Daunton M. The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Volume 3: 1840-1950
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opposite direction. The advent of the electric tram reduced marginally the
amount of horse droppings. More important was the introduction of surface
dressings. Granite setts were noisy, slippery and difficult to wash down, so they
represented a pollution problem. Wood paving was tried but was also criticised
for being slippery and because of its porosity it did not improve the insanitary
conditions. As a result of the unsatisfactory nature of these road conditions, in
the City of London experimented with compressed mastic asphalt in
Threadneedle Street.
83
This had the advantage of reducing noise substantially,
as well as providing an impermeable surface which was easy to wash down and
so reduced the fly and droppings problem. Despite new road building, traffic
jams continued and worsened, so that the Building News of could talk of
‘the daily deadlock from forenoon to evening’ on London Bridge and its
approaches.
84
Crime and civil disturbance seemed to be worse in the cities than
the rural areas. Air quality, with domestic coal fires adding to the smoke and
specks of steam engine boilers, was poor and in windless conditions could be
appalling.
85
In addition, as commercial activities increased the merchants, retail-
ers and offices needed additional space, and hence moved into previously resi-
dential districts often bidding up the rents, making it too expensive for domestic
use.
86
Thus the urban middle classes looked for more salubrious surroundings
and secured them in the suburbs. Here they found cleaner air – especially if
they moved westward and hence upwind of the prevailing airstream – more
space and perhaps a neat garden, which aped in miniature the upper-class estate,
some protection from disease, dirt and crime and a greater degree of privacy.
The ‘vulnerable’ wife and children were placed in safety, leaving the ‘stronger’
patriarch to do battle daily with the corrupting city. Thus was the Victorian
patriarchal family preserved.
The ability of the middle classes to afford both the cost of transport and the
extra time taken was important. For the upper middle class initially this might
well take the form of a private carriage and hence the construction of a new
turnpike road might lead to the building of suburban villas with stabling
attached. This was what Simpson found in the West End of Glasgow.
87
Here the
construction of the Great Western Road as a turnpike in the early s was
ahead of residential development and led to a boom in house building of the
substantial sort with stables. This move was emulated at a later date by the lower
middle classes. The Highbury New Park estate in north London, developed
from the s, was intended for middle-class commuters to the City. It was built
in the expectation that residents would use their own carriage or the North
London Railway from Canonbury to Fenchurch Street, or from Broad
John Armstrong
83
Earle, Black Top, p. .
84
D. J. Olsen, The Growth of Victorian London (London, ), pp. –.
85
H. T. Bernstein, ‘The mysterious disappearance of Edwardian London fog’, LJ, (), –.
86
Dyos, ‘Workmen’s fares’, ; Ochojna, ‘The influence’, .
87
Simpson, ‘Urban transport’, .
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Street, at a first-class fare of d.
88
This was obviously aimed at upper-middle-
class occupants. As white-collar jobs proliferated with the growth of the service
sector, especially central and local government employment, retailing and cler-
ical and administrative posts, so more workers became salaried with a greater
security and regularity of payment and status. Thus the Pooters, so scathingly
portrayed, were not atypical in their search for material refinement,
89
he using
the bus to travel to the City,
90
although their son for a while aspired to a pony
and trap.
91
Emulation of the values of their ‘social superiors’ was a strong spur to
moving from the city centres.
Such moves were facilitated by the construction and extension of horse-
drawn and electric trams but there is some debate over how far these and other
transport systems, such as motor buses in the early twentieth century and the
underground railways in London, were causal of urbanisation and how far they
were a response to it. H. J. Dyos, for example, in his pioneering study of the
development of Victorian Camberwell
92
was unable to be certain of the contri-
bution of transport to the growth of particular neighbourhoods. Although he
devotes some space to explaining the development of transport facilities to the
area,
93
he has to conclude rather lamely that ‘few daily travellers can have been
totally indifferent to the length and cost of the journey to work’.
94
Similarly,
Thompson’s study of Hampstead places no great importance on the develop-
ment of public transport systems as a causal factor in its growth.
95
To demon-
strate that this was not solely a metropolitan feature, Simpson’s study of Glasgow’s
West End can be cited. He states: ‘most forms of transport followed rather than
led suburban development’ and ‘in no case did either [tramways and railways]
build lines and stations ahead of substantial urban growth, and termini were
always located behind the western edge of the development area’.
96
As Donald
Olsen said of John Kellett’s major study of five cities, ‘railway extensions usually
followed rather than preceded suburban development, and at best served to rein-
force population movements already in progress’.
