To what extent do the 2 sources show how Stoke Bruerne was affected by the coming of the canal in 1805 and the railway in 1840?”

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Carrie Bradshaw History Coursework - Canals Question Three

"To what extent do the 2 sources show how Stoke Bruerne was affected by the coming of the canal in 1805 and the railway in 1840?"

During the Industrial Revolution, the village of Stoke Bruerne endured two major changes, which caused both long, and short term affects and altered the village socially and physically. The two sources display Stoke Bruerne very differently from each other. However there are many factors to be taken into consideration when drawing a conclusion for this question, mainly about the reliability of the source and how it is backed up by information we gained from the site visit and other sources available to us.

Source A was a passage taken from "A Tour of The Grand Union in 1819" written by John Hassell, fourteen years after the canal had been completed. Source A starts off by describing the general appearance of the village. Hassell described Stoke Bruerne as "picturesque" and "rustic," the village still had a rural feeling to it, and he has said that it was very similar to country Welsh villages and had buildings very similar in make to those he found there. It was said by the writer of the Stoke Bruerne guidebook that the slate on the roofs had actually been taken from the mines in North Wales. The canal had obviously brought trade to the village from other areas of the country.

However, the more drastic effects on the village were on its wealth and fame. There was a lot of traffic around the canal, "succession of moving objects" and "navigation attendants and their cattle bustling to pass a lock" and there appeared to be a lot of business and jobs. There was "freighted boats" and accommodation for the diverse visitors that came to the village, described as a "motley group," the guidebook expressed a frequency of boats and traffic, the "boat after boat" passed through Stoke Bruerne every day. The business of the canal at Stoke Bruerne was also evident when in 1836, the weight of traffic on the locks at the village (70 in total per day) caused the Grand Junction Canal Committee to construct a second pair of locks in order to deal with the amount of boats (Guidebook and site visit, where second set of locks were evidently removed).
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In addition, women had been taking on "laborious avocations" implying that there were lots of jobs, as normally the more physical jobs would have been done by men. In addition, there appeared to be a good supply of food, and enough food to go spare, as the writer was offered an "excellent piece of corned beef." With the large amounts of cattle (for trade) in the area and the visitors, the economy of Stoke Bruerne appeared in the source to be extremely healthy. This is very clear from the table of dividends for the years from when the ...

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