Counterurbanization: The Nineteenth Century Origins of a Late-Twentieth Century Phenomenon

Counterurbanization: The Nineteenth Century Origins of a Late-Twentieth CenturyPhenomenonAuthor(s): Colin G. Pooley and Jean TurnbullSource: Area, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Dec., 1996), pp. 514-524Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20003736 .

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Area (1996) 28.4, 514-524

Counterurbanization: the nineteenth century origins of a late-twentieth century phenomenon

Colin G Pooley and Jean Turnbull, Department of Geography, Lancaster University, Lancaster LAI 4YB

Summary Data on the life-time residential histories of 16,091 individuals born 1750-1930 are used to examine the relative importance of movement up and down the urban hierarchy. Although movement to larger towns exceeded counterurbanization until the 1880s, there was a substantial amount of movement down the urban hierarchy from at least the mid-eighteenth century.

Introduction

It is usually assumed that counterurbanization is a phenomenon of the second half of the twentieth century. Beale (1975, 1977) and Berry (1976, 1980) identified counterurbanizing tendencies in the USA in the 1970s, and similar demographic trends have been demonstrated in most developed countries (Fielding 1982, 1990; Perry et al 1986; Champion 1989; Cross 1990). In most British studies counter urbanization is defined as the movement of population from large cities to smaller settlements on a scale which makes a significant difference to the distribution of the population between towns at different points in the urban hierarchy. Counter-urbanizing trends must also redistribute the urban population to smaller free-standing settlements to distinguish them from the much older process of sub urbanization (Champion 1989, 19-33). There have been some recent attempts to place counterurbanization within a broader theoretical context, and to appraise the persistence of the phenomenon (Berry 1988; Champion 1989, 1992; Sant and Simons 1993; Geyer 1996), but no studies have placed counterurbanization within an historical context.

This paper uses new evidence on the pattern and process of residential migration from the mid-eighteenth century to argue that not only was suburbanization a feature of nineteenth-century British cities (Dyos 1961; Jackson 1973; Thompson 1982), but also that a substantial proportion of those leaving large cities were moving down the urban hierarchy to smaller free-standing settlements. Although not as quantitatively dominant as in the second half of the twentieth century, it is suggested that such movement was a significant part of the nineteenth-century migration system, almost matching rural to urban moves in its demographic significance. It is thus argued that the process of counterurbanization is not new, but that the late-twentieth century has simply experienced an expansion of a much older trend.

The data

Studies of migration in the past have mostly relied on census evidence which provides only a snapshot of movement from place of birth to place of residence on census night (Friedlander and Roshier 1966; Lawton 1973; Pooley 1983), on sources



Counterurbanization: origins of a late-twentieth century phenomenon 515

which focus on the movement of specific groups of people for particular reasons (such as apprentice registers, Poor Law certificates or Trade Union records (Lovett et al 1985; Taylor 1989; Withers and Watson 1991; Southall 1991a)), or on individual accounts drawn from diaries, contemporary observations or oral evidence (Parton 1980; Pooley and D'Cruze 1994; Richards 1991; Southall 1991b; Jones 1981;

Bartholomew 1991). The data used in this analysis were collected as part of an ESRC-funded project in which one of the main objectives was to create a large database of individual residential histories spanning the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. The research has not identified a single new source, but it has used a large labour force of family historians and genealogists who have traced the life histories of their ancestors, linking a wide range of conventional sources (such as census and vital registration data, wills, directories, ratebooks and poor law papers amongst other records) and family papers that would not normally be available to the historical geographer. Respondents were contacted through family history and genealogy

magazines, and those with relevant information were sent a detailed data-entry form. Information was requested on the residential life history of ancestors born between 1750 and 1930, together with details of why people moved, who they moved with, employment change and other major events in the life course. A total of 2,420 family historians requested forms, of whom 57 4 per cent (1,388) returned completed data sheets. Of the 17,161 forms returned, 6 2 per cent were rejected because they contained insufficient or inconsistent information, leaving data on 16,091 individuals who undertook 73,864 separate moves in their life times. 66,664 of these moves had an origin and destination in Britain, and this is the data set on which analysis in the paper is based.

