"The Weirdest of all Undertakings": The Land and the Early Industrial Revolution in Oldham, England

Matthew Osborn

IN MANY WAYS the history of humankind, of civilization, has been a history of distancing ourselves from the natural environment. Until relatively recently the most significant development in this process was the expansion of settled agrarian societies. This "Neolithic revolution," while making us less dependent upon nature's bounty, was still intimately connected to natural processes and had to work with and accommodate them. Soil fertility, rainfall, wind, insect invasions, flooding, and other natural factors made manifest the limits to expansion and humanity's dependence upon the natural world. However, the next major revolution in this process of distancing ourselves from our natural context was much less accommodating. This industrial revolution in production was based upon both the conquest of nature and the subordination of social concerns to economic concerns.	1
Despite the obvious importance to environmental history of understanding the change from pre-industrial to industrial, environmental historians have written little about the subject. That is especially true for the first industrialized nation, Great Britain. Within social and economic history, however, some important work has been done on this topic. Well before the emergence of environmental history as a distinct sub-field, Karl Polanyi included the land in his analysis of industrialization, The Great Transformation (1944). He argued that at the heart of the multitude of changes associated with industrialization in Britain was the establishment of a market economy and the philosophy that landscapes and traditional societies should be subordinated to it.1 This classic work in political and economic history did not explore any one community in any detail, so it does not allow us to understand this process in specific environmental and social contexts. At this level, the best example to date is David Levine and Keith Wrightson's The Making of an Industrial Society: Whickham, 1560–1765 (1991). The emphasis of Levine and Wrightson on the development of the earliest coal-based export economy (the oft-mentioned coals from Newcastle) allowed them to explore in detail the subordination of the land and society to the demands of a distant market. Initially the concerns of the more locally oriented agrarian economy dominated, and the terms of coal leases were restrictive and favored agriculture over mining. However, the growing London market for "sea-coal" and the "timber crisis" of the later sixteenth century led to an increased demand that tilted the terms in favor of the coalmasters. As the coalmasters gained more power over their leases, the terms of their leases were less prohibitive, and there was a fundamental alteration of the economy, society, and environment of Whickham. While it may be debated that the outcome in Whickham was an industrial society, it is clear that what resulted was based on capital investment and wage-labor, and the agrarian economy was thoroughly subordinated to the demands of the new system.2 This work addresses the strong need for case studies exploring this transformation, especially in the context of the enormous growth in productivity of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.	2
The history of Oldham, in southeast Lancashire, makes for a particularly rich case study. Within the orbit of the quintessential industrial city of Manchester, Oldham played a key role in the division of labor associated with the industrial production of textiles. In many important ways the Oldham of the late eighteenth century was similar to the Whickham of the mid- to late sixteenth century. As with Whickham, the climate, geology, and topography of Oldham were unrelenting constraints upon the social and economic activities of the human inhabitants. Oldham was also a coal region and, as scholars such as E. A. Wrigley and Kenneth Pomeranz have argued, coal was a decisive element in industrialization.3 Though the majority of Oldhamers before industrialization lived a twofold life of domestic industry and agriculture, like the inhabitants of Whickham they lived according to the natural rhythms of an agricultural lifestyle. Oldham also went from being a relatively isolated rural community to a place dominated by production for distant markets. Despite these similarities, the process of change and the end result were different in critical ways. While the coalmasters of Oldham played a crucial role, the story begins with efforts by the gentry to "improve" their estates. This was largely achieved through the landholders' active support of extractive industries and the concomitant expansion of a turnpike and canal network. Another important difference was the ascendance of a new landowning elite in Oldham that was intimately connected to coal mining, textile manufacturing, and the hatting industry. Extractive economies played an important role in forming key market links, but it was the centralized, large-scale production of textiles that became the hallmark of this industrial town. By the end of the eighteenth century, many of the old landed elite had sold off their holdings to their tenants and to the newly enriched miners, manufacturers, and merchants, signaling the beginning of a new relationship with the land.	3
This profound change in how communities relate to their surrounding environment is at the center of all industrializations. This transformation would not have been possible were it not for an intensification of Oldham's market connections, in which timber felling and coal mining played a key role. But the example of Oldham clearly shows that market links and coal reserves are not enough to "industrialize" a society. The third essential component is the control of the land by an entrepreneurial elite committed to this kind of society, economy, and relationship with the land. The new market linkages and the emergence of the profitable coal trade with Manchester played a role not only in reshaping how the land was viewed and used, but also in empowering this new landowning class that depended upon these extensive market contacts. By 1802 to 1803, as evidenced by the Act of Parliament that enclosed the remaining common lands surrounding the town, Oldham's relationship with its land base had been thoroughly industrialized.4 The outcome was a new socio-economic order that subordinated the land and the old land-based society to market concerns, changing and reshaping them into something new and revolutionary. The long-term result was an urbanized landscape, and a thoroughly industrialized society. As Karl Polanyi pointed out: "What we call land is an element of nature inextricably interwoven with man's institutions. To isolate it and form a market out of it was perhaps the weirdest of all undertakings of our ancestors."5	4
Timber Felling
Far remote from Noise and smoke Hark! I hear the Woodman's Stroke Who dreams not as he fell the Oak What Mischief dire he brews How have his fate in falling Trees In aid of luxury and ease, He weighs not matters such as these But sings and Hacks and Hews Anonymous, Lancashire (approx. 1840)6
THE "GROVES" in Lancashire, and in most of England, scarcely could be called forests except in the medieval sense of royal hunting preserves. At the end of the seventeenth century only one-eighth of England was wooded, and even in the principal timber counties in the southeast less than half the acreage was wooded. Lancashire was not considered a timber county, and this was especially true in the moorland areas of the Pennines where there were few trees of any economic importance. Though Oldham was not a heavily wooded area, timber extraction did play an important role in the integration of this region into a wider economic context, and in the shift to a new relationship with the land. Most of the standing and merchantable timber in Oldham was found on the private holdings as opposed to the common lands, which were largely moorland. The desire of landowners to profit from their estates through timber extraction may have been a part of the old landed order, but it also was a precursor to the sale of estates and a great aid in the integration of Oldham into an extra-local economy. As James Winter has pointed out, only where timber could be transported at reasonable cost to "river, canal, or seaport" did it make sense to maximize timber production. The accelerating pace of timber sales in this period testifies to the growing influence and development of efficient links to distant markets.7	5
In the eighteenth century, relatively dense masses of the old woodlands still remained in the inaccessible parts of Saddleworth (upland and northeast of Oldham town) and Oldham. During the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion, for example, the farmers of Shelderslow hid their cattle in the thick-grown wood called the Hurst Field. A store of timber in Oldham also was available to the local population for building. In the 1760s, Hollinwood Chapel was built almost entirely with local timber and stone and much of the wood came from nearby stands at Birchen Bower, Chadderton, and Werneth. The erection of this chapel, and almost simultaneously of St. Peter's in Oldham, were results of the expanding domestic economy, which increased this area's population, independence, and prosperity in the eighteenth century.8	6
