Page:The National Gazetteer - A Topographical Dictionary of the British Islands, Volume 1.djvu/7



present Gazetteer was undertaken to meet a daily increasing want. The great changes in the political and ecclesiastical arrangements of the country, and the revolution effected in locomotion by the construction of railroads, during the last quarter of a century, have rendered former works comparatively obsolete. The census of 1861 and the Ordnance Survey have furnished new statistics both as regards population and area. The progress of manufactures and commerce has created fresh centres of industry, turned villages into towns, and changed the whole face of the country. By the Act of Parliament regulating the boundaries of counties, whole towns and parishes have been transferred from one county to another. Great alterations have likewise occurred in the ecclesiastical distribution of livings. In England numerous new parishes have been demarcated under Sir Robert Peel's Act; in Scotland the Free Church has arisen, and the National Church suffered disruption; and in Ireland great changes have taken place from various causes, among which may be mentioned emigration, the decrease of tillage and the increase of pasture, and other consequences flowing from the operation of the Encumbered Estates Act.

Under these circumstances a careful revision of the topography of the United Kingdom has been considered as likely to meet with public approval. Great exertion has been used to obtain authentic information, many of the more important articles having been contributed by gentlemen personally acquainted with the localities described in them; while, in the majority of instances, even the lesser articles have been revised by persons living in or near the neighbourhood.

To render the work more useful, a series has been added of seventy maps of the counties, drawn from the best authorities, on such a scale as to insure both efficiency and convenience, the railways and railway stations being indicated, and the whole verified on the Ordnance Survey.

For much valuable assistance and information the publishers are indebted to the clergy and landed proprietary, for whose courtesy their acknowledgments are gratefully tendered; while, in offering the to the notice of the public, they venture to hope that the proportion of inaccuracies inevitable in a work of this nature will not be found to have exceeded an excusable limit.