Mid-19th Century housing in Nottingham
In the first half of the 19th century Nottingham was a town with a particularly bad housing problem.
In 1721 the population of the town was about 10,000, and Charles Deering, writing in 1751, described it as a garden city, with well laid out houses, surrounded by orchards and gardens in the midst of parkland and open spaces. By 1831 the population had risen to about 50,000 but the people were packed into very much the same ground area as had been occupied a hundred years before.
Where there had once been a garden city, there was, by 1851, 'a chequer board of mean streets, alleyways and courts' (Chambers: Modern Nottingham in the Making, p.6) which had evolved by the over-building of the gardens, orchards and vacant spaces.
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