level of out migration varied by decade, accelerating in the 1870s and 1880s and then subsiding gradually in 1890s and sharply in the first decade of the twentieth century to reach a period low. In 1911, the population of rural districts in England and Wales had decreased by about one-half since 1850. (See Table 3.)

Table 3. Percentage Change in the Population of Rural Registration Districts due to Net Migration, 1851-1911

Decade	No. of Districts	Mean Percent	Median Percent	Minimum Percent	Maximum Percent	Standard Deviation.
1851-61	373	-9.32	-10.83	-22.08	45.05	6.97
1861-71	362	-8.75	-10.74	-38.95	50.34	8.240
1871-81	355	-10.85	-12.11	-22.62	20.16	6.41
1881-91	342	-10.89	-12.14	-31.50	38.42	5.76
1891-1901	322	-10.14	-10.43	-54.75	38.45	7.82
1901-11	312	-4.76	-5.87	-23.38	54.95	6.80

Source : The Victorian Railway GIS

Map 2. Percent Population Change due to Net Migration, 1861-1901

As the level of rural out migration rose and subsided over the years, it also varied greatly by region, as the following maps shows for 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s. (See Map 2.) The impact and adjustments associated with the agrarian depression are visible in the maps for the 1870s and 1880s. In the 1870s, the Eastern counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex were already experiencing high rates of out migration as were the other farming areas of Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Somerset, and Devon (See Map 3). In other regions, high rates were more dispersed, touching certain districts of Lincolnshire, West Riding Yorkshire, and Northumberland in the eastern half of the country and a few scattered districts in Herefordshire and central Wales in the west. In still other regions, clusters of districts experienced lower than average rates of out migration; in a few, the population grew as more migrants arrived than left. In both cases, these “privileged” areas enjoyed relative demographic stability, indicating the rural population’s ability to weather the storm and adjust to shifting economic forces. Notable in this respect were certain districts in Lincolnshire, northern and peninsular Wales, and coastal Sussex.

In the 1880s, the areas of high out migration in the 1870s continued to loose population, but the regions sutaining the heaviest losses shifted to include larger parts of Lincolnshire, North Riding Yorkshire, and, above all Shropshire and central and northern Wales in the West. In the South and Midlands, a band of districts running northeasterly from Shaftsbury in Dorset to Daventry in Northampton, and another running southeasterly from Melton Mowebray in Leicestershire to Maldon in Essex sustained large losses as well. As in the 1870s, so in the 1880s districts with lower than average rates of out migration were scattered, as we can see along the southern edge of Hampshire and Sussex and the coast of Essex. In the interior, a group of districts in the extended hinterland of Birmingham, with a marked concentration around Stratford on Avon, suggests that the provisioning of this industrial center anchored a solid rural economy in the surrounding region.

The geographic pattern of the 1890s shows a mixture of continuity and change from the previous decade. Intense and concentrated depopulation persisted in the districts clustered around Woodstock in Oxfordshire and St. Ives in Huntingdonshire, while it spread anew in an arc running through Suffolk and Norfolk, reflecting the continuing hard times in eastern regions where farmers clung to grain growing while reducing their labor force through the use of machinery and the conversion of some arable to pasture. In the West Country, some concentrated losses occurred in the interior of Devon and parts of Somerset and Dorset, while in the North Riding of Yorkshire a similar concentration existed. Elsewhere in the North, in eastern Wales, and in southeastern Sussex and Kent high rates of out migration occurred in few, scattered districts.

Map 3. Counties of England and Wales

But in many other parts of the countryside, the 1890s saw the return to greater demographic stability as out migration began to diminish. After decades of increasing depopulation, the degree of stability reached in central and northern Wales stands out as rather remarkable. The campaign to modernize central Wales through the development of Welsh railways appears to have had the desired effect.[16]

Railways and Rural Depopulation

We can now turn to the question of central interest: how was the coming of railways in rural England and Wales related to rural population change? In the face of widespread and continuing depopulation, where and to what extent did railways stimulate economic opportunities sufficient to slow the drift from the countryside?

