New Picture of London, 1820
In the Georgian era, ahead of the industrial revolution and after over 50 years of “obsession with the paving of Westminster’s streets” (White, J. (2011) City rivalries and the modernisation of Eighteenth-Century London 1720-1770, p. 10) in 1762, the Westminster Paving Act “established an entirely new framework for paving, cleansing and lighting the streets west of Temple Bar” (White, J. (2011) City rivalries and the modernisation of Eighteenth-Century London 1720-1770, p. 18). Instead of individual property owners having the responsibility for road improvements, a parliamentary grant and paving commissioners system was set up for massive public works and infrastructure projects.
This, in turn, inspired the 1766 London Paving and Lighting Act. These changes began pushing London, now at the forefront of major infrastructure projects, into the new century. The “reorganization” of roads and lighting, the naming of streets, and numbering of houses “all made London tangibly more manageable, and more moder too” (White, J. (2011) City rivalries and the modernisation of Eighteenth-Century London 1720-1770, p. 20).
As a student of urban history, its hard to understate how ambitious and revolutionary this act was. This would have a significant impact on public health (drainage, road quality) and also change the way buildings would be fit into the fabric of cities (more space allotted for improved streets, increasing the size of streets) which would in turn be codified by the Building Act of 1774. Uniform lighting also helped to reduce night time accidents and crime, pushing us increasingly towards 24 hour economies.
Curbside gutters replaced drainage kennels, Purbeck stone replaced cobblestone or paving stones (and would be revolutionized, again, by Macadam in the 1820s), and street cleaning would help reduce the dust and rubbish in the roads.
Without these aggressive public works projects, and systems for uniformity, the productive machine of the industrial revolution would have been significantly hampered. As the guidebook in 1820 tells us, the “Paving Act” led the way for growth and development of London well into the Regency era.
More on house numbering in London in 1766: https://www.markpack.org.uk/38336/house-numbering-in-the-uk-the-mystery-of-postage-act-of-1765/