Cross-sections of the data have been compared with census evidence to check the representativeness of the information collected.' There are some inevitable biases arising from the nature of historical sources and the objectives of family historians,

most notably a bias towards males, those in higher socio-economic groups, and towards those who ever married and lived to an old age. It is also likely that residential life histories for the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are less complete than those for later periods. Analysis of the reasons given for migration

must be treated with due caution (in many cases sources give explicit reasons, but in others they must be inferred), but overall the quality of the data is very good and none of the biases affect the analysis presented in this paper. All parts of the country are adequately represented in the data set and the distribution of the sample population between places of different size is quite close to that given in the censuses, but with an under-representation of larger towns, especially in 1801. This should not unduly influence the analysis presented in this paper as moves both from and to large towns will be equally affected.

Obviously any analysis of flows up and down the urban hierarchy will depend, in part, on the size categories that are used to define urban places. Historical analysis is further complicated by the fact that many settlements changed the size category in

which they were situated over the 200 years from 1750. Whereas in 1801 74 0 per cent of the population of England and Wales lived in places of under 5,000 people, by 1891 only 31 9 per cent lived in such settlements (Robson 1973; Law 1967; Weber 1899). In this analysis, no attempt is made to identify and define urban functions, and

movement up or down the urban hierarchy is associated purely with town size. All places which formed an origin or destination for the 73,864 moves in the data set (9,479 different settlements within Britain), were grouped into eight size categories at four different census dates (1801, 1851, 1891, 1951).2 In addition London was



516 Pooley and Turnbull

separately identified as were all suburbs of large cites which, although not part of the administrative unit, formed part of the contiguous built-up area. Clearly the

boundaries between categories are arbitrary and the divisions used in this analysis present only one of many possible pictures of movement between places of different sizes. However, the data are very stable when analysed within different frameworks, and the divisions used are more than adequate to identify the aggregate movement up and down the urban hierarchy explored in this paper.

The evidence

The most common migration experience at all times in the past was movement either within a settlement or to a place in the same size category (Table 1). Overall such moves accounted for around two thirds of all movement, with the relative significance of very short-distance intra-settlement movement increasing in the nineteenth century but falling again in the twentieth. The one third of moves that took migrants either up or down the urban hierarchy to settlements in a different size

category were, overall, almost equally divided between moves to larger and smaller places. Over time the relative importance of moves both up and down the urban

hierarchy increased, but the relationship between the two changed with an excess of moves to larger places until 1880, an approximate balance in the period 1880 to 1919, and an excess of moves down the urban hierarchy after 1920 (Table 1). The proportion of all migrants who ever experienced a move down the urban hierarchy also increased substantially from 28 6 per cent for those born 1750 to 1819, to 70 3 per cent for the cohort born 1890 to 1930. These figures thus imply that some counterurbanization was occurring in the eighteenth century (although it was

demographically less important than moves to larger places), that by the late nineteenth century moves up and down the urban hierarchy were equally matched, and that movement from large to small places was the dominant trend after 1920.

A more detailed examination of these data by size of origin settlement confirms these trends, and shows that most counterurbanizing moves from large places were not to towns in an adjacent size category, but were mainly to small settlements of under 5,000 population (Table 2a). In contrast, movement up the urban hierarchy from places under 5,000 population was quite evenly split between those that moved to a town only a little larger, and those who went directly to a large city of over 100,000 population (Table 2b). Excluding settlements of under 5,000 population and

London (from which migrants must have moved respectively to either a larger or smaller size category), migrants leaving towns in the other seven size categories were

much more likely to move to a smaller than to a larger place (Table 3). The pattern of such moves is obviously related to the distribution of urban settlements in different size classes (with there being far more small towns in the earlier time periods (Robson 1973)), but the overall trend is stable.

