Medieval towns

Chapter seven

Throughout the Middle Ages the majority of people dwelt

in the countryside in villages, hamlets and isolated farm-
steads. Even at the height of urban expansion and pros-
perity in the early fourteenth century it is doubtful if more
than one in ten would have thought of themselves as
townspeople, while in 1200 none of the towns, with the
exception of London, was very large. Bristol, York and
Newcastle might have numbered 10,000 inhabitants, but
most of the others would have had fewer than 5,000,
including a considerable percentage with less than 1,000.
Yet towns have probably received more scholarly attention
than any other aspect of medieval life. One of the reasons
for this is that, in general, urban records tend to survive
better than those relating to the countryside, and therefore
provide the historian with a readily accessible source of
information. Borough records cover not only town govern-
ment and administration, but also a wide range of social,
demographic, economic and commercial aspects of urban
life, and have enabled the compilation of detailed topo-
graphical studies of medieval towns such as Oxford,
Canterbury and Winchester, as well as a number of other
towns covered by the Atlas of Historic Towns volumes.
As we shall see, the dividing line between town and
village was a fine, not to say frequently blurred, one. Many
villages displayed urban characteristics during the period
up to about 1350. Some took the form of fleeting and
forlorn aspirations, but others displayed more tenacity and
some of the proto-towns managed to succeed. Still others
were hybrids with characteristics of both town and village.
For example, by the mid-thirteenth century, although
burgage rents and market tolls represented the principal
source of revenue at Clare, Suffolk, nevertheless the
community never became a fully fledged borough. Two
examples from Norfolk are worth quoting here. The first
is Castle Rising, where a decayed town and port lie to the
north of the impressive castle remains. A large church
containing architecture contemporary with the castle tells
us something of the size of the former settlement here.
An impressive market cross lies to the east of the church 173
Medieval towns in the old market square, which is now a village green.
Not far away at Castle Acre another decayed medieval
town lies in the western lee of the great earthwork castle.
The massive town defences, thought by earlier historians
to be Roman, formed part of a defensive complex contem-
porary with the medieval castle. It can be seen that the
southeastern corner of the medieval borough has been
abandoned and given over to allotments, while the
modern village lies in the form of a little planted unit
outside the northern defences, with the wide Market Street
lying partially over the northern town ditch.
On the other hand a number of towns which started out
life confidently armed with borough charters, gradually, or
in a few cases abruptly, faded into a state of rural tranquil-
lity. License and privilege could help, given favourable
conditions, but geography and commercial viability were
usually the ultimate arbitrators. The acquisition of market
and borough charters have conventionally been seen by
historians as essential requirements for successful medi-
eval towns. However, in reality such legal license
confirmed status and potential upon the recipient, at the
same time as providing revenue for the grantor. Obtaining
a borough charter no more guaranteed commercial success
than did the erection of town walls, although as it happens
the majority of successful towns did ultimately achieve full
borough status.
Medieval towns had three main functions. These were
commercial, administrative and strategic, although a
number of towns did develop other specialist functions
based, for instance, upon industrial production or on
scholarship. In the century following the Norman
Conquest strategic and administrative functions tended to
be most important, particularly in the larger urban centres,
but by the later Middle Ages trade and commerce were
far more important to the majority of English towns. The
Normans had used the town and the castle as the means
of at first dominating and then administering their newly
won kingdom. Initially the ancient shire capitals were used
as political and ecclesiastical bases, but as relatively stable
trading conditions were restored new generations of stra-
tegic towns were created in the west and the north. These
were followed by new or greatly expanded towns whose
main function was marketing; during the early Middle
Ages population pressure prompted existing towns to
grow and led to the creation of a considerable number of
new towns throughout England and parts of Wales.
174 After about 1350 the fortunes of some towns declined
along with those of the surrounding countryside, and as Medieval towns
late as 1500 several of the old corporate towns do not seem
to have recovered fully. There is little evidence for the
continuing expansion of suburbs during the fifteenth
century and some towns, which relied upon cloth manu-
facture, were seriously affected by the growing compe-
tition from rural-based industries. Added to which the
plagues that had been inflicted upon the whole country
42 Sites of important
towns, fairs and
pilgrimage centres in
the Middle Ages (after
J. F. D. Shrewsbury)

Leading English towns

O Fair
A Pilgrimage Centre

in the fourteenth century became a particular phenomenon

of the towns in the fifteenth, sapping them of their energy
and their population. In a number of towns there were
repeated complaints about buildings being neglected,
streets being left unpaved and townspeople attempting to
evade heavy taxations. In part these were levied to cover
the effects of disastrous fires which became an increasing
threat to the late medieval urban population, which was 175
Medieval towns housed largely in timber-framed buildings.
There was a significant decline in the number of markets
by 1500. For instance, of 45 markets found in early medi-
eval Staffordshire, only 20 had survived into the late
Middle Ages, and the picture in other counties was very
similar. Not until the Great Rebuilding of the late sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries did many towns revive,
although some were never to regain their medieval glory
and were to sink back into rural backwaters. Only a few
reverted to mere village status, but where the woollen
industry had boosted communities into small towns and
then abandoned them as quickly as it had arrived, the
pattern of change was very dramatic. In the Cotswolds,
Chipping Campden, Stow-on-the-Wold, Northleach and
even Cirencester all display ornate parish churches, guild-
halls and market-places reflecting their former status. Such
centres were typical of a new generation of small industrial
towns grown wealthy largely on the proceeds of the
flourishing textile industry in the later Middle Ages. There
were many small towns which for a short period enjoyed
considerable prosperity. All are towns where wealth disap-
peared as rapidly as it had arrived. Today we find such
places 'delightful' and 'charming', but perhaps we should
remember that they owe their charm to the fact that they
stopped succeeding in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Had they continued to prosper then Broadway
and Bourton-on-the-Water would have more in common
with Reading or Swindon than they would with other
rustic Cotswold retreats.
The picture of urban decline during the later Middle
Ages, which emerges from the analysis of certain towns,
is no doubt an accurate one, but the historical record does
contain some serious contradictions. For despite setbacks,
a comparison of the taxation records of 1334 and 1524
shows that some towns continued to prosper throughout
the later Middle Ages and most important of all there is a
marked increase in the total proportion of urban wealth
during the period. Naturally the fortunes of individual
towns differed quite markedly, but collectively they had
strengthened their grip on the national economy. Even
the decline in the number of market towns hides the fact
that there was a polarisation of trade and commerce in a
smaller number of successful towns. There was increasing
centralisation epitomised by London which was increas-
ingly important as the largest and most prosperous urban
centre in the land. There were 85 parishes within the
176 city wall and Westminster, Southward and other outlying
Villages', which were closely associated with its daily life, Medieval towns
would have ranked as major provincial towns elsewhere
in the kingdom. London contained between 14 and 18,000
households, giving it a total population of about 60 or
70,000. The crowded character of the city is vividly illus-
trated by a late thirteenth-century enactment, where we
hear that the houses
are so close together that in many places there is no vacant
land and some occupy a neighbour's walls where they have
no right at all; and occupy them maliciously, as by putting
into the said walls beams and corbels or chests or cupboards;
and . . . such purprestures are made in cellars and rooms
where no-one can enter and know the same, except the
occupier's household, and . . . are concealed during many
years and not perceived.

