CORBY

town and borough (district), administrative and historic county of Northamptonshire, England, on the crest of the ridge of hills that crosses the county from southwest to northeast and yields iron ore from the formation known as the Northampton Sands. The district comprises the new town of Corby and seven surrounding rural villages. Corby was a village of 1,596 inhabitants in 1931. In the next five years it became the scene of a remarkable experiment: a steel-making firm from Scotland moved to Corby with a large number of its original Scottish employees and began to mine the ironstone and manufacture steel and tubing. This Scottish enclave in the English Midlands was designated a new town in 1950, with a development corporation to plan it and a projected population of 82,000. A large new town centre was opened in 1954, and by 1971 the population had increased to more than 47,000. New industries were drawn to the town, but the steelworks (a part of the British Steel Corporation ) closed in 1979. Area borough, 31 square miles (80 square km). Pop. (1991) town, 49,053; (1998 est.) borough, 51,400.