Changing Landscapes of Time and Space: the Bristol Channel Region c.1790-1914

The thesis considers how perceptions of time and space changed during this period in the Bristol Channel region as new forms of transport and communications stimulated an unprecedented movement of people, freight and messaging at speeds which appeared to compress space, bringing the outside world closer. Newspapers are used as the principal primary source, and, as expressions of locality, they provide an insight into the diverse mental landscapes concerning speed and space that were emerging across the region. The region was on the margins of Great Britain prior to these changes, but new transport and communications networks brought the region into the mainstream. New forms of transport and communications tended to favour urban areas and the experience of rapid movement was uneven across the region. The revolution in individual travel and passenger transport was populated principally by men, with the exceptions of the railway excursion and the urban tram, which expanded the horizons of leisure for working classes, but the level of railway fares excluded many potential working-class travellers. Perceptions of time and space, therefore, did not only vary between locations across the region, but also between men and women and social classes as they experienced travel differently. The railway and telegraph, Britain’s ‘nervous system’, connected the region with markets throughout the British Isles and globally. Steamships forged ‘ocean highways’ and telegraph cables bounded the planet, creating an international communications system that also standardized ‘railway’ time everywhere. As the outside world became more accessible, nearer and more connected, new forms of landscapes regarding place, identity and ‘others’ were defined as a measure of human progress. These changes helped define what is meant by ‘modern’; but they originated in industrial change from the 1790s which was made possible by new technologies in transport and communications