Between City and Country: New 'Urban' Landscapes of the Industrial Period

Summary

Industrialisation in England is often associated with urbanisation. Yet outside the major conurbations, many industrial settlements retained an essentially rural character. Although they contained ‘urban’ elements such as streets, rows of housing, churches and pubs, these settlements nestled within a predominantly rural landscape, and their inhabitants sustained semi-rural lifestyles – growing food, keeping animals and actively hunting and fishing. Using excavated examples from the East Shropshire Coalfield, this paper will consider the transition from 'rural' to 'urban' and back again and the fluidity of mindsets shifting between work and home. Previous work has focused on urban industrial housing or rural housing of the period: this paper will argue that these settlements form a peri-urban landscape with both 'rural' and 'urban' characteristics, and suggest some theoretical and practical directions to address the research questions such landscapes pose.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• In the City: archaeology and the personal experience of urban transition   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2013

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 537