The principal cost of timber extraction was usually transportation because of the high bulk-per-unit cost. This was especially true in pre-industrial Oldham on account of the poor state of the roads, the distance from navigable rivers, and the steep terrain. Often the transport cost of English timber equaled the value of the wood itself, and twenty miles was considered the maximum profitable overland haul. This cost barrier was shattered at the close of the eighteenth century. The establishment of a turnpike network and the spread of canals, which also consumed timber in locks, canal boats, and the like, significantly lowered costs and opened previously unimproved woodlands to exploitation (improvement being shorthand for increased utility and economic productivity). This provided an extra incentive for private estates to exploit their woodlands. Oftentimes the denudation of whole estates followed the death of the landowner. There was a considerable "liberty given to widows to fell and sell without impeachment or waste, and to young heirs after they come to posses their father's lands. For the readiest monies they can think on (toward their wasteful expenses) is a sale of timber." Although the money obtained might not have gone to "wasteful expenses," this certainly was a popular avenue for quick profit from inherited entailed estates.9	7
If there were valuable deposits of sand, stone, gravel, slate, ore, or timber, "men of property were usually more than ready to convert parts of the landscape they owned into money."10 The value of standing timber to young heirs and widows is evident in the dealings of the Middleton Estate, along the western border of Oldham. This estate was managed in the late eighteenth century by William Bailey. It had been jointly inherited by the two daughters of Sir Ralphe Assheton, the eldest of whom was married to Harbord Harbord, the future Lord Suffield. In 1777, Bailey informed Harbord that it was "time to be looking out some more Timber for Sale ... for if you sell them Estates it is much if you get the value of the Timber upon them as the Buyer will reckon that to go for Repairs &c when he is Buying, and Afterwards makes it into ready Money." In other words, it would be better to cut these trees before selling the estate lands. In this way Harbord could reap a double windfall. That Harbord took this advice seriously was evidenced by the amount of timber taken from the Middleton Estate over the next two decades.11	8
One of the earliest archival references to a timber sale in the immediate Oldham area was a sale of building timber at Lane Head in Saddleworth, near Waterhead Mill on the Medlock River. In 1767 John Taylor and Joseph Pickford, Esqs., put up 280 oaks "mostly proper for Building" together with several ashes, alders, and birches. The phrase "mostly proper for Building" suggested relatively immature trees that were too small to command the higher prices which navy timber (high grade) commanded. Because of their location these trees could make it to a wider market only with considerable transportation costs which made them unmarketable outside of the general area. Though there was no definite evidence of the motivation of the sellers aside from the obvious profits they were seeking, they may have been clearing their land for agriculture.12	9
This was just the beginning of private timber sales in this area, and the pace and size of holdings for sale increased over the next few decades. The growing influence of an extra-local market economy can be seen in the rise of timber prices tied to the American Revolutionary War, as demonstrated in a letter from Bailey to Harbord from late 1777. "For whilst this War holds with America Oak will be sold better than it will after."13 During the American war there was a fall in trade, and exports were at a lower level from 1779 to 1781 than they had been since the 1740s, but for timber the war meant an increase in demand for military (especially naval) use. A sale of timber by auction in April 1779 in Glodwick (downhill and south of Oldham) advertised 204 oaks, with their cyphers, bark, and tops, standing upon Mr. Richardson's estate. The tops were the branches and limbs that were considered separate from the trunk and were valuable in the timbering trade. The cyphers were all that was deemed worthless in the immediate vicinity of the tree. These trees were located along the streams and clough sides, where they retained water and prevented soil erosion. Their continued existence in Glodwick, which was closer and more accessible than Saddleworth to the Manchester timber market, was probably because of the difficulty in removing timber from these steep slopes and their utility in this location.14	10
The market for timber was so lively that landowners grew impatient with those who resisted the trend to remove and sell timber quickly. The Earl of Derby found his neighbors displeased when he allowed four years to pay for and remove a huge amount of timber on his estate. This delay in paying and removing amounted to a future discount on the rising prices and would help to keep prices down. William Bailey of the Middleton Estate wrote: "The Earl of Derby set us a bad Pattern in Selling off Timber last year, I think it was upwards of 12,000 numbers that he sold and allows four years to fall and pay in. The Earl of Stamford I heard yesterday is going to clear his Estate at Assheton, but in what Manner he intends to sell it I cannot tell, but Allowing four years for payment is a bad custom."15	11
The pressure to exploit timber undermined the long-term viability of timbering on these estates. It takes about one hundred years for an oak to mature, and the number of trees cut in this period overwhelmed the replacement rate. Previously, through coppicing and replanting, estates were able to sustain their timber supplies into the indefinite future. For example, William Bailey attempted to reforest parts of the Middleton estate with varying success. In 1769, he wrote of 250 fir trees he had planted on two hills that had died, but the beeches in the same area were thriving. He also sought to increase the planting of elms because they were "very scarse upon yr. Estate, a few would look very hansom among the others, if they would take to grow upon that hill." The Middleton Estate kept a nursery with beech, oak, fir, and elm for replanting around the demesne. In addition, prior to the price rises of the later 1770s and 1780s, attempts were made to leave the younger trees for future benefit. However, the practice of planting was curtailed in the 1770s, and the "thriving young trees" mentioned by Bailey soon fell prey to higher prices.16	12
In January and February of 1781 the pace was considerably quickened. In January alone five lots were for sale at the house of Robert Jackson, near the Church Gates in Oldham, and the oaks with their cyphers and bark were at the top of the list. John Taylor and Joseph Ogden, near North Moor in Chadderton (just west of Oldham town), were selling fifty oaks; fifty more were for sale on John Rowbotham's farm at Hunt Lane, in Chadderton; fifty more on John Hoyle's farm; fifty at John Scholfield's farm at Bear Trees; and sixty oaks at John Ashton's and James Moor's farms near Foxdenton, along with twenty additional ashes and sycamores growing above the farms. Though the round number of fifty was often listed, probably to simplify the business transaction, these were all the sellable trees on these relatively treeless lands. Like the earlier sales, these trees were located on or near watercourses, on steep grades, or on isolated farmsteads, and they would have been costly to remove.17	13
The February sale was even larger and was held as an auction at James Whittaker's Roe Buck Inn in Middleton. The total of the 10 lots listed was 788 oaks, over 350 alders and birches, over 230 holly, and over 120 ash. The number of non-oaks that were listed indicate the almost complete deforestation of this area, which included part of a coppice woodland. Coppice woods were often "two-storied" groves with the taller trees growing above the younger to provide a regular succession of large and small wood. It has been estimated that about fifty of the large "standards" could be raised per acre. These coppice woods, through pruning and selective cutting, could provide building materials and fuel for a village or estate for centuries if properly maintained. Though the age of this particular coppice woodland is not known, this cutting was obviously a serious blow to its long-term viability, as evidenced by the sale of the cyphers. Many of the oaks came from the lands above Boarshaw, a large number were from the coppice wood, and one hundred trees came from Middleton Park. Most of this timber was from the Middleton Estate and "the aforesaid Timber is mostly large and fine, fit for Millwrights, Ship Builders, Carpenters, Joiners, &c."18 The rapid pace of sales continued, and the Middleton Estate led the way. By 1782, the influence of turnpike construction was more evident and a ten-lot sale that year in Middleton provided a good example of the effect of transportation improvement on the marketing of previously unprofitable timbering areas: "The First three Lots are mostly fine and lengthy Timber, and may be suitable for Ship-building or any other Uses: the other three Lots there are several good Bends, Knees, Shafts, and other straight Timber fit for Building, &c. The aforesaid Timber stands near the Turnpike Road leading from Manchester to Rochdale."19	14
