In this chapter I shall examine class capacities based on the neighbourhood, and I shall argue that these changed considerably, with the changes falling into three main periods. Before the 1890s the workingclass neighbourhood was not a good basis for collective action since it was continually undermined by middle-class and elite initiative in the form of religious provision. Between the 1890s and World War I this began to change and a wide range of popular neighbourhood institutions developed, but most of these were pre-existing ones taken over by local residents. The inter-war years saw the full flourishing of the workingclass neighbourhood based on a range of distinctively working-class institutions, from Labour clubs to the Co-op. In order to understand these changes, however, it is necessary to examine the broader context of Preston's social geography and to appreciate the relationship between the neighbourhoods and their wider environment.

Preston's urban structure, 1890–1940

There is still considerable uncertainty concerning the spatial structure of the English nineteenth-century city. There is general agreement that a well-defined elite of large employers, upper professionals and financiers lived well apart from the rest of the town's populace, but the extent of residential segregation between other members of the middle class and the working class, and within the working class itself, remains unclear. It is easy to be influenced by the exceptional example of London, where the contemporary Charles Booth established beyond reasonable doubt that there was very considerable segregation.