Table 5 Wealth of medieval towns c. 1300

Assessed Assessed
wealth wealth
£ £
London 11,000 Beverley 500
Bristol 2,200 Cambridge 466
York 1,620 Newbury 412
Newcastle upon Tyne 1,333 Plymouth 400
Boston 1,100 Newark on Trent 390
Great Yarmouth 1,000 Peterborough cum 383
membris
Lincoln 1,000 Nottingham 371
Norwich 946 Exeter 366
Oxford 914 Bury St Edmunds 360
Shrewsbury 800 Stamford 359
Lynn (King's and 770 Ely cum membris 358
South)
Salisbury 750 Luton 349
Coventry 750 Barking 341
Ipswich 645 Hull 333
Hereford 605 Scarborough 333
Canterbury 599 Cottingham, Yorks. 330
Gloucester 541 E.R.
Winchester 515 Derby 300

Southampton 511 Swaffham 300

By the 1520s the City of London alone was almost 10

times as wealthy as Norwich, then the leading provincial
city, and more than 15 times as wealthy as Bristol. In the
subsidy of 1543-4, London paid 30 times as much tax as 177
Medieval towns Norwich, and well over 40 times as much as Bristol. At
that date even the suburb of Southwark, across the river,
paid more tax than Bristol. London contributed as much
in 1543^4 as all the other English towns put together. By
1600 its population was probably about four to five times
as great as it had been in 1334. London's prosperity was
based upon an increasing share of England's trade,
particularly the cloth trade, as well as an increasingly
centralised government, which brought with it the
fortunes associated with a capital city.
Gradually London usurped the trading functions of
many provincial towns. During the fifteenth century the
distribution of cloth in York, for example, was taken out
of the hands of the city's traders first by West Riding
merchants and later by London merchants able to supply,
in return for textiles, a large variety of imported goods
which previously had not been obtainable from local
traders. By the early sixteenth century much cloth manu-
factured in Devon was being sent to London and thence
exported to the Low Countries, rather than being exported
to France from West Country ports as had been the custom
previously. The ever increasing influence of London's
merchant class was clearly demonstrated in Southampton.
From the mid-fifteenth century Londoners had taken a
leading part in Southampton's commerce, using the town
as an outport for trade between England and the Mediter-
ranean. Eventually London merchants penetrated into
every branch of commerce in Southampton, gradually
swamping local merchants by their larger capital
resources. Increasingly London dominated overseas trade
as it came to dominate the English economy in general.
An anonymous writer of 1497 said that apart from
London there were only two towns of importance in the
country, Bristol and York, but in this he was misinformed,
for there was another town which experienced a remark-
able and spectacular growth during the later Middle Ages
- Norwich. In 1334 Norwich was the sixth richest town in
England, with an estimated population of about 6,000, but
by the end of the Middle Ages it had risen to second
position. It was the chief market town of one of the most
thickly populated and prosperous districts of medieval
England. The main market-place came under so much
pressure that subsidiary ones developed, for example
horses were sold outside the churchyard on St Stephen's,
an area now appropriately known as Rampant Horse
Street. A wide range of commodities came into Norwich
178 including wool, bread corn, barley, pigs, sheep, cattle,
fish, shell-fish, poultry and dairy produce, vegetables, Medieval towns
herbs and salt. Even in the thirteenth century there were
over 130 trades and occupations recorded. These included
the principal trades of leather-working, textile-working,
and metal-working. There were also many imports - fish
from Sweden, Caen stone, timber, steel, olive oil, dye
stuffs, ash, alum, mill stones - and luxuries such as wine,
furs, fine woollen cloth, silk, beeswax, and sugar. After
43 Norwich in 1348

+- Churc
B Bridge
A Austin Friars
D Dominican Friars
C Carmelite Friars
F Franciscan Friars
L Leper Hospital
= Religious House
Open Field

1194 when Richard I granted a charter giving the citizens

the right to elect their own city governor there was
considerable migration from the surrounding countryside.
In the thirteenth century the defences were strengthened
and the enclosed area greatly extended. A new bank and
ditch were made in 1253 enclosing an area of almost one
square mile, which was far larger than most medieval
boroughs. This extension was partly made in order to
provide larger marketing areas within the town. Similar 179
Medieval towns walled extensions occurred at other successful towns, such
as Hereford.
Along with other large towns Norwich appears to have
suffered badly during the middle years of the fourteenth
century. In 1357 it is recorded that shops and market stalls
were left empty so long that they were falling down, and
that after the plague and famine of 1369 the overcrowded
churchyard of St Peter Mancroft was extended southwards
44 Norwich in the early
seventeenth century
(Speed)