The first three lots were from the Middleton coppice wood and were probably some of the best remaining trees. The "other three Lots" were free-standing trees that were largely from cloughs. These trees, along with hedgerow trees, were often the wood of choice for compass timber for the navy. Compass timber, which was used in the bending or curved aspects of ship carpentry, required the irregularity of form that the exposure to the elements imposed upon these free-standing trees.20	15
The push for improvement occurring at this time was an indication of the penetration of a wider market and the effects of new ideas about how to use resources. Not only was there a clearing of trees, but there also was a simultaneous surge in the building of tenements and various mills to cater to and cash-in on the growing population. These changes further reflected the new, and market influenced, conception of the proper use of land. An excellent example of this was an advertisement for the sale of a freeholding, know as Mathew Fold, belonging to the Hopwood Estate. In July 1784, the advertised sale of this land, by private contract, laid out its particulars and also its future possibilities for profitable use; the ad juxtaposed the old agricultural society and the emergent industrial one. Mathew Fold was listed as: "Containing 20 Acres of Meadow & Pasture Land, with a Right of Common on North Moor & Hollinwood; also Turbary on White Moss and Two Seats in Oldham Church, situate about one mile & a half from the Premises. There is a strong Current of Water runs thro' one part of the Estate sufficient to turn an Engine, with plenty of Stout Timber for Building ready to be cut down. The above is in a populous part of this County, and capable of great improvements..."21	16
The "strong current of water" was where a textile mill would be located a few years later, and it was along this watercourse that the remaining "stout timber" was growing. This ad appealed to a traditional form of status by offering the two seats in Oldham Church, in addition to mentioning the profit available from the stout timber. Aside from the obvious agricultural enticements (the rights of commons and turbary), there was also the lure of quick and continuing profits from a mill. The benefits of water power plus plentiful labor and building materials would have been obvious to any industrious resident with the requisite funds.	17
The spring of 1785 marked the end of this surge in timber extraction in Oldham and its environs. The next big sale was not until late March of 1787, and this represented the last gasp of easily accessible, profitable, and high-grade timber. This cut was almost solely in Middleton and its surrounding area, and many of the trees were near a turnpike road. A final timber boom focused on more difficult to reach areas and trees located in cloughs. After a gap of almost six years there was a sale of timber located in Crompton, in the northeastern extremity of Oldham Parish. In terms of timber cultivation Crompton had a number of shortcomings. It was higher in altitude, contained more difficult terrain, and was further from the major thoroughfares. The sale of the timber in this out-of-the-way place was tied to the revived demand created by the French revolutionary wars. This spurred a second wave of timber sales, just as the earlier sales were tied to the rise in demand associated with the American Revolutionary War and the naval battles with France from 1778 to 1783. A further spur to timber extraction was the imminent construction of canals in this region. Three Acts of Parliament for the construction of canals in this area were passed in 1794.	18
In December 1794 and January 1795, two other estates sold off their timber. The estate of Waterhouses, toward Manchester down the Medlock River, and the Hopwood Estate near Middleton and in Oldham Parish, began to profit in that winter from their standing timber. Waterhouses parted with 99 oaks with 33 cyphers, 131 ash with 142 cyphers, and 98 alders with 134 cyphers. The Hopwood Estate sold off timber scattered throughout its lands from late 1794 through 1796. This timber was advertised as being of the finest quality, and the Hopwood sales represent the best this private estate could offer as they advertised the fine quality of these "remarkably large, and full grown" timbers.22	19
These two sales represent the last of the marketable timber stores available on private estates in the Oldham area. Looking back from the mid-nineteenth century, when there were scarcely any woods remaining in Oldham Parish, an "octogenarian" remembered the woods of Hollinwood and vicinity: "Bower Clough to Under-lane was thickly covered with birch and oak trees of large dimensions, and in Bower-lane and Dark-lane umbrageous trees mingled their gigantic boughs across the road, so that when the foliage was thick people might have walked through the grove or bower screened from the heat of the burning sun. Such being the aspect of the place before the woodman plied his destructive axe."23	20
This romantic view was not echoed by all. In the latter part of the eighteenth century, timber scarcity was rationalized in much the same way as the pollution from coal smoke was in the mid-nineteenth century—as a sign of progress. This sentiment was aptly expressed in 1791 by a Suffolk doctor. Well before the advent of steam powered ships and locomotives, the doctor spoke positively of the increasing reliance of Britain on the timber of other countries: "The Scarcity of Timber ought never to be regretted, for it is a certain proof of National Improvement; and for Royal Navies, Countries yet barbarous are the right and proper Nurseries. Buy Oak, as you buy Fir to build your houses."24	21
The doctor not only gave a fine example of a sunny view of progress, but also illustrated the growing reliance of England on foreign trade to supply raw materials that used to be available at home.	22
In the thirty years between 1767 and 1797 well over ten thousand mature oaks were cut in the Oldham area, and this does not include the many fellings of which we have no record, or the many other types of trees felled. In 1822, another optimist rationalized that in Oldham "timber wood seems on the decline, but sunshine is generally preferred to shade." Timber felling was a traditional moneymaker on any estate, but the pace and the scale of these sales was unprecedented in Oldham. This extractive industry helped to set the stage for a new conception of the land through its encouragement and exploitation of the new transport infrastructure, but it was still a part of the old society. The completion of the revolutionary change to a system of market capitalism would be finalized through a much more intensive and long term endeavor—the mining of coal.25	23
Coal Mining
LIKE TIMBER felling, coal mining already was well established in the pre-industrial domestic economy but its character changed as the eighteenth century progressed. In this period, the sale of timber was often a precursor to the sale of an estate and the abandonment of the area for greener pastures, but coal mining picked up steam and its profitability came to be recognized by industrious people who were not of the landed gentry. As Kenneth Pomeranz and E. A. Wrigley have argued, the substitution of coal for wood as a fuel source was the basis of sustained industrial growth. Wrigley calculated that the annual energy yield from British coal around 1820 (when output was five times that of 1750) was the equivalent of the sustainable yield from 15 million forest acres.26 The expanding coal industry in the Pennines transformed the landscape, formed the basis for the new elite's wealth and control of the land, and served as a spur to the expansion of the canal and turnpike network in southeast Lancashire and to road improvement in general. Whereas timber was quite visibly exhaustible as a resource if harvested in an unsustainable manner, the invisibility of the underground coal reserves made them seem endless and provided a great stimulus for further exploitation and large capital expenditures. In 1817 James Butterworth noted in his History of Oldham the key role that coal played in enriching the new industrial elite: "Timber may be said to be remarkably scarce here; but that defect is wonderfully and abundantly supplied by the vast quantities of coal found in every part of the parish: indeed a great number of the inhabitants derive their subsistence and employ from the digging of them, the sale of which has raised many of the first adventurers in that business to a state of opulence."27	24