97
This view can be bolstered
by consideration of the motivation of private transport businesses. Such firms
wished to provide services only where there was a high probability of a substan-
tial traffic to generate ample revenue and hence profits. This was likely where
there was already residential development, while the opposite was true of cur-
rently unsettled areas. Even where the tram or tube was operated by a local
authority the same rule applied, for the municipalities saw such activities as partly
a service to the electorate but also as a contributor of surpluses which kept down
the level of the rates and ensured their re-election. Richard Dennis concluded
Transport and the urban environment
88
T. Hinchcliffe, ‘Highbury New Park: a nineteenth-century middle class suburb’, LJ, (),
–.
89
George and Weedon Grossmith, The Diary of a Nobody (London, ).
90
Ibid., p. .
91
Ibid., p. .
92
H. J. Dyos, Victorian Suburb (Leicester, ).
93
Ibid., pp. –.
94
Ibid., p. .
95
F. M. L. Thompson, Hampstead (London, ).
96
Simpson, ‘Urban transport’, .
97
Olsen, Growth, p. .
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
that transport extensions were probably not causal, but rather that for the average
worker rising expectations of housing, combined with decreasing quantities of
suitable residential property in the centre, obliged them to undertake longer
journeys to work.
98
In this view transport responded to other moves for a shift
to suburbia and then facilitated its furtherance. G. C. Dickinson and C. J.
Longley believed that the combination of electrification and municipalisation of
the tramways led to ‘the breakthrough to cheap popular fares’, so that by
d. fares, affordable by the average workingman, were giving miles (. km)
of travel in the larger cities.
99
What is more difficult to estimate is the extent to
which the proximity of a tramline led builders to construct housing in the antici-
pation that the tramway would be extended once the traffic justified it. In some
cases the combination of existing forms of transport plus anticipated develop-
ments in them was enough to encourage house building. Thus the White Hart
Lane estate in north London was built gradually between and by the
LCC as it was within walking distance of two Great Eastern railway stations
offering workmen’s fares, there were cheap trams in nearby Tottenham High
Road, and a tube was projected – the North-East London Railway.
100
The pro-
vision of electric trams also acted as a spur to improving the railway service for
commuters, for electric trams were often more frequent and cheaper than the
mainline railways. In Newcastle, for example, within a year of the corporation
operating electric trams the North-Eastern Railway (NER) lost about million
short-distance passenger journeys. As a result the NER began electrification of
its suburban lines, especially to the coast at Whitley Bay and Monkseaton, so
encouraging the growth of these towns as dormitories for Newcastle.
101
(v)
As well as having an effect on the size and scale of towns, transport modes had
an impact on the shape of urban centres. They did this directly in their demand
for space within the urban environment. The building of new roads or the wid-
ening and improvement of existing ones required land and usually that meant
the demolition of some of the buildings on it. To minimise cost and objections
it made sense to drive such ‘improvements’ through low quality housing where
it could be claimed that the road was sweeping away unhygienic slums contain-
ing criminals and beggars.
102
Thus Victoria Street, New Oxford Street and
John Armstrong
198
Dennis, English Industrial Cities, p. .
199
Kellett, ‘Municipal socialism’, –; G. C. Dickinson and C. J. Longley, ‘The coming of cheap
transport – study of tramway fares on municipal systems in British provincial towns, –’,
Transport History, (), –.
100
R. Thorne, ‘The White Hart Lane estate: an LCC venture in suburban development’, LJ,
(), –.
101
K. Hoole, ‘Railway electrification on Tyneside, –’, Transport History, (), –.
102
Olsen, Growth, p. .
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Regent Street all demolished rookeries and slums.
103
Patricia Malcolmson,
examining some notorious areas of west London in the middle of the century,
found many occupants had migrated there from the slum clearances accompa-
nying the construction of Drury Lane, Strand and New Oxford Street.
104
A
similar effect was felt by the vast amount of railway building. The tracks required
a swathe of land and the stations and termini compounded this greed for ground.
Michael Robbins has calculated that there were fifteen termini and about
mainline stations in London.
105
Dyos, in a pioneering article, claimed there were
about seventy railway schemes between and which displaced about
, people in London alone.
106
At the same time, he estimated, a further
, people were displaced in London for road improvement and dock exten-
sion schemes.
107
Henry Binford in a study of the Charing Cross Railway, shows
that this mile (. km) railway required the acquisition of several hundred
houses containing between , and , people. The estimates of Dyos are
probably minimum levels for London. If the rest of the country could be
included, the numbers would rise appreciably.
