ABSTRACT
Across the Pennines from Liverpool were to be found another two centres of instrument making, which provide contrasts since one was older than the other; and, as neither Shefeld nor York were great ports, they in turn should illustrate characteristics different from those shown by Bristol and Liverpool. ‘York,’ wrote Daniel Defoe,
is a spacious city, it stands upon a great deal of ground, perhaps more than any city in England out of Middlesex, except Norwich; but then the buildings are not close and thronged as at Bristol, or as at Durham, nor is York so populous as either Bristol or Norwich. But as York is full of gentry and persons of distinction, so they live at large, and have houses proportioned to their quality; and this makes the city lie so far extended on both sides of the river.1
