ABSTRACT
Until recently, space was simply the places where history happened, and historians paid it little attention, preferring to cede its study to geographers and specialist historians of architecture, landscape, and design. In the Victorian period, spaces became separated, with city and country and public and private particularly distinct from one another. Cities varied widely: the ancient, enormous capital differed from the new industrial towns of the North and the Midlands, and both were different from smaller, older regional centers. In discussions and depictions, cities were generally characterized by their public streets, impressive centers, distressing slums, and growing suburbs. One key response to urbanization and especially to urban poverty and slums was the promotion of city parks. In rural Britain, the aristocracy owned most of the nation's land and derived much of their wealth from agricultural products, both grain and livestock, and from rents paid by their tenants, the rural working class who lived in small cottages on their land.
