 Hoskins begins his chapter on industrialisation with the remark "England was still a peaceful agricultural country at the beginning of the seventeenth century." He describes the early industrial landscape, water power and early mills, steam power and slums. He names transformative inventions such as Kay's flying shuttle of 1733 and Hargreaves's spinning jenny of 1767, and comments that Matthew Boulton opened his steam engine factory "in the still unravished country" outside Birmingham in 1765. He quotes a poem by Anna Seward lamenting the ravishing of Coalbrookdale, c. 1785, and one by Wordsworth from The Excursion. He is critical of the industrial slums and the smoke and dirt of the Staffordshire Potteries. He emphasises the rapid growth of industrial towns like Preston, and of new towns like Middlesbrough, which went from a single farm in 1830 to over 50,000 inhabitants in 1880. However he appreciates the mining landscapes of Cornwall, including the gleaming white china clay pits of St Austell and the abandoned tin mines of St Cleer, commenting that "there is a point, as Arthur Young saw, when industrial ugliness becomes sublime".
