ors. The
experiment did not altogether answer, and was in time abandoned,
when the company built whole streets, and even erected a covered
market-place for their labourers. They went further, and bore the
chief expense in building a church. A reading-room was started, and
grew and grew till a substantial place was required for the
accommodation of the members. Finally, the 'barracks' was converted
into a place of worship for a Dissenting body, and a grand hall it
afforded when the interior was removed and only the shell left. But
by this time vast changes had taken place, and great extensions had
arisen through private energy. This land was the poorest in the
neighbourhood; low-lying, shallow soil on top of an endless depth of
stiff clay, worthless for arable purposes, of small value for
pasture, covered with furze, rushes, and rowen; so much so that when
a certain man with a little money purchased a good strip of it, he
was talked of as a fool, and considered to have committed a most
egregious error. How vain is human wisdom! In a few years the
railway came. Land rose in price, and this very strip brought its
owner thousands; so that the fool became wise, and the wise was
deemed of no account. Private speculators, seeing the turn things
were taking, ran up rows of houses; building societies stepped in
and laid out streets; a whole town seemed to start into being at
once. Still the company continued to concentrate their works at the
junction, and at last added the culminating stroke by bringing the
carriage department here, which was like planting a new colony. A
fresh impulse was given to building; fresh blocks and streets arose;
companies were formed to burn bricks--one of these makes bricks by
steam, and can burn a quarter of a million at once in their kiln.
This in a place where previously the rate of building was five new
houses in twenty years! Sanitary districts were mapped out; boards
of control elected; gas companies; water companies--who brought
water out of the chalk hills three miles distant: all the
distinctive characteristics of a city arose into being. Lastly came
a sewage farm, for so great was the sewage that it became a burning
question how to dispose of it, and on this sewage farm some most
extraordinary results have been obtained, such as mangolds with
leaves four feet in length--a tropical luxuriance of growth. One
postman had sufficed, then two, then three, till a strong staff had
to be organized,