by taking in part of what had been the cloth market. By

the end of the fourteenth century, however, there was
a recovery, led by the expanding textile industry which
attracted agricultural workers from the marginal lands
close to Norwich, as well as traders from throughout
Europe. By the later fourteenth century Norwich was the
chief seat of worsted manufacture and this was reflected in
the rebuilding of a number of municipal and ecclesiastical
buildings. In the century after the Black Death all four
orders of friars built new churches and conventual build-
ings of considerable grandeur. St Peter Mancroft was
rebuilt and reconsecrated as was St Mary in the Fields and
many of the parish churches. Municipal buildings such
as the Market Cross and the Guildhall were also rebuilt.
Perhaps even more impressive than the churches and the
public buildings were the houses. Cunningham's perspec-
tive view of 1558 which is probably the earliest such view
of any English town, shows a picture of substantial two-
storeyed late medieval buildings, many of which seem to
have been constructed between 1440 and 1525. Recent
180 excavations in the city have confirmed that the 'great
rebuilding' which was later to transform rural England, Medieval towns
was accomplished in Norwich at the end of the Middle
Ages, when it 'changed from being predominantly one-
storeyed to being predominantly two-storeyed'. All this
would seem seriously to call into question Leland's
description of Norwich in 1530s as 'a city of decay'.
Although no medieval towns were able to survive on
specialist activities alone, the fortunes of some were 51 Oxford. The centre of
certainly enhanced by performing specialist roles and the city is dominated
important trends began to emerge in the fourteenth and by the University,
several of whose
fifteenth centuries. London, as already noted, was the constituent colleges
prime example, as it developed the administrative and were founded in the
fiscal characteristics of a capital city, and those centres in later Middle Ages. In
the foreground is
East Anglia and the west where textiles began to dominate Christ Church, which
have already been discussed. During the Middle Ages was created by
Oxford and Cambridge began to develop as important Cardinal Wolsey in the
early sixteenth century
centres of learning, and in the case of Oxford at least, the out of St Frideswide's
coming of the university seems to have in part offset a monastery
Medieval towns severe economic decline during the later Middle Ages.
Oxford began to acquire a reputation of a place of learning
early in the twelfth century. Theobold of Etampes called
himself Master of Oxford and was lecturing to over 60
students as early as 1117. Towards the end of the same
century some of the English scholars who were ordered
by Henry II to leave the University of Paris arrived to take
up studies in Oxford. Masters and students alike seem to
have been attracted to Oxford by its central position in
southern England and by its remoteness from ecclesiastical
control. At this stage the University was no more than a
guild of teachers and scholars, who combined together for
mutual protection and convenience. The early years of the
University were not without their problems. For instance,
after two clerics had been hanged by townsmen in 1209,
the students left. Some moved to Cambridge and did not
return until 1214. In 1264 some students moved to
Northampton to avoid involvement in a dispute between
the crown and Simon de Montfort, while in 1334 half the
scholars of Oxford went to Stamford after serious rioting
between rival student groups, but they were ordered by
the king to return to Oxford immediately. Despite these
upheavals the University grew rapidly during the thir-
teenth century, partly under the influence of the friars
who began arriving in 1221. The first chancellor of the
University was appointed in 1214 to act as a representative
of the Bishop of Lincoln, under whose aegis the University
nominally operated. One of the first men to be appointed
as chancellor was Robert Grosseteste who later became
Bishop of Lincoln himself. To begin with there were few
specific university buildings, and ceremonies and meet-
ings took place in the church of St Mary Virgin, but in
about 1320 Thomas Cobham, Bishop of Worcester, built a
congregation house with a small library on the north side
of the church. The first building specifically planned and
built by the University was the Divinity School (completed
in 1490), one of the finest examples of fifteenth century
vaulted architecture. Over it was built a library named
after Humphrey Duke of Gloucester its principal
benefactor. Both buildings now form part of the Bodleian
Library complex. The first colleges began to appear during
the second half of the thirteenth century. The earliest was
Merton College endowed by Walter de Merton about
1263-4, which was established in order to enable 11 gradu-
ates to study for their MAs. It was not until William of
Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, founded New College in
182 1379 that the characteristic layout of all subsequent colleges
was adopted. Wykeham had been a surveyor of the king's Medieval towns
works and he took a great interest in the buildings. This
close association between the University and the church,
explains his use of the monastic plan of quadrangles, clois-
ters and chapel. New College was intended for 70 scholars
from Winchester School, another of his foundations, and
as the largest educational institution in Oxford, was the
first to cater for undergraduates. Later other colleges such
as Magdalen College, founded in 1458 by William of
Waynfleet, Bishop of Winchester, were to copy this
design.
Despite the establishment of a number of colleges during
the fifteenth century, including Lincoln founded in 1427,
and elaborate building schemes for other foundations, the
fifteenth century appears to have been a period of
regression in Oxford. By 1450 the number of students had
fallen to about 600 compared with 3,000 in the fourteenth
century and many of the halls were closed down. Early
in the sixteenth century the university complained that
numbers were falling again because abbots were no longer
sending their monks to be educated and parents were
unwilling to expose their sons to heretical ideas. Oxford
and Cambridge survived the dissolution and unlike the
monasteries were able to build on their medieval repu-
tations, eventually coming to dominate their mother cities.
Another town which had a specialisation of a rather
different nature was Bath. Bath clearly shared in the pros-
perity of Somerset, which was the premier wool-producing
county in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Chaucer in the Tale of the Wife of Bath went so far as to
claim that its cloth was superior to that of Ypres and
Ghent. In addition to the wool trade, there were the priory
and the church which had doubled up as the cathedral for
the diocese of Bath and Wells. During the Roman period
Bath had been the main spa centre in Britain and it would
appear that interest in the baths was revived perodically
during the Middle Ages, possibly linked with attempts to
promote Bath as a major pilgrimage centre. One of the
earliest references to the baths comes in the Gesta Stephani
(1138) when they were recorded as 'most delightful to see
and beneficial for health7. King John visited the town on
a number of occasions, and Henry III spent money on
repairing the wall around the King's Bath in addition to
his house in the city. The crown's interest in the baths
then seems to have lapsed until the sixteenth century.
During the Middle Ages there are, however, various refer-
ences not only to the King's Bath, which was said by 183
Medieval towns Leland to be used by 'gentlemen', but also to the Cross
Bath which lay immediately to the east of St John's
Hospital on the site of one of two hot springs in the
southwestern part of the town. It was recorded that this
bath was much used by 'people diseased with lepre,
pokkes, scabbes, and great aches'. There was also the hot
bath - alternatively known as Alesy's Bath during the
Middle Ages - which, according to Leland, 'for at
52 Bath. The first known
pictorial
representation of the
city, dating from the
mid-fifteenth century
from an illuminated
initial to the 69th
Psalm of David in a
Book of Hours of
Henry Beauchamp,
Duke of Warwick. The
walled city with the
Abbey church is on
the right. The figures
outside represent
Henry III immersed in
the river and the
Bishop of Bath and
Wells and the Prior of
Bath. Note the sheep
grazing outside the
city walls

cumming into it Men think it wold scald the Flesch at the

first, but after that the Flesch ys warmid and it is more
tolerable and pleasaunt'. Other medieval baths referred to
were the Lepers' Bath, the Mild Bath and the Priory Bath.
Leland completes his account by noting that:
The Colour of the Water of the Baynes is as it were a depe
blew Se Water, and rikith like a sething Potte continually,
having somewhat a sulpherous and sumwhat a pleasant
flavour. The Water that rennith from the 2 smaul Bahthes
goit by a Dike into a von by West bynethe the Bridge. The
Water that goith from the Kinges Bath turnith a Mylle, and
after goith into Avon about Bath Bridge. In all the 3 Bathes
a Man may evidently se how the Water burbelith up from
the Springes.
Improved overland communications were later to enable
Bath to prosper through her hot springs, but the seeds of
this success had been sown during the Middle Ages.

Markets
The creation of markets and fairs, either by means of royal
184 grants or by the action of more locally based interested
parties, reached a climax in the thirteenth century. A Medieval towns
network of chartered and prescriptive markets and fairs
was established throughout England by 1300. The charter
simply represented the legal recognition of the right of a
community to hold a market. Many markets were,
however, held without such charters while the granting
of a charter did not necessarily lead to the creation or
expansion of a market area. It is clear, however, that the
45 Markets and fairs in
medieval Derbyshire
(after B. E. Coates)
Charlesworth
1328

Castleton 1222/3
o
1245C2nd Market
#Tideswell 1251
Chesterfield 1204
©Bakewell 1254 ^ o
Monyash 1340 Bolsover
1225/6
Pleasle v
Hartington 1203 Higham 1243 \ 1285C2 fajrs)

Wirksworth 1306

Ripley1251 #
• Market & Fair Denby1334
Q Weekly Market
© T w o Markets & Fair
1252 Year of Grant Mapperley1267i_
(B Annual Fair Ilkeston1252

overidgee 1275 DerbyO

(1204,1229 Fairs)

Aston/Trent1257 awley1259
OKings Newton1231
Ielbourne1230
'(1246 2nd Fair)

