Wellington in the Age of George III

This article was first published in June 2010 as Wellington prepared to relive its 18th century ‘Jubilee’ festivities at the Midsummer Fayre. Join us on a gallop through Georgian Wellington and find out what changes are afoot...

2010 marks the 250th anniversary of George III’s accession to the throne in 1760. He’s less well known than the likes of Henry VIII or Elizabeth I, yet his reign spanned sixty years in which Britain built the biggest empire of any European nation and became the world’s first industrial powerhouse, setting the scene for era of Victoria and laying the foundations of modern Britain as we know it. Here in Wellington, as in so many towns across England, it was a time when buildings and landscapes were reshaped, when old trades flourished as new industries emerged, and when some of the ancient, boisterous customs and habits gave way to the sobriety and decorum that the Victorians would so take to heart.

Great Natives
Science and art both flourished in Britain during George’s reign, and whilst they might not have done much of their flourishing here in Wellington, a few of our talented natives did go off and make their mark in these fields of endeavour. Best-known to readers of Wellington News will be Dr William Withering, the son of the town apothecary, born in 1741. Educated at Edinburgh University at the height of the Scottish Enlightenment, he became a physician in Birmingham – at one stage the best paid outside London – and also a keen chemist and botanist. In 1785, he published his seminal work on the foxglove, paving the way for its use in the treatment of heart disease and for the modern drug digoxin.
But there are two other less well-known local talents from this period: Nathaniel and Andrew Plimer. These brothers were born in 1757 and 1763 respectively, the sons of a clock maker in the town. They had no intention of going into the family trade and, so the story goes, they joined a band of gypsies and ‘wandered about with them’ before eventually reaching London. Once there, Andrew presented himself to the great miniaturist painter, Richard Cosway, and learnt the art of portrait painting. His brother Nathaniel, meanwhile, fell on his feet with famed enamellist Henry Bone, before later joining his brother in Cosway’s studio. Both brothers went on to exhibit their work at the Royal Academy on numerous occasions, and their beautiful miniatures of the great and the good can now be picked up for a mere £20,000 a piece.

The changing face of the town
Clearly the modern world was very tangible in the galleries of London and the dining rooms of Birmingham’s Lunar Men, but surely all the new ideas and fashions stopped far from Wellington, didn’t they? Well, certainly it was a town that looked more medieval than today, more quirky and crooked than today, and with open fields and farmsteads lapping at its small, knotty core of centuries-old streets, our extensive redbrick suburbs not yet built.
But even sleepy Wellington could not escape the ‘urban renaissance’ that characterised this era, and the change it witnessed within the period was significant. When a young George ascended his throne in 1760, a timber-framed market hall stood in Wellington’s Market Place, and a medieval All Saints Church still stood in the churchyard. By the time the King died in 1820, both those landmarks had disappeared, and a great many other buildings had either been demolished or remodelled, their arcane timber frames replaced by (or at least encased in) more fashionable brick. That was true of the modest shops and dwellings in the middle of the town, and of the great houses that pricked the landscape around it at Apley, Dothill, Eyton and Orleton – all four of which underwent partial or total reconstruction during this period, and saw their estates remodelled into sweeping parkland.

Religion, morals and manners
But it wasn’t just the physical world of bricks and mortar that were undergoing a renaissance; so too was the spiritual world of religion and morality. The reign of George III witnessed an upsurge in non-conformist Christianity in England. The days of violent religious persecutions had ended, but tensions still ran high as the Church of England sought to hold on to the nation’s souls. Here in Wellington and the Coalfield districts, it was a battle keenly fought. In 1760, for instance, a Quaker meeting in Wellington’s town hall so riled the vicar that he apparently rang all the parish church’s six bells to disrupt them. Baptists were also present, among them the successful Houlston printing family who paid for the building of a new Baptist chapel in Tan Bank in 1825 – the same year that their success in Wellington led them to open a branch in London. Most numerous of all were the Methodists, who had flourished since the famous John Fletcher preached in the town in 1753. By 1799, these various ‘Dissenters’ made up a fifth of the town’s population. The trend towards non-conformity was one that would continue in the Victorian era, when it would count many of the town’s most prosperous business men amongst its congregations.

This trend, part of a wider evangelical revival, was evident in all sorts of aspects of the nation’s life. Here in Wellington, the aforementioned Houlstons were a prime example. Starting their printing business in the Market Place in 1775, they began publishing books of their own in 1804. From the start, their energy went into strongly religious, moral stories that rode the crest of that evangelical tide. Their message was clear – bawdiness and loose living was out, sobriety and godliness was in. It was a trend also evident in the disappearance of the rougher customs and festivities, such as the boisterous Wrekin Wakes. Drink-fuelled and violent, on one occasion in the 1750s – Allan Frost has found – they had got so out of hand that the Riot Act had to be read. In the 1820s, reports suggest that the local gentry finally stamped them out, though I suspect many of the ordinary townsfolk themselves turned away from the tradition, encouraged by their preachers. The world was changing, and even the old ways of having fun were on the frontline of that change.

Don’t forget the Georgians
So, there’s just a flavour of what was going on in Wellington during the reign of the rustic, mad ‘Farmer George’. It was a time when the town produced some of its greatest sons; when industry exploded onto our local landscape; when towns and country estates were re-imagined in elegant, Classical styles; and when old customs were curtailed as a new, impassioned piety began to take hold. For Wellington, as England, it was a time of enormous change that laid the foundations for much that we recognise in the more well-known Age of Victoria. But whilst a lot has changed since, there is also a lot of this era still evident in and around the Wellington of today. Walk into the parish church, and you’re walking into the one that opened its doors for the first time in 1790. Step inside many of the town’s shops and pubs, and you’re treading in 18th century footsteps; and turn up at the town’s Midsummer Fayre on 19th June, and you can even see a snapshot of Georgian Wellington walk straight past you as we re-enact the ‘Jubilee Procession’ of the 1770s. So, whilst the Victorians might get most of the glory in these parts, with their railways, their redbrick villas and their civic halls, don’t forget what the Georgians did for us.