The bends and folds of the Pennine escarpment had long presented shallow and easily accessible coal seams. Coal mining as a profession, like textile outwork, was used by men from a number of different trades as a supplementary income, and was an integral part of the pre-industrial domestic economy of Oldham. Before the establishment of regular roads and a turnpike system the transportation of coal from the pit was the main impediment to expansion. It has been estimated that the price of coal doubled (according to some it quadrupled) every two miles from the pit head. Heavily laden coal carts destroyed roads, and the coal mine owners or lessees often did not pay extra or provide extra labor to maintain the roads which they disproportionately damaged. The Lancashire and Cheshire coalfield was only one-quarter the size of the Yorkshire-Midland coalfield, but it was less difficult to extract and bring this coal to market over-land as it had easily and cheaply worked outcroppings. These outcroppings, or "bassettings" as they were known locally, gave easy access to the coal and it paid to sink new pits frequently. When underground haulage exceeded one hundred yards a new pit was sunk, and the result was a pockmarked landscape wherever coal was near the surface, as it was in many parts of Oldham Parish. This was known as the "Lancashire System." Among the early uses of coal in Lancashire were salt-making, drying malt, and manufacture of dye-stuffs, lime, bricks, and glass.28	25
Coal mining in Oldham was advanced enough by the 1730s to lead to documented disputes, as demonstrated by an agreement from 1736 between James Brierly and Samuel Scholes. This agreement sought "the putting a final end and period" to the disputes these two men had over the carting of Scholes' coals. However, this was only one aspect of the "Several Variantes, Disputes and Controversies which have of late been and Still are depending Between" the two men. Scholes carted his "Cole and Kannel" through two lanes which crossed Brierly's land in Glodwick. ("Kannel," more commonly known as cannel, was a hard black anthracite coal that burned more cleanly and at a higher temperature.) Brierly sought some financial recompense for the damage from the heavy coal carts, especially in the winter, and was granted five shillings yearly on the feast day of St. Philip and St. Jacob for a term of forty years. For this sum Scholes was allowed to load or unload at his pleasure at all times and seasons but he still had to repair, at his own cost, the lanes and Brierly's fences to prevent cattle from escaping. In addition, Brierly granted to Scholes the "herbage of the Upper Lane" as fodder for Scholes' carting horses.29	26
This early clash between agricultural and extractive interests demonstrates the differing priorities and constraints associated with these two views of proper land use. For Brierly, the main concern was with the loss of labor time and the maintenance of his herds and fences. For Scholes the sole concern was bringing his coals to market profitably and quickly by whatever available means. The meeting of these two worlds was represented by Brierly's request for financial recompense in addition to the labor required to mend fences and lanes, and by Scholes's need for "herbage" in order to feed his cart horses. In the years to follow people like Brierly, and the concerns they represented, became rarer. Conversely, the number of men like Scholes continued to grow and their interests came to dominate the local economy and society.30	27
Few landowners in any coalfield failed to take financial advantage of coal under their land if it was winnable by available mining techniques. Under English law deposits of coal belonged to the owner of the soil, and so the mining of coal depended on the acquisition of such land, or the negotiation of favorable mining leases from local landowners. This was demonstrated in a fairly complex lease agreement made in September 1743 between William Booth and his son John, and a group of entrepreneurial miners, two linen weavers, a carpenter, and a husbandman. Booth sought a percentage of the coal extracted from his lands in exchange for a one hundred year lease, and the miners sought to mitigate this amount by subtracting coal for operating costs from the overall figures. In exchange for the "full power and Liberty to Digg Delve Cutt Sluice Tunnel Bore Sink pitt or pitts and use all Customary ways and means made use of in the Country at other such pitts of Coal and Cannel," Booth was to receive seven pence for every twenty-eight baskets of coal, and four baskets of coal or cannel each week for his own use (not included in the twenty-eight baskets). The miners also were allowed ingress and egress from their pits and the freedom to "Tunnel Sough and drain and Lay dry any Coal Cannel or Bass mine lying within any other mans Land yielding and paying unto the said William and John Booth" providing that Booth also received a quarter of any coal obtained through these means. This percentage was the traditional "quarterage."31	28
A similar agreement was made between the same group of miners and Abraham Taylor of Thorp, Royton, in May 1745. The expansion of this group's operations indicates how profitable the coal trade was even before the canal and turnpike network. In return for the rights to mine the coal on his land Taylor was to receive eight pence of "good and lawful money of Great Britain" for every thirty-two baskets, plus four baskets for his own use each week. This ninety-nine year lease was almost identical to the one of two years earlier with some minor adjustments. The proviso to "make Hills for Laying Coals" demonstrated a growing familiarity with the requirements of this industry and how it would encroach upon the agricultural lands near the pit head.32	29
By 1769 the mining of coal had become a proven source of great profit for large landowners like the Middleton Estate. The Radcliffe Colliery on the estate had, in the first five months of 1769, netted over £122, with a new pit being sunk that midsummer. In March 1771, the estate hired five men to bore for coals, and they bored in five different locations with little luck. As there were multiple folds and bends in the coal strata of the western Pennines, after the obvious seams had been discovered and mined out, it was often difficult to find another profitable seam. As William Bailey pointed out, "I am uncertain as the mines lye very irregular in this part of the country." The effort and cost were worth it, however, and Bailey rightly believed that "where water and Coals are to be had at command they are principal articuls [sic] to improve a landed Estate in this part of the World."33	30
This was not lost on Radclyffe Sidebottom, Esq. In September 1768, he contracted to mine his estates on very favorable terms. This lease not only provided Sidebottom with a quarterage on the amount of coal extracted, but also brought the considerable sum of a £50 yearly rent fee and other rents. The man Sidebottom contracted with, William Jones, proved to be a considerable force in the growth and profitability of the mining industry in Oldham. For an experienced miner such as Jones to enter into such a one-sided agreement the potential for profit must have been large. Jones was allowed to seek and mine for coal throughout the Bent Hall and Werneth Estates, except "under any Houses Buildings folds or gardens belonging to the said Lands."34	31
Another interesting aspect of this lease was the extent to which Sidebottom spelled out the amount of damage he would tolerate on his land. He also requested that when played out the mined areas be somewhat restored to their former state. This agreement shows a clear appreciation of the impact of mining on the environment. Not only was Jones to "pay and make satisfaction ... for all Trespass and damages that shall or may happen to Cattle Corn or Grass Housing Buildings Lands Ways Waterbanks and Fences," but also: "when any pit or pits open soughs or Trenches Dams Wares or Goits become useless and unserviceable ... the same shall immediately afterwards by and at the Costs of the said William Jones be filled up and the place or places where such pit or pits ... have been so made shall be levelled by removing the Rubbish and Soiling over the Ground so as to make the same as good as it was before or as the nature of the thing will admit."35	32
In addition to all of these costs and restrictions upon Jones's operation, Sidebottom also insisted that he be allowed to appoint one or more banksmen and miners in every one of the operating shafts and that they would be paid the same as Jones's other workers. These men may have been spies for Sidebottom. According to the Earl of Sandwich, who revived the coal trade of Whickham in the 1690s, in the coal trade "... you will find more lying and tricking than in any dealings you have ever had." Whether these workers were to keep an eye on Jones or whether Sidebottom simply sought employment for some of his tenants, or both, we cannot know for sure. However, what was obvious here was that the dictates of this lease were in Sidebottom's favor, and coal mining must have become very profitable for Jones to agree to all of these additional costs and restrictions.36	33