The effect of these clearances is still disputed. The view of the transport firms
was that they were helping to clear squalid sinks of iniquity, and that those dis-
placed could move to the healthier suburbs. As Dyos has argued, there is an alter-
native view.
108
As a result of road and railway construction overcrowding
increased in adjoining areas and the lower supply of houses bid up the rents
which had to be paid, worsening the situation of the lowest classes. This is to be
explained by the large amount of casual labour which militated against workers
living far from their place of work, as well as the cost and time involved in
commuting.
The impact on the towns was dramatic. Not only did railway companies
become among the larger urban landowners, but the railways altered the status
and value of the land through which they passed. Land located immediately adja-
cent to railway viaducts, goods yards and stations was affected by the noise,
smoke and traffic congestion so that it was often dominated by less salubrious
trades and dwellings. Elsewhere, proximity to a railway station pushed up land
values and hence rentals. The railway lines became boundaries, defining neigh-
bourhoods or zones with different social status. The phrase ‘to be born on the
wrong side of the tracks’ came into common usage. François Bédarida, in his
study of Poplar, showed how docks, canals and railways cut the area into ‘tiny
Transport and the urban environment
103
H. J. Dyos, ‘Urban transformation: a note on the objects of street improvement in Regency and
early Victorian London’, International Review of Social History, (), –.
104
Malcolmson, ‘Getting a living’, .
105
M. Robbins, ‘London railway stations’, LJ, (), .
106
Dyos, ‘Railways and housing’, .
107
H. J. Dyos, ‘Some social costs of railway building in London’, Journal of Transport History, new
series, (), .
108
Dyos, ‘Railways and housing’, –.
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neighbourhood units isolated from each other by these major physical obsta-
cles’.
109
He believed this had the effect of strengthening solidarity within these
separate areas so that they became more cohesive and mutually supporting.
However, outsiders were objects of suspicion and resentment. The persistence
of transport lines as boundaries in this area was shown after when school
board blocks were defined by the lines of the railways and canals. Daunton,
looking at Cardiff, found that the Great Western, Taff Vale and Rhymney
Railways cut the city up into districts, which were separate in character and some
of which, such as Cathays and Splott, were socially cohesive.
110
New road building had a similar importance. These new wide thoroughfares
were lined by the most fashionable shops built in the most splendid architectu-
ral style allowing the middle classes to shop and move between home and office
or theatres, shops and other fashionable areas. However, behind these grand
façades the courts, alleys and tenements often continued to exist so that the new
thoroughfares became lines of security for the middle classes allowing them to
travel without having their sensibilities affected by the squalid conditions of the
majority of the workers. In this way they were encouraged to ignore the social
problems which seethed a stone’s throw from their secure route. The railways
had the opposite effect. By cutting through working-class districts they forced
their passengers to contemplate the meanness and squalor. By carrying travellers
at roof top level on viaducts they gave them a panoramic view of mean back
yards, crowded cottages and squalid settlements. Thus the middle-class traveller
– the MP shuttling between his constituency and the Palace of Westminster, the
judge out on the circuit, the scholar returning to his university – had to acknowl-
edge the problem and was persuaded of the need for action.
111
Transport improvements also had an impact on the aesthetics and feel of the
city. New roads, as already explained, provided secure access between fashion-
able parts of the city to the middle class and hence raised status and prestige. The
railways were much more visually intrusive with their viaducts, embankments
and bridges cutting across the visual landscapes. Some of Gustav Doré’s prints
demonstrate this clearly with the railway running across the centre of the print,
elevated and very evident, like an idol or deity. As Olsen has put it, the new
transport systems ‘represented the most startling novelties in the [urban] envi-
ronment. They contributed not only visual shocks but movement, unfamiliar
noises and smells, and altered both the pace and rhythm of urban life.’
112
The
trams were little less dramatic taking up the middle of the road with their tracks
and imposing a discipline on parking habits. This was compounded by
electrification when poles and wires, well above eye level and therefore visible
John Armstrong
109
F. Bédarida, ‘Urban growth and social structure in nineteenth-century Poplar’, LJ, (), .
110
Daunton, Coal Metropolis, pp. –.
111
J. R. Kellett, Railways and Victorian Cities (London, ), pp. –.
112
Olsen, Growth, p. .
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
from some distance, festooned the city’s main streets. By comparison the tubes,
hidden underground, intruded much less.
