ABSTRACT
The nineteenth century was strikingly different from the eighteenth in England and Wales. Population, for one thing, was far higher. Whereas in the mid-eighteenth century there were roughly five and a half million people, in the mid-nineteenth there were nearly eighteen million. Industrialisation, though a much more gradual process than used to be supposed, changed how many people earned their livings. The geographical spread of Nonconformity was as extensive as its social appeal. It was more flexible than the Church of England, hampered as it was by legal restrictions from the past, and so could respond to the needs of the rising urban-industrial society as well as to the call of the countryside. Nonconformity, which enjoyed the support of many manufacturers, merchants, shopkeepers and clerks, was necessarily affected. The impact was clear on chapel buildings, which were increasingly built in the Gothic style, and in patterns of worship, which added organs, choirs and elements of liturgy.