The focus on the mitigation of mining damage not only shows some recognition of the long-term effects of mining, but also shows that agriculture was still the highest land use. Jones's goal was to keep the cost of production below the contract price, and he would have had little to no margin for miscalculation or adverse market fluctuations. With that in mind, it would not have been reasonable to expect him to be concerned about the appearance or the agricultural viability of the land. Nor would he be interested in spending money or labor on the recycling of waste from his mines. However, at this point the old view of the land still held, as concerns over land subsidence, slag heaps, the damage from carting, and the effects on streams and soil were frequently mentioned in estate leases from this period. A lease between Adam Ogden and John Lees from March 1770 similarly restricted and defined the amount of damage that would be allowed. Ogden stipulated that rent be would be paid on the Black Mine "until the premises shall be cleared from Rubbish and be made into arable ground," and that three pounds an acre be paid "for the trespass which he ... may sustain by the opening or sinking the said pitt or pitts and the passing and repassing to and from the same or the getting and selling and carrying off the Coals." Ogden, like Sidebottom, stipulated that Lees had to work the mine to completion, leaving only enough coals that "shall be sufficient to support the Roof from falling in."37	34
Though agricultural concerns still were in the fore, the demand for coal was growing, and the push to mine to the last was intensified. By the 1770s coal was widely used to heat homes in Oldham. This was especially true for the majority of the inhabitants who could not gather adequate amounts of firewood or afford to buy the increasingly scarce resource. In the winter months prices would rise, and more importantly, the supplies of coal would dwindle. The state of the roads and the bulkiness of coal combined to prevent adequate amounts from reaching areas not near the pit head. In January 1772, William Bailey wrote, "The inhabitants in and about Radcliffe are in sad distress for want of Coals, you would almost think there was a Famine amongst them, was you to hear their Complaints as I do sometimes."38 Though mining was expanding, population and local demand also were growing, and turnpike construction added even more demand from outside markets.	35
Coal mining not only required large amounts of capital, it also demanded a numerous and geographically concentrated labor force. On the capital side, the mining of coal additionally often required agreements with surrounding landowners to sink pits and build adits and soughs to drain the water from the mines. These agreements represented substantial costs, and they widened the scope and effect that mining had on the surrounding countryside. The labor costs were also substantial, as Levine and Wrightson clearly showed in their list of the many and various occupations allied with coal mining in Whickham. Sinkers opened new shafts, hewers cut coal, putters dragged baskets full of coal to the pit eye, fillers attached baskets to ropes, banksmen unloaded and checked the coal at the surface, horse drivers controlled the powering of winding gear and pumps, overmen supervised it all. There were also wailers who screened coal at the pit head, shovellers who loaded carts, wainsmen who carted the coal to markets or to canal quays, and staithemen and their laborers who loaded the boats. All of these different occupations called forth more labor to supply their gear—basket weavers, chandlers for candles, smiths to sharpen tools, carpenters and wrights to line shafts and maintain wooden tools, and sometimes masons to wall off part of the workings. As the eighteenth century progressed the scale and the cost of equipment and operations increased, and gradually mining outgrew the resources of small groups of working colliers and was dominated by partnerships of men with greater financial resources at hand.39	36
The availability of mines on the market, and their consolidation into a few men's hands, accelerated in this period as the gentry moved away from the responsibilities and the profits of collieries. Perhaps the best example of this trend was the sale of the Oldham and Werneth manors. The advertisement in November 1789 made much of the profitability of the local coal: "The most valuable Manor and Lordship above mentioned (which abounds with Game), together with all Mines, Minerals, Courts, Fines of Courts, Quit Rents, Incroachment Rents, Common Waste Lands, Woods, &c., thereunto belonging, containing an inestimable Quantity of Coal (and other Minerals), allowed to be of the best Quality in the Kingdom, and most conveniently situated for the largestSale, including and subject to a Lease of a Colliery ... under that Part of the said Manor called Hollinwood and Werneth Estates."40	37
There was little mention of agriculture, except in connection with the collection of fines and rents, and the main selling point of the manor was its extractive potential. This was a marked difference from the concerns represented in earlier estate cash books.	38
When no one bought the manor, it was sold at auction in 1792, and the auctioneers outlined several additinal "benefits." "Slate & Freestone Quarries" as well as the previously listed collieries were offered in addition to the location which would enable the coals to be transported without adding burdensome costs: "The Situation is uncommonly advantageous. Particulars of Capital Manors, and Estates both for the Sale and Conveyance of the Coal, being intersected by several Turnpike Roads and a Canal, and the intended New Cut from Manchester will also pass through the Common Land."41 And this valuable parcel was open to any "gentleman who wishes to realize his property in a capital landed estate."	39
The Werneth Estate was being leased to Lees & Co., for £300 a year. This estate also contained two mines that were leased by Lees & Co. for twenty-one years beginning on 31 October 1781, at the "very low rent of £520 per annum." Of those two mines Lees & Co. were only working the Werneth mine, which was previously mentioned as containing the best coal in the kingdom. This mine was valued, after the expiration of the lease, as being worth £6,090. In addition to this valuable mine there were "All the beds, or veins of Coal, that pass through that estate as well as the Hollinwood Common... Besides these beds of coal it abounds with cannel coal at a small depth from the surface."42	40
The estate was sold to two speculators from London. One resident of Oldham, a weaver, wrote in his diary, "this day Werneth Hall with all its appurtunnances and royalties were sold to Mr. Sidebottom and Co. of London for £25,500 and thought exceeding cheap." Unable to secure an act for enclosure in 1792, the two speculators turned around and sold the manor to John Lees, Esq., cotton manufacturer and partner in the colliery firm of Lees, Jones and Booth, for £30,000 and a nice profit.43 This sale was quickly followed by the sale of the Whetstone Hill Estate in September after a "spirited competition" to Abraham Clegg, merchant and hat manufacturer, for £3,037. This estate was advertised as "considerably under let and capable of great improvement" as there was supposed to be "a Valuable Coal Mine under the premises, which is not opened, but may be worked to great advantage."44	41
On 25 July 1794, the ten men who dominated coal mining in Oldham signed an agreement that consolidated their concerns into what would later be generally known as Lees, Jones, Booth and Co. The agreement combined the land leases of all parties, which comprised a nice chunk of the parish, and it brought the concerns of all ten parties under one controlling interest. This indenture gave the group control over most of Hollinwood, the estates of Thomas Butterworth Bayley in Chadderton, Cowhill, and Over-Cowhill (which were leased for 999 years for the yearly fee of a peppercorn), much of Edward Gregge Hopwood's lands, much of Joseph Radcliffe's lands, and Sir Watts Horton's lands in Chadderton and Oldham. These significant parcels of the old elite's land put much of the parish into the service of this newly powerful group of men who sought land not to profit through working the soil, but through "digging delving and boring searching sucking for getting carrying away selling and disposing of coals." Once the land was under the control of these men there was no need for leases, no need to mitigate mining damage, and the land was given over fully to this industry. These men were much less interested in the long-term viability of an estate, or agriculture, or the old social structures than were their predecessors. The consolidation of these land leases, and the sale of the above two estates along with the "Lordship of the Manor" to the enterprising entrepreneurs John Lees and Abraham Clegg, combined to signal the end of the extractive industries associated with the landed gentry and the ascendancy of a new entrepreneurial elite and a market-based view of land and society.45	42
The Conduits of Commerce