Transport systems also had an architectural presence in the town. The most
grandiose and visual were the railway companies’ mainline termini. These were
far more than functional. Some, such as Charing Cross, employed the associated
hotel as a classical façade to hide the less attractive business end. Others, such as
Euston or St Pancras, were ornate, demonstrating the wealth, power and pres-
tige of the railway company.
113
The Doric arch at Euston was particularly sym-
bolic, denoting the victory of the railway company in its struggle over
opposition, and the towers on some stations indicated the soaring aspirations of
an arriviste industry in its search for respect and prestige.
114
As Geoffrey Channon
has shown, London termini were not necessarily built for sound economic
reasons but for prestige and ‘political’ purposes.
115
They were often ‘monuments
to the self confidence, determination and pugnacity of their builders’.
116
As
Robbins has reminded us, stations needed to be seen as part of their function of
attracting people and goods,
117
but many went well beyond this, building in the
currently fashionable architectural style to emphasise the solidity and respectabil-
ity of the enterprise – gothic and classical – though the latter was much criti-
cised by Pugin and others for putting form above function.
118
Because of their
centrality in urban life, they became one of the nodal points of the city, like the
town hall, the central library or the cathedral, and as such places for meetings
and rendezvous, where a whole gamut of emotions was displayed from joy to
sorrow, as partings and reunions occurred.
119
Later, tube stations were often built
by fashionable architects, especially those on the outer arms of the Piccadilly and
District Railways such as Park Royal and Southgate, both designed by Charles
Holden, in a modern style to emphasise the modernity, speed and comfort of
the method of transport and to entice passengers.
120
Central bus and coach sta-
tions, such as Victoria in London, were also designed to indicate the modernity
of the mode of conveyance and so broke from the classical or gothic forms asso-
ciated with the railway stations, going for the simpler, cleaner aerodynamic lines
that were mirrored in the buses and coaches which plied from there.
Thus in a number of periods the buildings of transport systems acted to
impress, entice and act as metaphors of the companies that created them. They
Transport and the urban environment
113
Ibid., p. .
114
J. Richards and J. M. MacKenzie, The Railway Station (Oxford, ), pp. –.
115
G. Channon, ‘A nineteenth-century investment decision: the Midland Railway’s London exten-
sion’, Ec.HR, (), –.
116
Olsen, Growth, p. .
117
Robbins, ‘London railway’, .
118
E. Jones, Industrial Architecture in Britain, – (London, ), pp. –.
119
Richards and MacKenzie, Railway Station, pp. –; G. Biddle and J. Spence, The British Railway
Station (Newton Abbot, ).
120
G. Weightman and S. Humphries, The Making of Modern London – (London, ), pp.
– and .
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
could also be seen as symbols. The mainline railway stations were symbols of
escape from the crowded smoky urban centres to the seaside or the cleaner
country.
121
Later, the underground employed leading designers to create posters
which talked of parks, riversides, woods and hills as ‘London’s lungs’ and by
extension the tube lines which conveyed one there were symbols of escape to
these rural idylls. The logo, approved by Frank Pick for the underground,
installed on the inside and outside of stations, on posters and maps, became very
well recognised and acted to symbolise the unity of the Greater London area,
eventually extending well beyond the LCC area and breaking down some of the
concept of London as a collection of villages, stressing the tube as a shrinker of
distances and a method of linking and integrating the various districts. Transport
nodes also acted as loci of attention. They were places to meet friends, to dawdle
or to drink while waiting for a train or bus. Thus around these focal points grew
up ancillary services such as the railway station bookstall and buffet. If people
were congregating and waiting at these locations it provided an opportunity to
sell them a good or a service. The placing of a bus or train stop encouraged the
appearance of shops or kiosks selling newspapers, sweets and tobacco. Tube sta-
tions were often the centre of a block of shops, or were the site of a pitch for
flower sellers, shoe repairers or dry cleaners. The large flow of travellers through
these loci acted as magnets to other small retailers anxious to provide goods or
services to this passing trade. Thus nodes on the transport network became
important points for social and commercial interaction. Coach and bus stations
served similar roles between the wars. As Frank Pick explained, when advising
the Soviets on the construction of the Moscow metro system, the stations should
be centres ‘at which other public services might be rendered – post offices, tele-
phones, police call boxes, and public lavatories at surface level’.
122
Nor should transport systems be ignored as employers of labour within urban
centres. By the end of the nineteenth century a large number of workers were
directly employed as carters, tram drivers, railwaymen, etc. Bédarida found over
per cent of the working population of Poplar were directly engaged in the
transport industries in and although this had dropped by it was still
over a quarter.