SeaM311

need for adequate market facilities, with or without market

or borough charter, was of primary importance in the
shaping of many medieval towns (and villages). Between
1227 and 1350 the crown granted market rights to more
than 1,200 places in England and Wales, underlining an
intense interest in trade and in the profits accruing from
it. Some developed quite intricate functions, while others
remained obscure villages and hamlets. As already noted
in many of the newly expanded centres the dividing line
between town and village was far from obvious. Clare in 185
Medieval towns Suffolk, for example, was said in 1086 'always to have had
a market', but apparently its 43 burgesses were then a new
group appended to what was essentially a rural manor.
By the mid-thirteenth century, however, burgage rents
and tolls from the market and fair were the principal
revenues drawn from Clare by its lord. It never became
a fully fledged borough, but it clearly developed some
essentially urban characteristics even if it remained of
modest size.
The abbots of Ramsey played an important role in
creating St Ives as an urban appendage to the Huntingdon-
shire manor of Slepe. This settlement was conveniently
situated to provide a meeting place for merchants from
the East Midlands and foreign merchants coming down
the Ouse; the abbey exploited the advantages of the site
by building a bridge over the river, obtaining the grant of
a fair in 1110 and encouraging the building and repair of
houses and shops. Even so, agriculture was never pushed
entirely into the background at St Ives, for its commercial
life was centred on its fair, which lasted for just one week
each year. It was in practice a temporary or periodic town
which never achieved municipal standing. Similarly Chip-
ping Campden (Gloucs), was created a borough by Hugh
de Gonneville in 1173 and became one of the main
marketing centres for Cotswold wool, but it, too, never
entirely outgrew its agricultural characteristics (see plate
47).
Market grants could lead to the physical expansion of
an existing village, and in some cases could dramatically
change village morphology. In the prosperous Essex
countryside, market charters were obtained from places
such as Castle Hedingham, Burnham-on-Crouch, Hatfield
Broad Oak and Newport, but none of their names survive
in a list of markets in 1575. Yet in each of those villages it
is possible to recognise the effect that the market made
by causing the main street to be widened in order to
accommodate it. At Linton (Cambs) there was a deliberate
attempt to create a market-place in the village, which led
to the development of the small town and subsequently to
the moving of the market-place. While at Caxton (Cambs)
which obtained a market grant in 1248, the village was
moved from its original site to a much more commercially
attractive position (c. 1250-80), probably in an attempt to
benefit from the commercial potential of the main road.
An open triangular space in the centre of the village is
known as the market-place and was used as such into the
186 eighteenth century. Another Cambridgeshire example, at
 Medieval towns

53 Chelmsford in the late

sixteenth century,
from a contemporary
map. The large
triangular market-
place is typical of
many market towns of
the Middle Ages and
the number of
encroachments within
the market
demonstrate that it
was successful.
Whittlesford, appears to have had a market-place or green
laid out deliberately on the outskirts of the village in the
early thirteenth century. The village then grew around it
and later beyond, rather than along the main street down
to the ford as might have been expected. Such examples
of fundamental changes to medieval settlement geography
were far more frequent than is appreciated; often a casual
reference to a market or to burgesses in manorial records
will be the only hint concerning what were often sign-
ificant changes to the village layout.
In Saxon burhs, in which defence was a major consider-
ation, no permanent market areas appear to have been
provided within the town plan. Trade was largely carried
out in churchyards and open areas within the town
defences. In the early Middle Ages there remained a close
relationship between the church and market-place, and in
many cases, as at Newport (Salop), and numerous other
examples the church occupies a central island in the
market. There was often a connection between the 187
Medieval towns parochial saints' day and the dates on which local fairs
and weekly markets were held; markets were also often
held on Sundays until the late thirteenth century. The
Statute of Winchester (1285), however, ordered that
'Henceforth neither Fairs nor Markets be kept in Church
Yards for the Honour of the Church', and the creation of
a considerable number of new town market-places appears
to date from about this time. In the older established towns
extra-mural market areas were developed, or in some cases
an area may have been cleared within the town to create
room for a market. At Oxford there is evidence to suggest
that Cornmarket Street was widened in the Norman period
to accommodate a market within the walls, though the
large market areas of Broad Street and St Giles were sited
outside the town defences. At Warwick and Wallingford
too properties also appear to have been cleared in order
to create town-centre markets.
54 Aerial view of
Brackley,
Northamptonshire,
showing the broad
open market-place
characteristic of so
many planned
boroughs of the
Middle Ages. The
location of a church on
the top right hand side
of the photograph,
well away from the
main town centre,
indicates that this was
a site of an earlier
settlement and that
the new town of
Brackley was laid out
some way away from
the original centre.
The area around St
Peter's church became
known as the 'old
town' during the later
Middle Ages. In the
fourteenth century
Brackley was a staple
town for wool and just
a mile to the south-east
was a great
tournament ground at
Evenley, both of
which brought
prosperity to the town
during the later Middle
Ages
188
 The market was a trading place where town and country Medieval towns
people congregated, but it was also a place of supervision
and regulation. A number of well defined market shapes
evolved or were designed to meet these needs. It was
necessary to provide sufficient space for free movement
within the market areas, while at the same time creating
access and exit points which were capable of being
controlled and suitable for the collection of tolls. This
requirement often led to very narrow market entrances,
which can still be found in many small towns today. Their
presence is frequently the cause of modern traffic conges-
tion. The long rectangular open space was a common form
of market area, as at Clare (Suffolk) and Chipping Norton
(Oxon), while funnel and triangular-shaped market areas
were frequently created in southern and central England
as at Hereford, Ely (Cambs), Woodstock and Bicester
(Oxon). A less common but more striking form was the
bow-shaped market area to be found at Thame (Oxon),
and Maryborough (Wilts). In larger towns there were some-
times several markets, often with quite different shapes.
Sometimes it is difficult to identify medieval market
areas because of encroachment or infilling which has
altered their original shapes. In many cases it was a logical
process for canvas stalls to be replaced by tiled shoppa, as
the lord of the market, whether king, seigneur or burgess,
saw that it was in his interest to have permanent rather
than temporary market stalls. Encroachments consist of
blocks of buildings occupying part or even all of the old
market area. Today these buildings or their successors can
be identified as they rarely possess attached gardens or
closes, and are usually separated from the old market
frontage by a narrow lane. Naturally enough it was in the
most successful market centres that encroachment was
most frequent. In the case of Ludlow (Salop) encroach-
ments virtually blocked off the eastern end of a large broad
rectangular market, completely hiding the substantial
parish church of St Lawrence, with its fine late medieval
porch. The market authorities generally displayed an
ambivalent attitude to encroachments, for while they did
contribute to congestion they also brought in a secure
revenue. Ironically at Thame, the Bishops of Lincoln were
persistently fined for encroachments which had been
made in the market area, which they themselves had
created.
Hereford provides an interesting example of a Saxon
town that was adapting throughout the Middle Ages to
meet increasing commercial pressures. The Saxon town 189
Medieval towns was based on St Ethelbert's cathedral and the crossing of
the river Wye. The grid of streets in the vicinity of the
cathedral dates from the ninth century and the modern
inner ring road precisely follows the line of the Saxon and
later medieval defences. The shape of the burh, which has
been revealed by excavation in recent years, was distorted
by the insertion of a great Norman castle on the eastern
side and by the growth of the cathedral precinct. The
46 Hereford town plan