Table 4. Railways and Population Change from Net Migration in Sampled Rural Districts

Registration District	County	Region	Population 1881	Persons /Km² 1881	Kilometers of rail lines per 1000 Km² area		Rail Stations	Population Change due to Net Migration 1871-1881
Registration District	County	Region	Population 1881	Persons /Km² 1881	1854	1876	Rail Stations	Number	Percent change
Lexden	Essex	East	21775	72	85	103	3	-5157	-21
Rochford	Essex	East	24406	65	0	39	2	-425	-2
Forehoe	Norfolk	East	11971	77	166	166	3	-1540	-13
St. Giles	London	London	45382	46295	738	738	0	-7684	-15
Lutterworth	Leicestershire	Midlands	13356	56	74	76	4	-1843	-13
Stamford	Lincolnshire	Midlands	18344	85	108	243	8	-1358	-8
Thrapston	Northamptonshire	Midlands	15115	67	56	81	5	-1378	-10
Wolverhampton	Staffordshire	Midlands	145470	638	143	168	9	-11227	-8
Haltwhistle	Northumberland	Northeast	7902	20	90	90	7	-227	-3
Northwich	Cheshire	Northwest	44046	174	94	189	9	-813	-2
Bootle	Cumberland	Northwest	12225	31	62	90	5	1192	14
Cockermouth	Cumberland	Northwest	56789	82	29	101	18	1039	2
Barton Upon Irwell	Lancashire	Northwest	72815	730	174	328	13	8166	16
Haslingden	Lancashire	Northwest	95293	860	108	108	8	1588	2
Knaresborough	West Riding	Northwest	22635	137	364	177	6	783	4
Alton	Hampshire	South	15198	60	4	61	3	-1902	-13
Christchurch	Hampshire	South	29455	229	48	121	3	7828	49
Ringwood	Hampshire	South	5488	37	109	162	2	-462	-8
Newton Abbot	Devon	Southwest	74996	154	59	102	9	-1426	-2
Okehampton	Devon	Southwest	16962	32	0	53	5	-3563	-19
Plymouth	Devon	Southwest	73863	14618	469	1214	1	-1743	-3
South Molton	Devon	Southwest	16818	29	9	49	7	-3073	-19
Shaftesbury	Dorset	Southwest	12662	85	0	56	1	-2091	-14
Pwllheli	Carnarvonshire	Wales	22911	60	0	43	5	-439	-2
Dolgelley	Merionethshire	Wales	15180	24	0	86	10	-628	-4
Machynlleth	Montgomeryshire	Wales	12517	24	0	114	12	-1758	-13
Cheltenham	Gloucestershire	West	55505	515	13	13	1	-2812	-5
Winchcomb	Gloucestershire	West	9533	41	0	11	2	-1686	-16
Hatfield	Hertfordshire	West	8802	72	80	214	2	-1032	-12
Oswestry	Shropshire	West	27073	81	71	149	10	-2783	-10
Warminster	Wiltshire	West	13840	58	9	77	3	-2452	-16

Source: The Victorian Railway GIS

For the 1870s, the evidence in the GIS shows that lower levels of rural depopulation tended to occur in districts that were relatively well served by rail transport. One indication of this relationship can be seen in Table 4 and Map 4. Both suggest that population loss from migration varied with the number of rail stations: the greater the number of stations, the lower the rate of out migration. This tendency is pronounced in the eastern counties and Lincolnshire, in the Southwest, and in central Wales. In Stamford (Lincolnshire), for example, an 8 percent decline due to out migration took place in a district served by 8 stations. This was a modest decrease compared to the 21 percent decline in Lexden (Essex) district where there were only 3 stations. (See Table 4.) Not surprisingly, some cases did not conform as well to this pattern. South Molton in Devon is one example (19 percent decline and 7 stations), while two contrasting districts in Wales exhibit the range of variation that occurred across the country and even between two neighboring districts. In Dolgelley a loss of 4 percent was paired with 10 stations, whereas in Machynlleth to the south, a steeper decline of 13 percent occurred in a district with a dozen stations. These departures from a tight correlation remind us that depopulation was affected by many factors. Economic factors at work included the degree of well-being or hardship, the demand for labor in relation to the size of the labor force, the chief activity of the local economy (grain growing, stock raising, dairy farming, mining, mixed, etc.), the proximity to towns with employment possibilities, and so forth. Lacking data of these kinds, we can go forward, knowing that the results of our analysis will reflect the limitations of the evidence.