The way in which such moves linked into the lifetime migration experience of four cohorts of individual migrants is shown in Table 4, which emphasises the benefits of a longitudinal data set. Movement up the urban hierarchy was most likely to occur following the first move undertaken by a migrant (particularly for migrants born before 1890), but thereafter most moves were within one size category or, and

especially for those born after 1850, to smaller places. Thus for migrants born between 1850 and 1889, a larger proportion lived in a settlement of under 5,000 population after their tenth move than did so following their first move. This indicates that in each time period most moves to larger towns took place at an early




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Table 2 Percentage of those leaving large and small settlements moving to towns in a different size category

2a: All migrants leaving settlements of over 100,000 population (including London) Time period

Size class of destination 1750-1839 1840-1879 1880-1919 1920-1994 All

<5,000 70 4 55 4 47 8 49 1 50 5 5,000-9,999 11-3 13 0 8 4 7-1 8 8 10,000-19,999 6 9 9.1 11 1 10 0 10 1 20,000-39,999 2 5 8 6 16 0 11 4 12 1 40,000-59,999 0 6 4 3 6 8 9 5 7 3 60,000-79,999 50 54 56 84 68 80,000-99,999 3 1 42 43 45 43 Total leaving size class 159 1,029 1,790 2,347 5,325 % of all moves 25 9 24-3 25 0 36 6 28 9 Moves within same settlement 455 2,856 4,575 2,875 10,761 % of all moves 74-1 67 3 64 0 44 9 58 4 Moves within same size class 358 789 1,187 2,334 % of all moves 8 4 11 0 18 5 12 7 Total moves 614 4,243 7,154 6,409 18,420

2b: All migrants leaving settlements of under 5,000 population 5,000-9,999 23 8 215 13 4 12 8 17() 10,000-19,999 26 6 13 2 17 3 13 3 16 1 20,000-39,999 10 0 13 7 16 5 13 4 14 0 40,000-59,999 1 8 6 8 7-8 11 2 7 7 60,000-79,999 10 3 9 0 4 3 7 2 7 3 80,000-99,999 3-7 25 37 52 38 100,000+ (ex London) 15 5 25 2 29 9 204

London 24-2 17 9 11 8 7 0 13 8 Total leaving size class 949 2,321 2,303 2,105 7,678 % of all moves 15 5 23 7 32 1 40 1 27 1 Moves within same settlement 1,172 2,854 2,055 1,157 7,238 % of all moves 19 2 29 1 28 6 22 0 25 5 Moves within same size class 3,999 4,640 2,824 1,987 13,450 % of all moves 65-3 47 3 39 3 37.9 47.4 Total moves 6,120 9,815 7,182 5,249 28,366

Source: Calculated from 16,091 residential life histories provided by family historians

stage in the life course, but (especially after 1850) older migrants were more likely to undertake counterurbanizing moves. It might be suggested that many moves from large to smaller places were in effect suburbanization, with people moving to villages and small towns that were becoming caught up in the expansion of larger conurbations. However, only 8 2 per cent of such moves were less than five kms, and the mean distance moved down the urban hierarchy was over 79 kms (Table 5). This

was only a little less than the average distance moved up the urban hierarchy, and the relationship between the two was very stable over time.

The characteristics of those moving up and down the urban hierarchy were also quite similar, with the majority of such migrants in the 20 to 39 age group and




Table 3 Percentage of those leaving towns in different size categories* moving to settlements in a smaller size category

Time period Size class of origin 1750-1839 1840-1879 1880-1919 1920-1994 All

5,000-9,999 667 55 1 423 464 507 10,000-19,999 75 0 60 3 56-4 47 5 56 6 20,000-39,999 766 646 584 57 1 602 40,000-59,999 950 682 630 655 657 60,000-79,999 91 9 75 3 69-3 67 7 72 0 80,000-99,999 71 8 85 4 73 4 70 8 70 3 100,000+ (ex London) - 94 0 89 6 92-6 91 8 Total moves to smaller settlements 730 2,486 3,641 4,536 11,393

*Excluding London and settlements under 5,000 population The table should be read as follows: In the period 1750-1839 66 7 per cent of those leaving a town

in the population size range 5,000-9,999 moved to a smaller settlement Source: Calculated from 16,091 residential life histories profided by family historians