THE BURSTS of timber extraction, and the enormous expansion of coal mining, would not have been as profitable or as extensive were it not for the new turnpike roads. As opposed to the conduits of commerce that these turnpikes represented, pre-eighteenth century transportation over the Pennines acted as more of a brake on trade than an accelerant. This was not unique to southeast Lancashire, as roads were in a poor state in most of England. Most goods in the Lancashire Pennines and the West Riding of Yorkshire were carried by pack horse. Pack-horse traffic in Lancashire traveled along paved tracks or causeways that often were found alongside ordinary highways. On the Pennine moors these tracks often were composed of slabs of local gritstones; elsewhere they were paved with Lancashire brook pebbles or cobbles. For bulk goods these conditions led to high transportation costs and long delays in delivery. The rough terrain and the unforgiving moorland climate multiplied these problems.	43
The expanding demand for coal was a major stimulus for the establishment of a turnpike system in Lancashire. In 1725, the Liverpool to Prescot road was authorized as a result of a petition from gentlemen and merchants for an easier means of transport of coals between Wigan, Bolton, Rochdale, Warrington, Manchester, and even into the counties of Derby and York. In their petition they described the state of the existing roads and the increasing trade which traveled upon them: "[T]he road is very much used in the carriage of coals (to Liverpool and also from Liverpool) ... and in the carriage of wool, cotton, malt and all other merchants goods; whereby several parts of said roads are so very deep, and other parts so narrow, that coaches, waggons and other wheel carriages cannot pass through the same; nor can the same be effectively repaired and enlarged without further provision be made for that purpose."46	44
This petition was an early attempt to more thoroughly integrate the Lancashire Pennines into a wider market economy stimulated by the important and profitable trade that flowed through Manchester and Liverpool. Gentlemen, merchants, and manufacturers cooperated for what was of mutual benefit. Though in presenting their case they may have exaggerated the state of the roads, their description was roughly in line with that of other contemporary observers. Between 1750 and 1754, thirteen turnpike acts were passed in Lancashire, whereas only eight were passed prior to 1750. Over the next seventy-five years, numerous turnpike roads were constructed, or re-constructed, reaching into the remote and unpopulated Pennines. These roads were both a catalyst for, and an outgrowth of, the extension of a wider market economy into the stubborn environment of southeast Lancashire.47	45
Oldham's first turnpike was authorized in 1734 by an Act of Parliament "for repairing the roads from the town of Manchester, leading through Newton, Failsworth and Oldham in the County Palatine of Lancaster, to Austerlands in the parish of Saddleworth, in the County of Yorkshire." Turnpikes trusts were a great improvement over the old parish system which relied on statute labor and took a piecemeal approach to maintenance. The trusts were responsible for the whole turnpike, and tolls paid for upkeep. In this case Austerlands was chosen as a terminus for this turnpike as the framing of these acts was still on a county basis. Rarely did promoters of a road in one county accept responsibility for carrying it into another. In keeping with the state of market transactions at this time, the focus was still regional, and the administration was local in scope. The hope was that the other counties and their local leaders would extend the road. In this case it was not until 1758 that an act was passed for "repairing the road from Wakefield to Austerlands in the West Riding of Yorkshire."48 The establishment of this turnpike, which would be improved later in the century, served as an immediate spur to the coal trade. In the cash books of the Hopwood Estate, James Hopwood mentioned four coal pits, all located near this turnpike, and the coal from these pits was mainly transported to the Manchester market.49	46
These piecemeal attempts to improve the flow of traffic and to reduce transportation costs also were concerned with the early textile trade in this region in addition to the large bulk trades of coal, timber, marl, and agricultural produce. Though they might reduce the cost of transportation, they also put these areas in direct competition with large and well-established markets like that of Manchester. As a result, formerly self-contained ecological and social systems were forced to react to the pull of urban centers and distant markets. Pennine communities responded to these pressures by specializing their land uses; exporting their water, minerals, and energy. In 1769 Arthur Young remarked: "[A]ll the sensible people attributed the dearness of their country to the turnpike roads; and reason speaks the truth of their opinion ... make but a turnpike road through their country and all the cheapness vanishes at once!"51	47
In 1765 the road from Ashton-under-Lyne to Oldham, was turnpiked. In Yorkshire, the Manchester-Austerlands-Wakefield turnpike received many alterations from 1735 through to the 1820s, especially the section that traversed the highest and most inhospitable part of the Pennines. A new stretch of road was cut over the moors to the south of the earlier turnpike that also required a new tunnel before turning northeast. These efforts combined to make the difficult terrain of Stanedge, and the neighboring valleys of the Colne and the Tame, some of the most heavily turnpiked areas in England. Though the links with Manchester were extremely important to Oldham, they were much more easily accomplished than these links with the old woolen centers of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and the extensive market contacts they represented.	48
As the advantages of turnpikes were recognized, a positive feedback loop developed. More traffic used these roads, which led to more improvements and the construction of new and more convenient routes and shortcuts. Throughout southeast Lancashire a model network of turnpike roads was rapidly established which connected all of the major towns with Manchester and with each other. In Oldham, still considered a sparsely populated and out-of-the-way place, a total of five turnpike acts were passed before 1800, two of which dealt with the important Oldham and Austerlands road. Later, with the addition of six more turnpike trusts, the Oldham and Saddleworth areas assured their importance as vital transportation links between Yorkshire and Lancashire. By strengthening these market connections and becoming a significant link between these two trade centers, Oldham began to find its niche in the division of labor associated with the emerging industrial order.	49
Another major stimulus for, and result of, the expanding coal trade was the canal system. It was clear from the construction of the first canal in Lancashire that the test of viability was the carriage of coal. A canal could haul coal twenty times as far by water for the same unit cost as turnpike transport. The resulting spread of the canal network in conjunction with coal mining furthered the integration of ever more remote regions into a wider market economy. The Bridgewater Canal, which was established by Act of Parliament in 1759, actually began in a sough near the coal face of the Duke of Bridgewater's mines at Worsley. This canal then ran four miles to the surface and ended at the Duke's quay in the center of Manchester. As the third Duke of Bridgewater aptly stated, "Every canal must have coals at the heel of it."52	50
As clear as it was to the merchants and manufacturers that coal would be the main freight, the canals were generally meant to link Manchester more firmly to its hinterland. As one observer pointed out in 1795: "The vast extension of the Manchester manufactures after the peace of 1783, gave rise to various new schemes of water communication between the centre of that traffic and its principal stations in the surrounding country."53	51
Manchester established a satellite relationship with its surrounding towns. As it incorporated these areas into its sphere of trade it encouraged them to specialize, creating a geographical division of labor. This further undermined well established land-use patterns and subordinated the land to extra-local economic imperatives. The first of these new "water communications" to extend into the upland periphery was the Manchester, Bolton, and Bury canal, for which an Act of Parliament was obtained in 1791.	52
Before a canal could be constructed it had to be proved that the carriage of coal and other bulk goods would both meet the interest on the large capital outlay and would undercut the existing road freight charges. On the national level the rate of canal construction accelerated in the 1770s and peaked in the 1790s. In Oldham Parish canal construction similarly intensified at the end of the eighteenth century. The role that coal and canals played in the development of Oldham was stressed by one county historian in 1824: "Every township in the parish has its collieries, and the quality of the coal obtains for it a preference in the Manchester market ... [T]he various branches of the manufacture, are essentially promoted by the inland navigation; and the Oldham Canal, which commences at Hollinwood ... and communicates with Manchester, Ashton-under-Line, and Stockport, as well as the Rochdale canal ... co-operate to enrich and improve this district."54	53