HEREFORD TOWN MAP

STAGES
A ANGLO SAXO
B ? NORMAN EXPANSION
C I2thr CENTURY EXPANSION
PARISH BOUNDARIES
O 6OO FEET

2OO METRES

gradual westwards expansion of the cathedral and its

associated buildings effectively filled up the interior of the
early Saxon town. Accordingly when a new area to the
north of the early town was enclosed within the defended
area in the early Middle Ages a broad new market area
190 was laid out running east to west at total variance with
the traditional north-south axis of the town. Subsequently Medieval towns
this and another market area were almost completely
infilled. All Saints' Church originally occupied an island
in a rectangular market running from the Eigne Gate to
the High Cross, but encroachment has reduced this to
two narrow, roughly parallel streets. A triangular market
nearby occupied the northeastern area of the town but the
whole of the centre of this area was infilled. The markets

Nearly
seventeenth century

thus extinguished were then replaced by streets of

specialist traders, such as the butchers in Butchers Row,
while later on the livestock markets moved right outside
the town centre. John Speed's town plans of the early
seventeenth century, included as insets to his county
maps, reveal just how many other county towns had
infilled their centres in this way. In his Theatre of Great
Britain, London 1614, Speed included plans of some 50
towns (Table 6).

Table 6 Speed's town plans

Chichester, Winchester, Newport (IOW), Southampton, Dorch-
ester, Exeter, Launceston, Bath, Salisbury, Westminster,
London, Colchester, Ipswich, Norwich, Cambridge, Hertford,
Bedford, Buckingham, Reading, Oxford, Gloucester, Bristol,
Hereford, Worcester, Warwick, Coventry, Northampton, Peter-
borough, Huntingdon, Ely, Oakham, Stamford, Leicester,
Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby, Stafford, Lichfield, Shrewsbury,
Chester, Lancaster, York, Richmond, Hull, Durham, Kendal,
Carlisle, Berwick, Newcastle. 191
Medieval towns Lesser medieval place-names are often able to provide
a useful source of information about the economy and
development of the town - many of these place-names
are more permanent than buildings. Specialised market
names, such as Bull Ring, are often retained and are of
value in reconstructing the function of such areas within
the town plan. The common name 'Shambles' or the earlier
'Fleshshambles', is usually indicative of a meat market,
and is derived from the Old English Scamel, Latin scam-
melum, meaning a little bench. Some names such as
'Newland' at Eynsham (Oxon), Pershore (Worcs), Whit-
church (Salop), Banbury (Oxon) and Cogges-by-Witney
(Oxon) indicate newly settled land, often in the form of a
planned extension. The names Old Town at Stratford-
upon-Avon and Brackley (Northants) indicate the earlier
village from which the town has developed. Street names
can also indicate phases of a town's development: for
instance, Old Street, Ludlow (Salop), and the many New
Streets, as at Deddington (Oxon), were often contem-
porary with, the town's medieval expansion. Street names
often indicate former occupations and hence the status
of particular areas of a town. 'Rother', 'Chipping' and
'Shambles', as well as simple 'Market' names, indicate
places or streets where general markets were held. Specific
types of market are indicated by such names as Cornhill
and Cornsteading (London and Ottery St Mary, Cornwall)
And Butcher's Row (Shrewsbury); and Butchery Lane,
Draper, Mercer's Row, Woolmonger Street, Wood Hill,
Horse Market, Sheep Street and Mare Hold (now Mayor
Hold) in Northampton. In Pontefract, for instance, a
remarkable collection of commercial trading names round
the church of St Giles represents the infilled market-place
west of the medieval town.

Town defences and suburbs

In 1086 about 48 towns appear to have had some form of
communal defences. These were largely the Saxon burhs,
many of which had reused Roman fortifications for their
town walls. By about 1200 the defences in most of these
towns had been neglected, to the point where they were
of little use and it is quite clear that in the century and a
half after the Norman Conquest, communal or town
defences were not considered to be important, the
emphasis being on private castle-building. From about
1200, however, the situation changed, and work on stone-
built town defences began again. Obviously town walls
192 were designed with defence in mind, but they did have
other functions. Not least was the restriction of access and Medieval towns
exit to the town, which was essential in order to control
trade and levy tolls. Town walls were also seen as symbols
of municipal status, and in those places such as Coventry
where the construction of walls went on well into the
fifteenth century status rather than defence seems to have
been the primary motive for building them.
There is some evidence of work on urban defences in
the later years of the twelfth century, but the greatest
stimulus seems to have been in the early decades of the
thirteenth when the threat of invasion and growing civic
pride led many towns seriously to consider the erection
of town walls. During the remainder of the thirteenth
century, and to a lesser degree during the following two
centuries, there was a steady increase in the number of
towns which built defences. By 1500 there were few major
regional centres in England and Wales which were not
surrounded by defensive walls of some sort. Much of the
documentary evidence comes from the record of what are
known as 'murage grants7. These were the permissions
48 Distribution of towns
Towns f o r t i f i e d between: in receipt of murage
1220-1250
grants (after Turner)
•
• 1251-1299
o 1300-1349
/ \
1350-1400
( ° °Q
• 1400-1520
X A A
o
* Towns without ^
grants
7*

• a \
>
o D
• n
n
a
•
• • o
•
c D

\
'/•
^
° Jp
Q

•
© a

4 Q 1

193
Medieval towns granted by the king to levy a toll on goods coming into
the town, the proceeds of which, in theory at least, were
to be used for the provision of town defences. However,
murage grants were only recorded for about half (51) of
the 108 walled towns in the thirteenth century.
There were also the walled towns of North Wales estab-
lished by Edward I which were financed directly by the
crown rather than by a levy on goods. The most notable
49 The planted walled
towns of North Wales
(after M. Beresford

New
Newtown Q ^ O Montgomery
Caersws
Llanidloes

• Edwardian Plantations 20
O Other Plantations miles

examples of these are the virtually complete circuits of

Conway and Caernarvon. The walls of Conway, built
between 1284 and 1287, form part of a larger defence
scheme, the main element of which was the great castle.
The walls are roughly triangular in plan with a circuit of
about a mile. There was an outer ditch on the southern
and northwestern sides, but on the northeast the river
Conway formed the outer defence. There were 21 towers
and 3 double-towered gates. The walls of Caernarvon
which were built c. 1283-6 were also linked to the castle.
There are also substantial remains at Denbigh including
194 the Burgess Gate and the Goblin Tower, but only slight
remains at Rhuddlan, where the defences were of earth Medieval towns
and timber, and virtually nothing at Beaumaris. In mid-
Wales there are no remains of the Edwardian defences at
Aberystwyth and only earthwork remains at Montgomery.
In South Wales there are good visible, but by no means
complete, remains at Tenby and Pembroke.
In England the outstanding surviving town walls are at
York and Chester, with less complete but still substantial
i Castle and planned
town at Caernarvon in
north Wales. The
town was built
alongside the castle as
part of Edward I's
policy of conquering
Wales at the end of the
fourteenth century. By
1312 there were 124
burgage plots in the
town

