ONE - INTRODUCTION

Summary

Yet, unless I greatly deceive myself, the general effect of this chequered narrative will be to excite thankfulness in all religious minds, and hope in the breasts of all patriots. For the history of our country during the last hundred and sixty years is eminently the history of physical, of moral, and of intellectual improvement. Those who compare the age on which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in their imagination may talk of degeneracy and decay: but no man who is correctly informed as to the past will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.

T. B. Macaulay History of England 1849: 1

In tracing the progress of improvement, it is not necessary to draw the line of distinction between individual, local, and national establishments. These … have all one origin and one tendency.

David Laurie 1810: xxxiv

This book is not a complete account of the history and archaeology of Britain between 1750 and 1850. The history books alone dealing with that century fill several hundred metres of shelf space in my university library and one obviously cannot distil all that information, or even the most important bits of it into one, medium-sized book. Instead I have chosen to focus on aspects of the material evidence of the period which throw light on what I consider to be an important and characteristic aspect of the period: the idea of Improvement.