The effect of the coming of the railway on the towns and villages of East Kent, 1841-1919

Railways revolutionized public transport: within a space of twenty years journeys which had taken days could be accomplished in almost as few hours. Railways were once the cutting edge of new technology, in both mechanical and civil engineering, but the difference which they actually made to the towns and villages they served through which they passed has rarely been examined.

In part, this is a consequence of the lamentable lack of railway company statistics on just how many passengers were, and just what, and how much, freight was carried from where to where, but changes in the way of life are qualitative rather than quantitative, and so much less susceptible of clear identification.

An alternative source of information is the trade directories, from which it is possible to calculate the changing social and commercial structure of towns and villages, both on and off the railway, and to relate these changes to the railway's arrival.

Nineteenth century East Kent was very well supplied with railways as a result of competition between the two rival companies, the South Eastern and the London, Chatham and Dover Railways. They served the Channel ports and the Thanet resorts as a matter of policy, but much of the rest of the area was only served by default, and this thesis is an analysis, based in the main on directory evidence, of the various changes. Five groups of towns are discussed, the Channel ports and main railway centres; the holiday towns; Canterbury; the minor coastal towns; and the villages on the railway, with a control group of villages which (up to 1914) had no railway service.

This analysis suggests that, in quantitative terms, the railway had much less effect on an area with virtually no manufacturing industry or raw materials than might have been expected.