Table 4 Sequential moves by size class of settlement and cohort of migrant

Date of birth of migrant 1750-1819 1820-1849 1850-1889 1890-1930

Residential sequence <5,000>100,000 <5,000>100,000 <5,000>100,000 <5,000>100,000

Origin settlement 79 1 42 604 12 5 42 0 33-9 25 1 41 0 Destination settlement 1 70 7 7-2 48 6 18 8 34 3 31 4 23-7 38 3 Destination settlement 2 67 6 8 8 46 1 20 2 31 2 33 4 24 5 34-8 Destination settlement 3 64 2 10 5 42-8 22 0 30 8 31 8 23 9 34 6 Destination settlement 4 61 8 11 0 42 8 22 7 31 9 31 0 24 8 34-1 Destination settlement 5 57-8 12 2 41 8 25 1 32 5 29 7 28 4 31 8 Destination settlement 6 55 8 14-0 40 1 26 2 33 8 28-8 27 8 31 9 Destination settlement 7 50 8 18 4 41 7 240 34 1 27-4 32-8 27 3 Destination settlement 8 49 1 21 1 37 9 28 0 34 8 27 7 31 8 25 6 Destination settlement 9 47 7 17 7 43 0 24 8 36 6 27 0 33 9 27-3 Destination settlement 10 44 9 20 3 364 31 6 41 3 22-8 32 9 26 7 Destination settlement 11 45 0 19 9 37 2 24 8 37 8 23 0 360 22 1 Total size of cohort 4,394 3,706 4,456 2,773

The table should be read as follows: 79 1 per cent of those born 1750-1819 originated in a settlement of under 5,000 population, and 4 2 per cent in a settlement of over 100,000 population (including London). After their first residential move 70 7 per cent of the cohort born 1750-1819 remained in a settlement of under 5,000 population and 7-2 per cent lived in a settlement of over

100,000 population. Source: Calculated from 16,091 residential life histories provided by family historians

moving as part of a family grouping (Table 6). As already noted, moves to larger settlements were more likely to be undertaken by younger people moving alone, especially in the earlier time periods, but there were no significant differences between male and female migrants. Other trends reflect general features of the




Table 5 Mean distance moved (kms) by type of move and time period

Year of move

Type of move 1750-1839 1840-1879 1880-1919 1920-1994 All moves

Within same settlement 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 05 New settlement in same size class 33 7 41 4 54 7 86 4 51 8 New settlement in larger size class 94 3 83 6 88 4 95 4 86 3 New settlement in smaller size class 87 4 75 8 79-8 88 9 79-3


migration process. Thus all longer distance moves between settlements were more likely to be undertaken by those in higher socio-economic groups,3 and the relative importance of professional and skilled non-manual groups increased sharply in the twentieth century as manual occupations declined in significance.

Reasons for migration up and down the urban hierarchy were also similar, with work-related moves accounting for over half of all such migration before 1920 (Table 6). In the twentieth century there was a general trend for work-related moves to be relatively less important, as people had more freedom to move for housing, family reasons and on retirement, but before 1920 personal crises were more likely to stimulate a move to a smaller than to a larger settlement. In detail, this reason included a wide variety of causes such as ill-health, unemployment, and family bereavement. The data suggest that, in a period when many people still had links with smaller settlements, some counterurbanizing moves could have been the result of migrants returning to a settlement in which they had lived earlier in their life at a time of personal crisis. However, this is not a dominant trend, and there is some evidence that those who counterurbanized were less likely than all migrants to have lived previously in a small settlement of under 5,000 people. Thus, whereas 54 per cent of all migrants originated in settlements of under 5,000 people, only 38 6 per cent of counterurbanizers began life in such settlements. Although this partly reflects the fact that counterurbanization was more common in the later time periods, when urban settlements were both bigger and more numerous, the same trend is true for migrants born 1750-1819, when 79 1 per cent of all migrants originated in a place of under 5,000 population compared to only 65 8 per cent of counterurbanizers.