50 The medieval
topography of Flint
and Caernarvon
FLINT CAERNARVON
medieval topography
3OO Fctt
3
IOO M«trt»

T
LINE of MEDIEVAL
BANKS and DITCHES
O ISO Met re »

195
Medieval towns remains at Canterbury, Southampton, Oxford, Norwich,
Yarmouth and Newcastle. In addition to these there are
sites where the principal remains are in the form of a
gateway as at Rye, Winchelsea, King's Lynn, Hartlepool,
Warkworth, Alnwick and Beverley. At its greatest extent
the town wall of York was over 3 miles long, while at
Chester the circuit is about 2 miles long and is virtually
complete, although it has been considerably altered, and
none of the original gates survive. On the north and east
the medieval walls follow the line of the legionary fortress,
making use of original Roman work. King Charles's Tower
stands at the northeastern angle of both the medieval walls
and the original Roman fortress. Although originally built
in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century the tower
was almost entirely rebuilt in the seventeenth century after
considerable damage suffered in the Civil War. The Water
Tower stands at the end of a short spur wall at the
northwest corner of the medieval defences, and was part
of the defences of the harbour, which is now Chester
racecourse. The remains of outer town walls tend to be
less extensive. The existing walls at Canterbury belong to
the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century, although
they represent rebuilding of an earlier system. At
Southampton about half of the original circuit of about a
mile has survived including 13 towers and 4 gates. Other
sites with visible remains of walls include Newcastle-on-
Tyne, Norwich, Oxford and Yarmouth. At a number of
other places the principal remnant of the town defences
is a gatehouse. These tend to have survived because the
accommodation above the gateway was useful for
domestic or business purposes.
The survival of town defences is variable and it is often
difficult to track down long stretches of wall. Turrets and
gates have a better survival record, often because of their
sheer size or their suitability as town gaols down to the
nineteenth century, but many have been destroyed within
the past century as increasing traffic demands brought
about their removal. At Canterbury, Lincoln and
Southampton massive gateways survive, either isolated on
traffic islands or still vulnerable to passing traffic; an
extreme example is at Canterbury where the buses had to
be specially designed to negotiate the narrow gateways of
West Gate. There remain only short pieces of the long
defence line of Norwich which together with the river
Wensum stretched for 2V2 miles. London's city wall has
also suffered badly over recent centuries, buried in the
196 dense concentration of buildings that have used it as a
convenient back wall, but the clearing of Second World Medieval towns
War bombed sites and more recently development within
the City has exposed some impressive stretches, of which
the Barbican site is now the best example. In a considerable
number of other towns, although the walls have gone,
their alignments can still be clearly traced through the road
pattern, the alignment of property boundaries and breaks
of slope. Two particularly good examples, where the urban
topography reveals the line of the medieval defences are
at Shrewsbury and Bath. Very few towns have lost all
trace of their walls, although those of Barnstaple, for
instance, have left nothing obvious on the ground. Field-
work may often help in the identification of lost ditches
and some defences are still remembered in street names
as in Walfurlong in Tamworth (Staffs) and Walditch (now
Joyce Pool) in Warwick. Gate names can be useful in the
south of England but in the north the name often means
a 'road' or 'way', and hence some care is necessary in their
interpretation. It is important to remember, however, that
long after their defensive function had ceased the town's
defences continued to be used as parish and other forms
of administrative boundaries.
The cramped nature of the medieval town within the
walls was accentuated by the large amounts of space
devoted to non-residential purposes. At Exeter, for
example, the cathedral close occupied almost a third of the
town, with the castle taking another small area, while at
Lincoln, excluding the large walled suburb of Newport,
the castle and cathedral together controlled over a third of
the old Roman town area even though much of the
cathedral close lay outside. With the expansion of many
towns in the early medieval period it is not surprising that
extensive surburbs later developed beyond the walls. At
Bristol, Lincoln and York the new suburbs were provided
with defences through an extension of the walls, while
other towns stretched their jurisdiction over their suburbs
but did not have the protection of a wall. Many continental
towns have a series of walls that mark successive phases
of growth, some of them covering the post-medieval
period, but similar examples from England are rare.
Groups of foreigners who often established separate quar-
ters are revealed in place-names such as Petty France
(Westminster), French Street (Southampton), Danes Gate
(Lincoln), Fleming Gate (Beverley), and also in the forms
Jewry or Jury, indicating the location of the medieval
Jewish quarter.
197
Medieval towns Town churches and religious houses
At the time of the dissolution of the monasteries urban
houses suffered particularly badly. Only two of the great
urban monastic churches, Gloucester and Chester, became
cathedral churches, whilst a handful of others such as
Tewkesbury and Evesham survived as parish churches.
The dissolution was often followed by widespread
pillaging of monastic sites to provide building stone for
other parts of the town; sections of the magnificent abbey
church of Bury St Edmunds can be recognised in frag-
ments of carved stonework scattered throughout the
town's buildings. In some places the monastic precinct
and some of the associated lesser buildings have survived.
For instance, Wells cathedral precinct is clearly demarcated
by two rows of houses built for the Vicars Choral about
56 The cathedral at Wells 1348, and on either side are the houses of cathedral officers
with the virtually such as the Master of the Fabric, Archdeacon and Chan-
fortified bishop's cellor. Anti-clerical feeling that developed in the towns
palace on the right. On
the left is a row of in the later Middle Ages was of such dimensions that
medieval houses, monasteries and cathedral closes began to protect them-
which houses the selves more effectively from the populace. Thus the Bishop
cathedral clergy and is
known as the Vicar's of Bath and Wells built a substantial moat around his
Close. palace in the early fourteenth century, crossed through a
defended gateway that was added in the following Medieval towns
century. The massive gateways that survive at Bury St
Edmunds and St Albans are to some extent a reflection of
the anxiety that beset fourteenth-century abbots. In some
towns the dissolution of religious houses within the town
provided space for urban expansion, but despite this the
form of the precinct was frequently preserved, as for
example the precinct of the Greyfriars, Worcester, which
can be traced partly from surviving remains and property
boundaries.
Although many ecclesiastical buildings such as urban
monasteries, chantry chapels and hospitals have fared
badly, the medieval church has survived as the most
visible remnant of the medieval town. Almshouses or
hospitals stood a better chance of being undisturbed,
although those which were of a secular nature from the
start are now the most conspicuous. Lord Leycester's
Hospital in Warwick was one of the few late medieval
timber-framed buildings to survive a fire that destroyed
much of the town centre in 1694. It was formerly a guild
house, which had been transformed into almshouses in
the late sixteenth century. Browne's Hospital in Stamford
founded by William Browne in the reign of Henry VII as
an almshouse is a well-known example of a late medieval
building which still continues to perform its original
function.
The high density of medieval churches in the major
towns of London, York, Bristol and Norwich was a note-
worthy feature of the townscape, although many of the
original structures have not survived to the present day.
Norwich now boasts the highest number of medieval chur-
ches of any English town, although many no longer
perform an ecclesiastical function. Shire towns throughout
the country tend to have a large number of parishes, but
in eastern England even relatively small towns contained
up to a dozen medieval churches. In the older established
towns parish churches and other ecclesiastical buildings
were to be found every few streets, and although some of
these churches can be explained in terms of guild associ-
ations, the majority of them reflected the very high densi-
ties of population which were to be found in most quarters
of the medieval town. In contrast, the newly planted
towns are often characterised by a solitary medieval church
sometimes serving a large parish.
The church-market-place relationship in many of the
new towns was also of considerable importance. Boston's
famous 'Stump' dominates its massive market-place, 199
57 Aerial view of Boston, acting not only as a beacon for vessels across the
Lincolnshire, with the dangerous sands of the Wash, but also as a reassurance
famous tower or
'Stump' which to the town's burgesses of the success of their new
dominates the venture. For those towns where population pressure
adjacent market- brought about the creation of a second parish (or, as at
place.
Heden in Yorkshire East Riding, and New Salisbury, three)
within the medieval period the new churches were
primarily functional and did not carry as much civic status
200 as the market church.
Table 7 The founders of towns (after Beresford) Medieval towns
England No. %
Kings alone 21 (12)
Seigneurs alone 77 (45)
Bishops alone 25 (15)
Abbots alone 31 (18)
Unknown 18 (10)
Total 172
Wales No. %
Kings alone
ixiii£a aiuiic 29
/.7 (35)
J
W /
Seigneurs alone 39 (46)
Bishops alone 6 (7)
Native princes alone 5 (6)
Unknown 5 (6)
Total 84