Unlike the river navigation schemes earlier in the century, which deepened and straightened existing waterways, a canal involved creating a waterway where none had previously existed—a monumental undertaking to control and direct nature to better serve the market. The first of these undertakings to reach Oldham was the Manchester, Ashton-under-Lyne, and Oldham Canal established by Act of Parliament in 1792. Crossing the Medlock River on the east side of Manchester, this canal then passed through Fairfield where one branch went to Ashton-under-Lyne and another to Oldham. At the southern end of the Oldham area this canal served New Mill. There was also a cut to the Park Colliery. "Coal, lime, lime-stone, and other minerals, and manure, are its principal objects of carriage." By 1794 these two cuts to Oldham were nearly completed, and a branch was being proposed to reach Stockport. This eventually would connect Oldham to another of Manchester's satellites and to the river Mersey.55	54
1794 was a key year in the initiation of canal schemes in this part of England. Perhaps one of the largest and most difficult schemes was the Rochdale Canal. This waterway connected the Duke of Bridgewater's canal at Manchester to the Calder navigation near Halifax, Yorkshire. Dissecting Oldham and Middleton this canal had a profound effect upon the western and northern reaches of Oldham Parish, which included Foxdenton, Chadderton, and Royton. This was the same area that was heavily cut over for its timber from 1767 to 1797, an area already well connected by the 1790s through turnpiking. From Manchester to the terminus at Sowerby-bridge, the Rochdale Canal traversed 31 miles and climbed 438 feet on the Lancashire side and dropped 275 feet on the Yorkshire side. Early opponents argued that this scheme would cut off the tributaries of the river Irk, which worked many small mills and fed the Irwell River, but that problem was overcome by the construction of reservoirs to "supply all the waste of locks or leakage, without borrowing from any of the streams." This completed a link that enabled sea-to-sea canal navigation. By serving as an overland connection between Hull and Liverpool the Rochdale Canal linked Rochdale, Halifax, Oldham, and the surrounding areas with both the trade of the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.56	55
Another Act in 1794 provided for the construction of a narrow-gauge canal to join Ashton (and by extension, Oldham) to Huddersfield by way of the Tame Valley. The avowed aim of this canal was to: "greatly promote and facilitate the Intercourse of Trade and Commerce ... [it] will encourage and increase Manufactures, will materially assist the Agriculture of the Country throughout the Line and Neighbourhood of the said Canal, by a Supply of Lime and other Manure at a moderate Expence and will tend very much to reduce the Price of Coals in the Neighbourhood thereof."57	56
This canal required the engineers to construct a tunnel through Stanedge for over three miles. This huge capital investment indicated the strength and extent of trade at this time in addition to the enormous amount of available capital. To raise the canal to the tunnel there were thirty-two locks. The act also allowed the Huddersfield Canal Co. to take water from "all such Brooks, Springs, Streams, Rivers, Rivulets, Waters, and Watercourses, as are or shall flow or be found in digging or making ... within the Distance of Two Thousand Yards from the same." The company also had the power to "cleanse, scour, and dig, open, deepen, enlarge, vary, and make straighter, the Streams, Brooks, or Watercourses, which come near or may be brought into or communicate with the said Huddersfield Canal." With this canal the hazardous overland journey through the southern Pennines for the trade of coal, wool, timber, corn, lime, and other goods was for the first time avoided. The Huddersfield and Rochdale canals are potent symbols of a much less accommodating view of the environment in that instead of working with or around the Pennines, they sought to change and bend the hills to the requirements of their economic necessities. This was done not only by tunneling and making reservoirs, but also through running these linear watercourses up hills and over bridges.58	57
By the end of the 1790s southeast Lancashire was firmly integrated into the national market economy. With turnpikes and canals providing the circulatory system for an expanding trade network, this previous backwater was now part of the vibrant merchant and manufacturing communities associated with Manchester as well as the old woolen centers of Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield, and Halifax. In addition, the water-borne trade from Oldham could now reach the port of Liverpool as well as the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea—greatly reducing the barrier of high overland transportation costs. One booster noted this important development: "[N]ow this country is pierced and rendered passable for merchandise and travellers, both by roads and canals. The rocky mountains are also perforated, and their steepness subdued by the tunnels which are cut through their rugged sides."59	58
Even after the extensive turnpiking of the second half of the eighteenth century, these canals had a profound impact. Their purpose was not only to add to and rationalize the market connections with Manchester (and by extension with a much larger area), but also to allow new producers outside of Manchester to compete in its already vital and well-connected market.	59
In Oldham the promoters and beneficiaries of these schemes were a definable group with common interests that were linked by a number of institutions. The newly expansive market economy hinged on and encouraged new perceptions of how money and land could be used, and this formed the basis for the social and economic interactions of this emerging elite. John Lees of Fairfield, James Lees of Clarksfield, and William Jones were the sponsors of the Ashton Canal in 1798, appropriately enough, since it was the major coal artery from Oldham.60 Along with the Lees of Werneth, representatives of the Clarksfield and Fairfield Lees were among the proprietors of the Peak Forest Canal, which was a projection into Derbyshire of the Ashton Canal, were sponsors of the Huddersfield Canal, and were also among the proprietors of the Rochdale Canal.61 Together they controlled over 50 percent of the area's textile workers and a clear majority of the coal miners by 1800. This was a coherent and small-sized grouping who quite easily organized to protect their economic interests through their contacts on turnpiking and canal committees, their coal mining partnership, their enclosure of the town's commons, and through other family and business connections.62 The construction of these canals was the final step in severing the links that tied this local economy to its land base, and in subordinating Oldham's society and environment to the new industrial market economy and its local allies. As county historian Edward Baines wrote in 1824: "Through these multiplied mediums Lancashire has discovered the art of making gold without the mystery of the alchymist, and the standing waters as well as the flowing streams are made subservient to her prosperity."63	60
Conclusion—The Market Environment
WHILE DIFFERENT places may have industrialized in different ways, in Oldham's case the "fortuitous location of coal" was key. That follows the model of Wrigley, Pomeranz, Levine and Wrightson and others. But coal mining alone does not necessarily lead to industrialization. As the case of Oldham suggests, the scale of this transformation increased tremendously with advances in transportation and communication technologies. Initially associated with the pre-industrial landed elite, the earliest extractive activities served as a stimulus for, and as a response to, an expanding transportation network. Timber extraction was much more grounded in the old system and was actually complementary to agriculture; cleared trees often meant more arable or grazing land. The difference in the late eighteenth century was the scale of timber felling in an area that previously had used its scarce timber resources locally. There is no evidence of such extensive felling before or after this period in the Oldham area—an indication of the penetration and strength of the market economy radiating from Manchester. Unlike timber extraction, coal mining used the land in a completely different manner. Coal mining helped further a new conception of land as something to be used up, to be mined or built upon, and as a commodity separate from society. This view could not be reconciled with an economy and society based on landed agriculture.	61
