John Little 
Book of Orders and Accounts for the Borough of Stockton-on-Tees 

In 1769, the Welsh antiquary Thomas Pennant admired Stockton-on-Tees as a ‘handsome town’ with a ‘remarkably fine high street’. Only a century earlier, ‘it had scarce a house that was not made of clay and thatch’, but now it was ‘a flourishing place’. The town would be transformed again with the coming of the Stockton and Darlington railway in 1825, but for the two centuries before that, the mayors and burgesses had been running the corporation, developing the town and port from a poor hamlet, in the shadow of the bishop’s manor house, to a thriving community which underwent an urban renaissance during the Georgian period. The ‘Book of Orders and Accounts’ records their decisions, orders, finances and dealings with the bishopric, from the reign of James I to municipal reform in 1835, providing an unusually complete record of urban affairs and recording the signatures or marks of a large number of individuals.

Tabella dei contenuti

Introduction

Editorial Method


The Text


Appendices

Appendix 1. Correspondence concerning the Book of Orders and Accounts, 1923

Appendix 2. Commission on Municipal Corporations in England and Wales, 1835: Report on the Borough of Stockton

Appendix 3. Mayors of Stockton-on-Tees 1616 to 1835

Appendix 4. Stewards, Sergeants and Constable

Appendix 5. Personal Marks

Appendix 6. Stockton Burgage Holders in 1602


Bibliography

Index of Names

Subject Index

Circa l’autore

JOHN LITTLE is on the management committee of Cleveland and Teesside Local History Society and is the Honorary Editor of Cleveland History. He was chair of the board of Cambridge Museum of Technology from 2014 to 2023. He was born and raised in Stockton-on-Tees.