Table 8 Areas of planted towns contrasted with mother

parishes, census of 1801 (after Beresford)
Acres Area of Mother parish
West Looe 4 2,661
East Looe 1 3,193
Oakehampton 10 9,542
Bishops Castle 11 5,638
Mitchell 15 7,022
North Shields 36 2,285
Newport, I.O.W 59 9,579
Tregoney 69 2,300
Stony Stratford 70 4,240
Weymouth 77 1,702
Harwich 87 1,392
South Shields 90 4,225
Boroughbridge 95 2,241
Uxbridge 99 4,845
New Lymington 100 1,415
Losthwithiel 110 6,790
Hartlepool 137 2,465

New towns of the Middle Ages

Considerable emphasis has been placed upon the legal
and commercial elements in medieval towns, but until
fairly recently relatively little attention has been paid to
the story to be gleaned from town topography. The publi-
cation of Maurice Beresford's New Towns of the Middle Ages
(1967) was responsible for demonstrating the importance
of ground plans in understanding a town's history and in
particular just how many English and Welsh towns had
deliberately planned origins. However, in the mid-nine-
teenth century the phenomenon of the medieval new town 201
Medieval towns had already been identified, although this discovery was
not followed up subsequently by urban historians. Mr
Hudson Turner in his book Some Account of Domestic Archi-
tecture in England from Edward I to Richard II (1853), wrote
an account which could have been based entirely on obser-
vations of Ludlow or Salisbury:
There is, however, still another class of towns which were
entirely founded in the Middle Ages, built from their
foundations on a new site for some specific object, which
have not been specifically noticed. These towns are more
regular and symmetrical than most modern towns, and are
built on an excellent scientific plan, combining very close
packing with great convenience for individuals, while the
principal streets are wide, open and straight, crossing each
other at right angles only. There are always two parallel
streets at a short distance one from the other and connected
by short streets at frequent intervals; between these principal
streets and also in parallel lines are narrow streets or lanes.
Corresponding to the modern mews and employed for the
same purpose: by this means each plot of ground for
building on is of a uniform size and shape, a parallelogram
with one end facing a principal street and another a lane.
In some towns each building plot, or, when built upon, each
house, was also divided by a narrow passage or court
leading from the principal street to the lane, serving as a
water course and surface drain. Sometimes when a large
house was required two plots were thrown together and the
passage omitted; and in some towns these narrow passages
were not used at all.
The earliest of new towns came into being immediately
after the Norman Conquest, often outside monastic estab-
lishments at places such as Abingdon, Battle and Bury St
Edmunds, or outside a castle in the case of Ludlow. The
presence of water, either as a river or along the coast,
acted as a natural break-point in many travellers' journeys
and hence proved particularly attractive for new-town
foundations, and accordingly those established on coastal
positions such as the new towns at King's Lynn, Boston
and Kingston-upon-Hull were often the most successful.
In the case of Newcastle-upon-Tyne the Norman castle
acted as the pre-urban nucleus, overlooking the new river
bridge as well as the Great North Road and thus combining
a strategic situation with one of considerable economic
advantage. Subsequently an open settlement (suburbium)
developed round the hill, with a market by the river and
a church on the plateau. The combined bridging point
and estuarine seaport soon grew as an important borough
trading in wool, leather, and other merchandise and
became the outstanding coal export centre of medieval
202 England. The town spread along the river bank and over
three adjoining plateaux; so that the fourteenth-century Medieval towns
town wall encompassed the pre-urban nucleus, the
suburbium, the medieval harbour quarter, the recently
incorporated village of Pandon, and three roadside exten-
sions on the plateau with new markets, three additional
churches, six urban friaries and other religious houses in
peripheral positions.
Towns sited at river crossings were also assured, at
least in prosperous well-populated areas, of a good start.
Stratford-upon-Avon, Hungerford, Ludlow, and Chelms-
ford had little problem in filling up their burgage plots. In
1086 Stratford-upon-Avon had no burgesses, and appears
to have been just a small rural settlement, but it had grown
considerably in the twenty years after the Conquest and
continued to do so during the twelfth century. By 1182 the
number of peasant landholders had practically doubled,
although the settlement was still primarily rural in
character. At the end of the twelfth century John de Cout-
ances, Bishop of Worcester (1196-8) decided to found a
borough and market town here. On 25 January 1196 he
obtained a charter from Richard I for a weekly Thursday
market following which he formally created a borough,
laying it out in the uniform thin rectangular building plots
referred to by Hudson and which are known as 'burgages'.
These were to be held by 'burgage tenure' at a money rent
of Is a year in lieu of all feudal services. Burgesses were
also exempt from tolls. In 1214 Bishop Walter Grey also
obtained the grant of a fair to continue for two days on
the eve of the Trinity. Like so many medieval new towns
Stratford was grafted on to an existing settlement or town-
ship, with three streets running parallel and three at right
angles to the river. A sinuous curve in the alignment of
some of the burgage plots suggests that they could well
have been laid out on top of open-field strips. A similar
usage of former arable strips is known from other medieval
new towns, most notably Thame (Oxon). The burgage
plots had frontages of almost 60 feet and stretched back
some 200 feet, which would have provided the burgage
with sufficient space to erect a substantial town house.
The typical fourteenth-century burgess's house would
have consisted of an entrance passage and several rooms
on the ground floor facing the street with other buildings
around the garden or courtyard behind. Frontages were
often subdivided between several dwellings, each with a
door leading on to the main street.
In Stratford the wealthiest man paid a rent of 18s, that
is the equivalent to 18 burgages, but the majority held 203
Medieval towns single burgage plots or even less. In 1251-2 over two thirds
of the original burgages were still undivided, and most
of the rest were split only into two. Although there are
references to plot subdivision as early as the thirteenth
century, when half - and even quarter-burgages were
recorded, the excavation of some town sites has suggested
that many original urban property boundaries are of
considerable antiquity. In Westwick Street, Norwich, basic
51 The regular layouts of
Stratford-upon-Avon
and Thame STRATFORD
ON AVON
Warwickshire