Some of these trends can be further illustrated through three brief case studies spanning the period from the mid-eighteenth century. John B. was born in the small town of Bishop Auckland (population 1,961 in 1801), County Durham, in 1767. His father was a potter, and he lived at home following his father's trade (from the age of 13) until he married in 1796 at the age of 29. He then established his home and his own pottery business in the village of Newbottle (population 970 in 1801) near

Houghton-le-Spring, some 30 kms from his parental home. However, within a vear of his marriage his wife died (probably in childbirth), and this stimulated a move to a new house in Newbottle with his baby son. In 1806, at the age of 39, he married again and moved some 120 kms to his wife's home city of Leeds (population 35,951 in 1811), establishing himself as a potter and earthenware dealer. However, he clearly did not settle in a larger city, and a year later he returned to Houghton-le-Spring with his wife and two sons, working as an itinerant pottery salesman. He moved again in 1811 to the small town of Hexham (population 3,427 in 1811) in Northumberland,




Table 6 Selected characteristics (per cent*) of migrants moving to settlements in larger or smaller size categories, by year of move

Year of move 1750-1839 1840-1879 1880-1919 1920-1994

Migrant characteristics Larger Smaller Larger Smaller Larger Smaller Larger Smaller

(a) Age: Under 20 years 32 2 25 2 28 4 23-9 29 8 26 2 10 6 9 7 20-39 years 57 5 61 2 53 0 56-1 47 0 49 1 42 0 40 5 40-59 years 9-3 11.9 14 1 15 6 15 9 17 6 23 1 24 5 60 years and over 1.0 1 7 4 5 4 5 74 7 1 242 25 2

(b) Marital status: Unmarried 53 2 379 42 5 33 9 446 39 2 246 21 8 Married 44 2 59 1 52 7 61 1 50 3 55 8 62 2 65 9

(c) Migration companions: Migrating alone 27 9 17 6 20 7 12 9 23 1 17 1 25 3 20 2 Migrating in nuclear family 64 5 76-2 71 5 77-7 69 4 74 0 64 3 69 1

(d) Employment: Professional/managerial 12 0 15 5 8 2 13 6 13 0 17 4 23 7 23-7 Intermediate 15 0 10 6 12 7 16 0 11 0 13 8 12 6 14 7 Skilled non-manual 10 5 8 5 10 7 8-4 17 6 14 6 27 6 26 7 Skilled manual (industrial) 34 9 33-6 33 3 30 9 24 3 23 4 17-0 16 3 Semi/unskilled (industrial) 11 5 10 4 18 8 13 7 13 4 11 8 7 2 5 7 Agricultural and fishing 5 3 5*9 6 8 8 3 5-8 5 3 1 7 1.9 Domestic service 3 0 3 5 6 0 3 2 9 9 5.7 5 5 4 6

(e) Main reason for migration: Employment 54 2 57 6 57 9 58 2 54 2 51 0 35 8 30 9 Marriage 168 140 160 127 118 118 76 8-1 Housing 09 2 1 1-8 40 4-9 62 117 15 8 Family 23 25 28 4.3 3.9 34 43 78 Crisis 5 9 17 4 7 2 14 3 6 6 17 9 11 1 5.5 Retirement 0.1 1-7 1-4 2 0 2 9 3 4 5-6 8 7

VPer cent of total moving to a settlement in a larger or smaller size class for whom characteristics are known. Not all columns sum to 100% due to missing data and the omission of some small

categories.


and in 1817 to Richmond (population 3,546 in 1821) in Yorkshire, both moves related to his work as a potter and travelling pottery salesman. However, in 1830 at the age of 63 he moved some 60 kms with his wife, 3 sons and 3 daughters, back to

Newbottle. Although he continued to work as a potter, the main reason for this move was to secure better employment opportunities for his sons in the Durham coal industry. John B. died in Newbottle in 1855. The lifetime migration experience of

John B. thus included movement up the urban hierarchy to the eighth largest city in Britain (in 1801), but for most of his life he moved between smaller settlements and returned in old age to the area in which he had spend his early married life. His

moves were mainly stimulated by employment reasons (for himself or his children), though marriage and the effect of the death of his wife were also important, and

movement between small settlements, and down the urban hierarchy, was a more frequent occurrence than movement towards larger settlements.