Map4. Percent Population Change due to Migration (1871-81) and Railways Stations (1876)

To gauge the economic stimulus that railways carried into the countryside, the number of rail stations in a rural registration district seems a good measure. After all, rail stations not only offered passenger service but, more importantly for our purposes, they served as commercial hubs of the local economy. Just as products for local consumption were off loaded and stored near the station, so the products for sale elsewhere were brought to this hub for rail shipment to other distant markets.

In addition to stations themselves, the economic effect of rail transport depended upon the volume of rail traffic and the size of the rail network in a given district. A district with a junction connecting main trunk lines with numerous branches was a central node in the network, as compared to the district of Kingsbridge in southern Devon where the inhabitants made due with a single station at the end of a local line. To approximate such differences in scale, we can add to the number of stations a second component, namely rail density (kilometers of track per 1000 square kilometers of area). This measure fails to capture the volume of traffic across main lines and branches, but until further research is completed it will have to suffice.

Another factor to consider is remoteness. As the opening story of Thenissey serves to remind us, the revitalization there involved the integration of a formerly remote village into the regional economy and larger transport network. As in Thenissey, so across the Channel, remote communities were apt to enjoy greater benefit from the coming of rail transport than those already well connected to urban markets by virtue of their proximity to major towns. By using the powerful spatial functions of GIS, our analysis will distinguish two groups of rural districts: those adjacent to a major town, and those that lay farther a field.[17]

When it comes to estimating economic well being or distress, we must once again make do with an imperfect indicator: county marriage rates in 1870. For the bulk of the population the decision and ability to wed was strongly related to prevailing economic conditions. When times were good, the wedding bells rang out often; when times were bad, they rang out rarely .[18] But because county marriage rates substitute the county average in place of the specific rate for each district, they serve only to index the degree of regional prosperity as opposed to the degree extant in localities. With these numerous qualifications in mind we can turn to the statistical results.

To a modest but significant degree railways went hand in hand with lower levels of rural out migration. Table 5 summarizes the findings for the decade 1871 to 1881. In this decade across 338 rural districts (those with fewer than 100 persons per square kilometer), approximately 13 percent of the variation in net migration is attributable to the combined effects of four variables: the number of rail stations, the density of rail lines, the country marriage rate, and remoteness from a major town.

Table 5. Regression Analysis of Percentage Population from Net Migration, 1871-1881

Variable	Coefficients	t Statistic	Probability	Standardized coefficients
Intercept	-22.7780	-8.5	.000000
Number of rail stations in 1876	.3050	3.1	.0021	.17
Rail Density in 1876	.0183	2.5	.0122	.13
County marriage rate in 1870	1.1356	3.1	.0021	.16
Remoteness	2.9209	2.84	.0048	.15

Statistics for the regression: R= .36 R²= .13

The standardized coefficients indicate the relative strength and nature of the relationship between net migration and each variable. These figures tell us that population loss (or gain) depended more or less equally on the extent of rail service as on the two other variables.

Although the explanatory power of the model is modest and reflects the limitations of our crude variables, the results are nonetheless interesting and important. By and large, existing studies of railways, of rural history, and of migration fail to examine the relationship between the advent of rail transport and rural development in a broad and systematic fashion. Case studies rich in local detail seem to treat the problem of railways and rural development either in passing or not at all, a characteristic one finds in studies of migration as well.[19] As this essay attempts to show, the application of GIS methods opens new ways of investigating new as well as old questions while drawing needed attention to the geography of historical change. Applying the methods in this case calls attention to a neglected problem and leads to a conclusion that further research can refine and strengthen. The extent to which rural communities in Victorian England and Wales were able to adjust to changing economic pressures depended in part on the degree of their integration in the rail transport network.

