Book of Orders and Accounts for the Borough of Stockton-on-Tees

In 1769, the Welsh antiquary Thomas Pennant admired Stockton-on-Tees as a 'handsome town' with a 'remarkably fine high street'. Only a century earlier, 'it had scarce a house that was not made of clay and thatch', but now it was 'a flourishing place'. The town would be transformed again with the coming of the Stockton and Darlington railway in 1825, but for the two centuries before that, the mayors and burgesses had been running the corporation, developing the town and port from a poor hamlet, i