Archibald M. was born in 1856 in the small Scottish town of Forres (population 3,339 in 1851), Elginshire. His father was a farm labourer and his mother worked as a seamstress, but in 1858 (when Archibald was only 2) his father died and the family of four children moved with their mother to a different house in Forres. The family moved once more in Forres, where Archibald was apprenticed as a painter from the age of 14, until in 1875 he moved with his two brothers to London where he continued to work as a painter. In 1883 he moved from London to Glasgow (no specific reason is stated), but by 1885 he was again living in Forres with his mother and two sisters, where he had established himself as a master painter and decorator. In 1887, at the age of 31 he married and moved to a new house in Forres, where he remained until 1909 when he entered a nursing home following a stroke. He died in Forres three years later. The migration history of Archibald M. thus includes movement to the largest cities of England and Scotland, probably in both cases for employment reasons, but he was drawn back to his family in the small town of Forres when he established himself in business on his own account. Such movement directly from a small place to a large city and then back to a small settlement was typical of the experience of many migrants in the nineteenth century.

Annie E. was born in Ardwick in Manchester in 1894. Her father was a signwriter and the family moved three times within Ardwick during the first 11 years of Annie's life. In 1909, at the age of 15, she moved with her parents and three siblings some five kms to the expanding suburb of Burnage in south Manchester, where she lived (working as a school teacher in Manchester) until she married and left home in 1920 at the age of 26. She moved to her husband's home in Gosforth (population 18,239 in 1931) on Tyneside and gave up paid employment. In 1925, now with one daughter, the family moved to the village of Monkseaton, effectively a suburb of

Whitley Bay, and they moved again to a better house in the same village in 1937. Although moving down the urban hierarchy most moves were effectively suburbani zation rather than counterurbanization, but in 1954 Annie moved with her husband some 40 kms to the tiny Northumberland village of Riding Mill, some 10 kms from

Hexham. A retirement move in 1964 took the couple to a small village in Norfolk, but after her husband died she moved in 1972 to Harrogate (population 56,345 in 1961) in North Yorkshire to be near her daughter. She died in residential care in

York in 1984. Annie E. thus grew up in a large city, made some suburbanizing moves in Manchester and Tyneside, before moving to the countryside later in her life course. However, old age and a desire to be near her family, took her back to an urban area at the end of her life.

Conclusions

Although in the period before 1880 more people in the data set collected from family historians moved to a larger place than to a smaller, and thus the process of migration did contribute to urban growth in the nineteenth century, the differences between flows up and down the urban hierarchy were small. This is consistent with calculations made by Welton and others (Welton 1911; Cairncross 1949; Lawton 1968) which demonstrated that from at least 1841, in most towns, natural increase

was a more important component of urban growth than migration. In line with the observations made by contemporary observers (Danson and Welton 1859; Ravenstein 1885, 1889), people were most likely to move up the urban hierarchy at an early stage of their migration life cycle, and move from large to smaller settlements a little later in the life course. Even in the eighteenth century there is strong evidence that




movement down the urban hierarchy was a significant part of the British migration

system and that it frequently included people who began life in larger towns as well

as those who moved from small places to large and then back down the urban hierarchy.

This has two important implications for research on migration and counter

urbanization. First, it suggests that much more attention should be paid to the whole range of migratory moves that people undertook in the past. Rural to urban

migration was not the most common type of movement, and this process needs to be set alongside the complex range of other migratory experiences, including intra urban movement, migration between towns of similar size, rural circulation, and

movement to small places, that individuals experienced during their life times.

Second, it demonstrates that the counterurbanizing processes identified from the 1970s, were not in themselves new. Although the volume of dispersal from large to small towns and its demographic significance has increased in the twentieth century, the underlying process is of long standing. Even in the 1880s almost as many people

moved down the urban hierarchy as up it. It can be suggested that counter urbanization should rank alongside urbanization and suburbanization as an important process of demographic change in the past as well as the present.

Notes

1 For more information on verification see Pooley and Turnbull (1996a, 1996b).

2 The size bands used for analysis were: under 5,000 population; 5,000-9,999; 10,000-19,999; 20,000

39,999; 40,000-59,999; 60,000-79,999; 80,000-99,999; over 100,000. 3 Socio-economic groups were derived from the 1951 OPCS classification (see Armstrong, 1972).

Acknowledgements

This research could not have been completed without the information provided by family historians and

genealogists, and research funds provided by the Nuffield Foundation and the ESRC. Thanks also to Jim

Johnson and two anonymous referees for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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Documents

Counterurbanization: The Nineteenth Century Origins of a Late-Twentieth Century Phenomenon