The tendency for lower levels of rural depopulation to occur in areas with greater rail service took root in the late 1860s and strengthened in 1870s, as the rural rail network grew rapidly. To continue the analysis into 1880s and beyond will require additional data on rail stations, rail density, and other economic measures for the respective periods. If we throw caution aside and carry forward the model and data for 1870s, the imperfect results point to a reoccurrence of the Thenissey experience. In the 1880s, the revitalizing effects of railways in the English and Welsh countryside waned.[20] This waning needs to be seen in the context of the decade’s worsening agrarian depression that accelerated the rate of out migration in the areas that were most affected. Under these circumstances, railways possibly conveyed a growing number of those who left to destinations that previous generations reached almost exclusively on foot. To get a sense of this changed situation let us conclude the journey we began in the Burgundian village of Thenissey in rural Devonshire with a local example.

A counterpart to Thenissey was the district of Kingsbridge in southern Devon. There in 1910, farmers and businessmen had their choice of six trains a day to make the 12 mile trip to the junction at Brent. From Brent they could make the short trip to the bustling town of Newton Abbot. Or they could go to the great seaport of Bristol and from there to London. With luck and good connections, they could leave Kingsbridge at 8 in the morning and arrive in London in time for afternoon tea at 3:30. For a family holiday or day’s excursion, they could take the early morning train to Brighton and spend the day at the famous pier. Their older sons and daughters who sought excitement or work on their own could travel to Brent, Tauton, or Newton Abbot in short order and everyday but Sunday when a motor coach provided limited service. In the first decade of the twentieth century, this new ease of travel for work or leisure helped keep more young women and men in Kingsbridge than was true of the previous half century, both during the 1850s and 1860s before the branch line arrived and during the first decades of its existence (1870s, 1880s, and 1890s). More than likely, the fewer young women and men who left from 1901 to 1911 did not follow the footsteps of their forbearers by making their way on foot. Instead they left by train.[21] La plus ça change, la plus ça change.

GIS Sources and Acknowledgements

This essay is based on the Victorian Railway GIS that I am developing at Mount Holyoke College. Some components come from The Great Britain Historical GIS and include the boundary files for the census registration districts and the demographic information on population, population density, and net migration from 1851 to 1911. The demographic information comes from the British decennial census. Data for the railways were constructed from maps. The rail lines for 1845, 1855, and 1914 were digitized from the map at the end of Jack Simmon’s book, The Railway in England and Wales 1830-1914 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1978). The lines and stations for 1876 come from the 24 sheets of large scale Railway and Station Map of England and Wales (London: Edward Stanford, 1876.). The statistics on rail density and the number of stations were constructed in the GIS by using the registration district boundaries to derive counts of stations and lengths of rail line for each district. I wish to thank Humphrey Southall and Ian Gregory of the Geography Department at the University of Portsmouth for allowing me to use data from The Great Britain Historical GIS, a pioneering achievement now housed at the University of Portsmouth. To my knowledge, this is one of the largest and most advanced collections of historical GIS data in Europe. For details on the project, in addition to their article cited in the notes, one can explore the web site at http://www.geog.port.ac.uk/gbhgis/ .

In addition to Humphrey Southall and Ian Gregory, I especially want to thank Jon Caris of Mount Holyoke College for his continuing assistance with the GIS and Frederick Musto, curator of the Yale Map Collection, for introducing me to the marvels of the collection and to the Stanford sheet maps in particular. I also want to acknowledge the assistance of many students who have worked on the project: Jennifer Gieseking digitized the maps from the Simmons book; Lindsey Hotchkies did the more arduous work for all 24 sheets of the Stanford collection; Michelle McCutcheon, Kimberly McMahon, Mikaila Arthur, and Rebecca Perkins provided much additional assistance with the data for the GIS. A Faculty Grant from Mount Holyoke College and a grant from the Multimedia Access Project of the Five College Consortium provided financial support.