123
Malcolmson, examining the slums of Victorian Kensington,
stressed the employment created by public transport businesses such as the
London General Omnibus Company which built a stable and smithy in
Goreham Place in and the Central London Railway which opened a goods
yard nearby. Barker hinted at the scale of employment created by the
Metropolitan Railway and the Great Central Railway when they built engine
sheds, repair works and associated sidings at Neasden and then built several
John Armstrong
121
Olsen, Growth, pp. and ; Simmons, Railway in Town, pp. – and –.
122
M. Robbins, ‘London Underground and Moscow Metro’, Journal of Transport History, rd series,
(), .
123
Bédarida, ‘Urban growth’, .
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
hundred workmen’s cottages for their employees.
124
This was carried to its
extreme when transport firms created new towns which grew up around work-
shops or railway nodal points, such as Crewe, Swindon, Wolverton or
Doncaster.
125
Here the size, scale and shape of the town was determined by the
transport undertaking so that rows of similar terraced houses dominated some
to give a solidly working-class look and feel. Swindon, for example, was devel-
oped by the Great Western Railway as an ‘engine establishment’from when
its population was about ,. By it was around , largely as a result
of the expansion of railway employment. Despite vigorous house building,
demand always exceeded supply, resulting in severe overcrowding, high death
rates and lagging provision of public amenities.
126
Similarly dock companies
could dominate port cities, as Sarah Palmer shows (see Chapter ).
(vi)
The interwar years saw a building boom on an unprecedented scale.
127
Something in the region of , houses were built on average every year
between and .
128
Although a little of this took place within the exist-
ing cities, for example slum clearance and renewal, most perforce had to be
outside on green-field sites thus extending the sprawl and scale of urban centres.
This centrifugal tendency was aggravated by the continued voracity of com-
merce for city-centre office locations. The flight to suburbia discussed in a pre-
vious section continued and was speeded up. These estates were not built solely
for private ownership. Local authorities played a much greater part: about per
cent of all new houses were built for them and hence popularly dubbed ‘council
houses’.
129
For instance the Watling estate, between Edgware and Mill Hill, was
built between and the s for the LCC. As most of the residents – ,
by – depended on jobs in the centre of town, they needed a frequent, cheap
and rapid means of returning there. This was provided by the Cricklewood to
Edgware tram, and the Hampstead to Edgware tube where Hendon Station was
Transport and the urban environment
124
Malcolmson, ‘Getting a living’, ; Barker, ‘The Metropolitan’, –.
125
Simmons, Railway in Town, pp. –; D. K. Drummond, Crewe: Railway Town, Company and
People – (Aldershot, ); P. S. Bagwell, Doncaster (Doncaster, ); W. H. Chaloner,
The Social and Economic Development of Crewe, – (Manchester, ); B. J. Turton, ‘The
railway towns of southern England’, Transport History, (), –; R. Barker, ‘The concept
of the railway town and the growth of Darlington, –: a note’, Transport History, (),
–.
126
K. Hudson, ‘The early years of the railway community in Swindon’, Transport History, (),
–.
127
H. W. Richardson and D. H. Aldcroft, Building in the British Economy between the Wars (London,
).
128
Mitchell and Dean, Abstract, p. .
129
M. J. Daunton, ed., Councillors and Tenants (Leicester, ).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
opened in and Burnt Oak in .
130
In addition some firms continued to
build homes for their workers such as the Great Western estate in North Acton
and the Guinness Company on Park Royal.
131
The causes of the exodus from
the city centre to the outskirts were similar to those of the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries: living standards were rising to the extent that artisans
could contemplate buying a cottage in the suburbs on a mortgage from a build-
ing society, the cities were perceived as crowded and unclean, whereas the
suburbs appeared spacious, salubrious and safe.
Transport facilities, whether built ahead of development or following it, were
a crucial factor and the baton of front runner moved away from the rail and
tramway to motor vehicles. The first motor bus service to operate in the UK was
in Edinburgh in . The first in London was in between Charing Cross
and Victoria.
132
Tillings, who had been major operators of horse buses and
trams, bought their first motor bus in . Progress was slow initially as reliabil-
ity was not high, whereas costs were, but by there were more motor buses
than horse buses in London.
133
Bristol Corporation bought Thornycroft buses
in , essentially to feed into tram routes.
