NEW INDUSTRIAL BUILDING IN GREAT BRITAIN 1923‐38: A PROBLEM IN MEASUREMENT
| Date | 01 February 1961 |
| Author | B. Weber,J. Parry Lewis |
| Published date | 01 February 1961 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1961.tb00149.x |
NEW
INDUSTRIAL BUILDING IN GREAT BRITAIN
1923-38
:
A PROBLEM
IN
MEASUREMENT
INDUSTRIAL
building is easily recorded but measured only with
difficulty. From various dates
in
the nineteenth century local authori-
ties kept registers
of
plans submitted and approved for buildings of
all kinds. Houses, schools, chapels, mills, factories and almost every
other kind
of
structure were all recorded, sometimes with precise
descriptions, sometimes very inadequately. These registers have already
been used as a source of historical statistics
on
house building,l but
it
is
less easy to obtain satisfactory series for industrial building.
Usually the registers simply record entries such as
‘
new mill
’,
‘
tool
factory
’,
‘
extension
’,
or
‘
shed
’,
and give little guidance about the
size of the project. Sometimes, when the actual plans still exist, it
turns out that an extension would more than double the original size,
while a shed might be anything from a weaving shed capable of
employing scores of people to a shelter for a bicycle or
a
gate-keeper.
For this reason, while the number of industrial plans passed in any
year
is
certainly some measure of the number
of
industrial concerns
who
are
planning expansion, it
is
a
very inadequate measure of either
the volume or the value
of
building. A single plan passed in one year
may represent
a
greater investment than twenty passed in the
following year, and it may mean several years
of
building activity.
Alternatively it may just not materialise. The number
of
industrial
plans passed is a measure of optimism, rather than
of
anything else,
lagged by the time taken to prepare a plan and to get it passed.
Useful series of this kind have been obtained for Glasgow, Hull,
Coventry, Bradford, Birkenhead, Oldham, Bolton, Salford and a
number of smaller towns around Manchester. Some of these series
go back to
1850,
but as yet they are too few to warrant a detailed
analysis
of
industrial building in the nineteenth century, even within
the limitations just indicated.
From
1911
an important change took place. The Board of Trade
began to publish the estimated cost of the buildings for which plans
had been approved in a large number
of
towns. The data were broken
1
See
B.
Weber,
‘A
New
Index
of
Residential Construction, 1838-1950
’,
Scottish
Journal
of
Political pxmorny.
1955,
pp.
104-132, and
J.
Hamish
Richards and
J.
Parry
Lewis,
House
Building in
the
South
Wales
Coalfield,
1851-1913
’,
The
Manchester
School,
1956,
pp
289-300.
57
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