During the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the balance of cultures within the British Isles once more shifted radically. In England, the social, demographic and economic changes, which are usually subsumed under the portmanteau concept ‘Industrial Revolution’, led to the creation of a new urban culture in ‘the north’, a term which may be used to include the industrial areas of the west midlands as well as the areas north of the Trent. ‘The north’ in this sense comprised the large cities of Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds and Newcastle, the factory towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire and the mining villages of the counties north of Nottinghamshire. Historians have tended to treat ‘the midlands’ as if it were different from ‘the north’. In fact, however, there seems to be no good reason why we should not look upon ‘the midlands’ as a sub-culture within the north. From this point of view, the midlands, Merseyside, Manchester and its hinterland, the West Riding, Tyneside and Teesside all constituted sub-cultures within an overwhelmingly industrial ‘northern’ culture. (An exception to this general northern pattern was Cornwall with its tin and copper mining.)

The new economic importance of ‘the north’ appeared all the more striking when contrasted with the decline of London as an industrial centre. Industries, such as shipbuilding and silk weaving, unable to compete with northern competition, sank into insignificance. Other skilled trades such as coopering and watch manufacture declined, especially after 1850.