134
The advantage of the motor bus
over the horse bus was its greater power and therefore speed and acceleration and
its lower running costs once technical progress had been made on tyres, fuel con-
sumption, etc.
135
Compared to the tram the motor bus was more flexible and
incurred much lower capital costs. For a while a hybrid between the tram and
motor bus flourished. This was the trolley bus, combining the smoothness and
lack of emissions of the tram with quieter operation than it or the motor bus.
The first in Great Britain were introduced in in Leeds, Bradford and
Aberdare.
136
They were less capital intensive than electric tramways and were
often operated in areas at the end of the tram tracks where traffic was insufficient
to justify extending the trams. Thus new, faster, cheaper forms of mass travel
appeared on the streets of the cities allowing the workers to live further from
their workplace. The interwar period was one of cheap fares, as Dickinson and
Longley have demonstrated for Leeds,
137
but this relied heavily on cheap tram
fares, perhaps because insufficient charge was made by municipalities for depre-
ciation, rather than on buses. Features which improved operating costs were the
John Armstrong
130
R. Durant, Watling:A Survey of Social Life on a New Housing Estate (London, ).
131
VCH, Middlesex, , pp. – and –.
132
Tilling, Kings, p. ; J. Hibbs, The Bus and Coach Industry (London, ), p. .
133
Hibbs, The Bus, pp. –.
134
Harvey and Press, ‘Sir George White’, p. .
135
T. C. Barker and D. Gerhold, The Rise and Rise of Road Transport, – (London, ), pp.
–.
136
D. G. Tucker, ‘The trolleybus proposal at Stroud, Glos. in : the Stroud District and
Cheltenham Tramways Bill’, Journal of Transport History, (), .
137
G. C. Dickinson and C. J. Longley, ‘Twopence to the terminus? A study of tram and bus fares
in Leeds during the interwar period’, Journal of Transport History, rd series, (), –.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
use of double decker buses to increase revenue and diesel fuel to reduce costs, so
that by bus costs were lower than trams.
138
There was also a new competitor beginning to emerge to cheap public trans-
port, namely private transport. For the middle classes the appearance of the
cheap motor car, such as the Austin Seven or Morris Eight, costing about £
new and much less second hand,
139
brought private transport within reach. Sales
reps, factory managers, professionals and shop owners could aspire to commute
by car. These remained too expensive for the ordinary workers
140
but they could
afford bicycles, perhaps bought on hire purchase, and often covered significant
mileage on them pedalling to work. By the interwar period a bicycle could be
purchased for about £, roughly two weeks’ wages, and many were bought for
commuting to work. For instance, in a standing conference on regional
planning estimated that over one fifth of all workers on the Park Royal indus-
trial estate arrived by bicycle.
141
This amounted to , each morning and each
evening. The cheap bicycle was a great liberator of working-class youth. For the
slightly better off and more daring there was the motor cycle, possibly with a
sidecar, which was cheaper to purchase and operate than a car. saw the peak
year ever in Britain for motorcycle registrations at nearly ,;
142
thereafter
they declined as affluence led some to small cars and unemployment reduced
demand at the other end. The growth of arterial roads, dual carriageways and
bypasses was both effect of the growing number of motor vehicles and further
encouragement.
143
The ability to commute longer distance freed the worker
from locational tyranny and also provided the possibility of escape from the town
to the country or the seaside at the weekend. The growing mobility also encour-
aged new shapes and styles within the towns in the form of garish petrol stations
and garages,
144
and on the outskirts, large road houses which catered for those
who drove and drank and ate. In addition, many of the houses built in the s
on the more affluent estates were equipped with their own garage – a nursery
Transport and the urban environment
138
Ibid., –
139
R. J. Wyatt, The Austin Seven:The Motor for the Million, – (Newton Abbot, ); R. A.
Church and M. Miller, ‘The big three: competition, management and marketing in the British
motor industry, –’, in B. E. Supple, ed., Essays in British Business History (Oxford, ),
pp. –.
140
S. Bowden and P. Turner, ‘Some cross section evidence on the determinants of the diffusion of
car ownership in the interwar UK economy’, Business History, (), –.
141
PRO, HLG /, report of November ; Acton Gazette, October .
142
Mitchell and Deane, Abstract, p. ; S. Koerner, ‘The British motor-cycle industry during the
s’, Journal of Transport History, (), –.
143
Bagwell, Transport Revolution, pp. –; H. J. Dyos and D. H. Aldcroft, British Transport (Leicester,
), pp. –.
144
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