TOWNS IN THE WRONG PLACES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2288, 6 January 1898, Page 50

TOWNS IN THE WRONG PLACES.

London OOg-ht to be at South end,

Tee average Britisher loves his country so dearly that be is apt to overlook certain points about it which might; very materially stand improvement. Take our towns. Has it ever occurred to you that tho general position of our towns is radical/ wrong ?

For ikstancp, London. Why was the great city built on its present site, when it ought to have taken Sruthend's place at the month of the Thame3 ? If you look at the map you can Fee how London would become much more useful to her country-— not only as regards navigation, but railway enterprise — at every mile she was brought nearer the sea. But we must remember, of cour.ee, that the metropolis, like other misplaced towns, was founded long before steam navigation or railways were thought cf .

A* a fact, with the exception of Liverpool, Dublin, Belfast, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen, ell the great, towns in the Uoited Kingdom stand in places wholly unfitted to t'neir wants and industries'. Consideiing its importance as a port, Glasgow and its long stretches of shipbuilding yarJs is even worse rff than London. Obviously the capital of Scotland, with its over-populated outlying district?, ought to have exchanged places with Greenock or Gourcck, or even a more exposed quarter farther down the Clyde.

Thus, amoseg other things, the enormous expense of chatmeUing and dredging the 30 miles of narrow river from Glasgow ci v y to the open Clyde, which is probably the costliest bit of river-keepieg in the woild, wou'd bs unnecessary. On the whole, Scotland has disp'ayed very keen foresight in errsrging her populous centres; but it is a pity tha anciant Glaswegians did not foresee ths value of es'ablishir-g themselves farther weet.

The two most suitably-situated towns in the kirgdom ars undoubtedly Liverpool and Dublin, which facs each other directly over the Irish Ss?. As regards the ls,ttei - , no better i-pot could bs found for the Irish capital than the- centre of Howth B?.y — " Ireland's eye," as ws see it in geography — . for besides being in the middle of the east coast, it occupies practically the nearest point to the laud to which it exports moat of its prodece.

Of course the nrtj >rity of the anbnd towns si ff-»r considerably from the absence of the sea; but in one or two ca*es the local authorities, having seen that they couldn't bring their towns to the sea, have brought the sea, so to speak, to their towns. Lo^k at Marchester. If ever a place ought to have "bean builfc ab the wafer's edge it is Manchester. Nevertheless, the inhabitants have made a brave attempt to make Cotionopolis a port by constrnetirg the Slip Can^l.

The inhabitants of Birmingham of' en hold forth that their only drawback to being the second ciiy in Groat Britain is their awkward position in the Midlands. Bat this is rather to be favoured than anything else, because, b&virg an export and not an import trade, it is about fquidisfaßt from Liverpool, Manchester, London, Bristol, and Cirdiff, all of which divide, more or less equally, the shipping of its exports.

A great many seaports have a nasty habit of shuffling back a3 far as posuole up the rivers or estuaries on which they are built. Southampton is a striking example of this. Americans on their way to London via Southampton often wonder how f the ship intends to fellow the sinuous channels of the Solent estuaries before it lands its passengers. Naturally enough, th-ey want to know why the port was not built nearer the sea. And if you look at the map again, it certainly does seam ridiculous why Southampton should hide itself at the narrow end of the Water, nearly 20 miles from the opan sea, while there are hundreds of eligible sites on the Solent shores.

Then see what an awkward mistake we have made in running up barracks of bricks and mortar, like the groups of which Liverpool and Manchester are pre-eminent. The more you look at the map the more you wonder how it was some of the manufacturing towns In the Midland?, and in Lancashire and Yorkshire, were not strewn along the barren Wash, Humber, Solway, or Dee estuaries.