Well, Howard, I wanted to let the thread pass without further intervention, but as you posed the question. I'll have to explain. During the 19 th century in Britain, wherever coal and iron were found, mines were dug, and the factories in which the newly invented vapour machines were functioning were built almost alays in the towns near the mines, so that the transport of iron and coal to these factories would be cheaper, as the railway was still not up and running, and actually develloped over long distances during the whole course of the 19th century. Hence, to transport coal and iron to a factory 100 miles away by dirt-track made little sense, so the factories were built in the towns near these mines. This is why big industrial cities spprung up out of small towns and villages and were concentrated in Southe Wales, the Birmingham area, the Newcastle Hull area and in the Glasgow Edinburough area, because either coal or iron were mined there. And people moved in mass to these areas to find work, as the factories were al built there near the mines. (and also to work as miners, of-course).
As the iron mines in the Wealden parts of Kent and Sussex had been already exploites during the previous centuries, and Kent's coal had still not been discovered, Kent escaped the mass migration into our County of hundreds of thousands of people from other counties, and remained an agricultural County, so we do not have any city with half a million or a million inhabitants.
Diana, when coal was dicovered in Kent, it was somewhat after the Industrial Revolution, around the beginning of the 20 th century, when the railway tracks were already established nationwide, so the coal could easily be transported to already existing factories without these having to be built from scratch in our Copunty. Furthermore, Kent's coalmines proved unproductive, as the coal is fortunately very deep down, and the mining companies packed up and went.
Also Diana, if you take a visit to our Museum in Dover, you will find that Kent's local people did not want the masses of miners here working. Please inform yourselves personally on this one, our fantastic Dover Museum teaches this, not me!
Finally, Howard and all, my last point is that, if we had not gone bankrupt in Britain, by now there woulf be tens of thousands of houses springing up all over our County and hundreds of thousands of immigrants marching in and settling down from all over the world, while we taxpayers pay for it.
Thank God the White Horse Invicta challenged the whole lot back!