Just as the timber crisis and increased demand from London in the late sixteenth century tilted the scales in favor of the coalmasters in Whickham, the intensification of market contacts in the late eighteenth century favored a new entrepreneurial elite in Oldham and their definition of proper land use. This allowed Oldham to be dominated and shaped by the expanding market of Manchester. As a result, the old system of landed agriculture, and a local or regional nexus of trade, was replaced by an ever more complex and dependent economic relationship with the outside world. A contemporary observer, James Butterworth, a weaver and self-taught historian, was not quite sure what this new Oldham was. However, he did recognize the key part these new links played in its transformation. In 1817 he wrote, "It seems to be a kind of central communication between the leading towns of the West-riding of York and that great mart of commerce Manchester."64	62
That the 1790s were key in this transformation is apparent in what immediately followed. In 1801, coal miner/manufacturer John Lees (as "Lord of the Manor") and a number of the other "principal inhabitants" began an attempt to obtain a Parliamentary Act of Enclosure. This was an unpopular proceeding with the majority of inhabitants and earlier attempts had been stymied. This act impinged upon the rights of unrestrained pasturage for cattle and fowl that had been enjoyed for generations, and it also ended the use of the moors as a place of recreation and escape. The aim was to enclose the six large commons of Greenacres Moor, North Moor, Higher Moor, Lower Moor, Sarah Moor, and Hollinwood Moor. Previous to this time, the moors nearest to the town, Greenacres, Hollinwood, and Priest Hill, had been encroached upon steadily by cottagers, by roads, and by the growing turnpike and canal network. The part of Greenacres Moor that was closest to town was already a moderate village, largely through the construction of houses for wage-earning laborers. The Hollinwood common had been encroached upon by the construction of a reservoir to feed the branch canal linking the collieries on the north end of Hollinwood with the Manchester to Ashton-under-Lyne canal, and the three main roads in Hollinwood (including a colliery tram road) also were cut through the common lands.65 The Parliamentary Act of Enclosure was obtained in 1802 to 1803, and by 1807 the common lands of the township had been completely parceled out among the adjacent land owners and occupiers. This enclosure was a tremendous spur to the growth of Oldham. It removed a large geographical barrier to expansion, and it transferred control over the public lands surrounding the town to the "principal inhabitants." As the moors slowly were built over the town center was connected with its periphery in a haphazard and ill-planned pattern of development. This led to further development spin-offs onto agricultural lands and further out onto the moorlands.66	63
This enclosure would not have happened if Oldham had not already been given over to industry. This land was not used to address agricultural needs, as one might expect in an area of increasing population. Instead, the enclosed moors were used to house wage workers; to further establish mining, quarrying, and manufacturing; and to profit from the land in a wholly different manner. As Kenneth Pomeranz has argued, in most cases "highly developed areas faced serious resource constraints, in part because commercialization and handicraft industry also tended to accelerate population growth." Britain's escape from these constraints required "new technologies plus coal, [and] New World resources." By the time of the enclosure act, Oldham had escaped from these constraints. The "fortuitous location of coal" and efficient links to New World resources were key to its industrial transformation. As important as coal were the "very different, politically structured, relationships between cores and their respective peripheries." In the case of Oldham, which was on the periphery of the core of Manchester, we can see clearly the key role that coal, transport links, and local entrepreneurs played in its integration into Manchester's orbit. Once this was done Oldham was part of the core, and the scope of its periphery was greatly widened. Coincident with this was the emergence of a landowning elite that was not dependent upon the local land base, but was allied to Manchester and its extensive market relationships. The newly established market linkages facilitated this group's increasing wealth and power, resulting in the concentration of land and capital in their control, and a "great transformation" in the whole community's relationship with the natural environment.67	64
Matthew Osborn is a lecturer in the humanities at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He received his Ph.D. in Modern European History from UCSC in 1997, and is revising his dissertation, "Land, Community and the Industrial Transformation: An Environmental and Social History of the Early Industrial Revolution in Oldham, England, 1750-1820," for publication. Notes 1. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1944), 40, 71, 130, 178. 2. David Levine and Keith Wrightson, The Making of an Industrial Society: Whickham, 1560-1765 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), ix, 5-6. 3. Kenneth Pomeranz, "Political Economy and Ecology on the Eve of Industrialization: Europe, China, and the Global Conjuncture," American Historical Review 107. 2 (2002): 426; E. A. Wrigley, "The Supply of Raw Materials in the Industrial Revolution," in The Causes of the Industrial Revolution in England, ed. R. M. Hartwell (London: Methuen and Co., 1967), 99-100; and E. A. Wrigley, Continuity, Chance and Change: the Character of the Industrial Revolution in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 4. Lancashire County Record Office (LCRO), Enclosure Act (EA) 6/12. 5. Polanyi, Great Transformation, 178. 6. LCRO, DDX 818/59. 7. Robert G. Albion, Forests and Sea Power: The Timber Problem of the Royal Navy, 1652-1862 (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1965), 97; James Winter, Secure from Rash Assault: Sustaining the Victorian Environment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 87. 8. Oldham Local Studies Center (OLSC), Giles Shaw, Annals of Oldham and District. Being a Chronological History from 1731-1783, vol. II (Oldham, England: "Standard" Office, Yorkshire Street, 1905), 139. 9. Shaw, Annals of Oldham and District, II:103; Quoted in Albion, Forests and Sea Power, 113. 10. Winter, Secure from Rash Assault, 148. 11. John Aiken, A Description of the Country From 30 to 40 Miles Round Manchester (London: John Stockdale, 1795), 242; Greater Manchester County Record Office (GMCRO), E7/25/2/33. 12. Shaw, Annals of Oldham and District, II:157. 13. GMCRO, E7/25/2/33. 14. Michael Flinn, Origins of the Industrial Revolution (London: Longmans, 1969), 60; Shaw, Annals of Oldham and District, II: 254. 15. GMCRO, E7/25/2/33. 16. Ibid., E7/25/3/7. 17. Shaw, Annals of Oldham and District, II:268. 18. Ibid., II:269. 19. Ibid., II:283. 20. Albion, Forests and Sea Power, 99. 21. Shaw, Annals of Oldham and District, III:9. 22. Ibid., III:220, 239-40. 23. Manchester Central Reference Library (MCRL), Giles Shaw MSS, vol. CXVI, no. XII. "Recollections of Hollinwood in Former Years," by an Octogenarian. Articles from the Oldham Chronicle, December, 1896 to March 1897. Microfilmed cuttings from a local historian's collection. 24. House of Commons Journal, 1792 (HCJ), 343. 25. G. A. Cooke, A Topographical and Statistical Description of the County of Lancaster (London: Sherwood, Neely and Jones, 1822), 62. 26. Pomeranz, "Political Economy and Ecology on the Eve of Industrialization," 427; Wrigley, "The Supply of Raw Materials in the Industrial Revolution," 99-100; Wrigley, Continuity, Chance and Change, 54-55. 27. James Butterworth, History of Oldham (J. Clarke: Oldham, England: 1817), 5-6. 28. J. U. Nef, The Rise of the British Coal Industry, vol. I (London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1966), 61, 103; John Langton, "The Industrial Revolution and the Regional Geography of England," Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 9 (1984), 145-167; Michael Flinn, The History of the British Coal Industry, vol. II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 1, 50, 69. 29. LCRO, DDX 614/16/1. 30. The same kind of disputes are documented in Durham and Newcastle in the later sixteenth century as the growing London market for "sea-coal" and a timber crisis increased demand for coal. See Levine and Wrightson, The Making of an Industrial Society. 31. Flinn, History of the British Coal Industry, 38; Levine and Wrightson, The Making of an Industrial Society, 16; LCRO, DDX 614/16/2. 32. LCRO, DDX 614/16/3. 33. GMCRO, E7/25/3/12; GMCRO, E7/25/5/23, and E7/25/6/5. 34. LCRO, DDX 614/16/7. 35. Ibid. 36. Levine and Wrightson, The Making of an Industrial Society, 61. 37. Winter, Secure from Rash Assault, 146; LCRO DDX 614/16/11. 38. GMCRO, E7/25/6/5. 39. Levine and Wrightson, The Making of an Industrial Society, 181-82; Flinn, History of the British Coal Industry, 39. 40. Shaw, Annals of Oldham and District, III:107-8. 41. Ibid., III:154, 156. 42. Ibid., III:156, 158. 43. Ibid., III:160, 246-47.