1 ROTHEA STRUT
2 WOOD STRUT
3 BRIDGE STRICT
4 ELY STREET
5 SHEEP STREET
4 SCHOLARS LANE
7 CHAPEL LANE
8 HICH STAEET
9 CHAPEL STREET
10 WATERSIDE

property boundaries remained unchanged from the

twelfth to the eighteenth centuries, while excavations in
nearby Oak Street have revealed a similar pattern over a
shorter time period. Even when the town experienced
204 considerable population expansion in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, this was carried out within the Medieval towns
medieval boundaries, by infilling and adding further
storeys. When subdivision did occur it tended to force
changes in the building alignment, the long-axis turning
at right angles to the street. Stamford and Stratford-upon-
Avon both clearly exhibit this phenomenon.
In a detailed survey of 1251-2 there were two very
distinct parts to Stratford: first the manor of Old Stratford,
52 Immigration into
Leicester
Stratford-upon Avon
to 1252 (after E. M.
Carus-Wilson)

Birmingham

, Chesterton
• *•
a
• STRATFORD-U PON-AVON

• Kempsey

#Bagendon

and second the new Borough of Stratford. In the manor

there were some 70 tenants, which represented a consider-
able increase over 1182; about 50 were customary tenants
holding land in villeinage. In the borough there were 234
tenants holding 250 burgages, 54 pieces of ground, 14
shops, 10 stalls, 2 ovens, and 2 dyepans. Only two tenants'
names survive which are coincidental in both surveys, so
altogether there were over 300 tenants. This represented
a six-fold increase within half a century. The two
communities were administered quite separately with
distinct manor and borough courts, and this separate juris- 205
Medieval towns diction of rural parish and urban borough provided a
constant source of friction. A draft charter drawn up as
late as 1600 sought to bring all the parish into the borough,
but it was never completed and consequently the towns-
people were obliged to use the church at Old Stratford
until eventually a chapel of ease was built within the town
in 1855. At their foundation many such chapels were
initially only endowed with a chapel of ease, the rights to
the important offices of baptism, marriage and burial being
reserved by the existing church out of whose parish the
town was carved. It was not uncommon for the ancient
parochial centre jealously to guard its rights and refuse to
hand them over to the new usurper. At New Woodstock,
Oxfordshire, for instance, although the mother church at
Bladon founded St Mary's as a dependent chapelry the
little parish church did not relinquish its ecclesiastical
domination of the busy town until the nineteenth century,
while at Henley-in-Arden the shape of the administrative
boundaries shows clearly how a new borough had been
cut from the parish of Wootton Wawen. There was no
church at Henley until 1367 when the Bishop of Worcester
permitted a chapel of ease to be built at the townsmen's
charge in view of the inconvenience of reaching Wootton
Wawen church two miles away in bad weather. At Market
Harborough (Leicestershire), built within the parish of
Great Bowden, the new town was not granted its own
church until a century after its foundation and even then
Great Bowden retained the rights to burial. Hence the tall
spired church of St Dionysius still has no churchyard or
burial ground.
The surnames of the inhabitants of Stratford suggested
that 90 percent came from villages or hamlets within a
12-mile radius, and most of these were from the rural area
within 6 miles of the town, an area which corresponded
to the Stratford market area. As there was already a well
established town at Warwick only 8 miles away Stratford's
success may on the surface appear surprising. Additionally
Alcester and Henley-in-Arden came into existence as new
commercial centres at about the same time as Stratford.
These too were no more than 8 miles distant. However,
Alcester and Henley served the Forest of Arden, an area
which was being rapidly colonised at that time, while
Stratford, like Warwick, was ideally sited to serve both
Arden and the Felden. Furthermore, down the street, the
Roman road from which the town took its name,
merchants could reach the wool-producing Cotswolds.
206 Stratford's prime advantage, however, was its location at
 Medieval towns

53 Olney, Bucks. A
borough added to a
village but with no
physical separation
(after M. Beresford)
Medieval towns the junction of these lines of communication with the navi-
gable Avon, then part of the great waterway system of the
Severn valley, looking to Gloucester and Bristol as major
markets and as ports from which Midland products could
be shipped.
By no means all the new planted towns were successful
and relatively few were founded after 1300. One of the
few medieval foundations after 1348 was Queenborough
in north Kent, which was intended as a naval base for
54 The regular laid-out Ferry
grid pattern of the Marsh
unsuccessful port of
New Winchelsea, River Harbour
Sussex. Edward I
planned the town at
the end of the
thirteenth century.
Late foundations such
as New Winchelsea
were particularly
vulnerable and it
failed for a variety of
reasons, but mostly
because of coastal
silting which made the
port inoperable

New Gate
500ft
208
use during the French wars. The town was founded to Medieval towns
accompany the new castle on the western edge of the Isle
of Sheppey, and named after Edward's queen, Philippa,
in the last year of her life. The castle can now only be
identified as a circular area of open ground near to the
railway station. The broad High Street runs in an almost
straight line from the station to the river bank where there
is a small quay. The town appears never to have consisted
of much more than the burgage plots on either side of the

High Street. The parish church stands near the Town Hall 55 Queenborough. One
on the north side of the High Street; despite the town's of the last medieval
planned towns, it was
royal foundation in 1607 there were disputes concerning created by Edward III
the tithes which had to be paid to the mother church of
Minster. The town's foundation charter sets out the events
and crown's motives: the king,
out of care for his subjects and realm and their protection has
lately founded and fortified in a suitable place in the island
of Sheppey where there is a broad and deep arm of the sea
convenient for ships to put in at, a town and castle which
he has named the Queen's Borough. In order that many
might more readily come and live there he granted borough
status, two markets a week, two fairs a year, the right to elect
a Mayor and two bailiffs, together with independence from
the jurisdiction of the Cinque Ports.
In July 1368 Queenborough replaced Sandwich as the
Staple Port along the coast of Kent and Sussex from
Gravesend to Winchelsea and from the same date the
customs duty on cloth was also collected at Queenborough
instead of Sandwich. This privilege lapsed as early as
January 1378 and Sandwich resumed its traditional role of
Head Port for this section of coast. Thereafter Queenbor-
ough declined. Its single main street is a vivid reminder
that late foundations stood much less chance of success,
even if they did have exalted patronage.
Any town coming late into the race, when agricultural 209
Medieval towns activity was already in recession and a century of decline
lay ahead, needed exceptionally good fortune. In 1286
Edward I established Newton on the shores of Poole
Harbour as a port from which Purbeck marble could be
exported, but despite generous privileges offered to new
settlers, the town never seems to have operated success-
fully and by 1558 only one cottage remained. On the Isle
of Wight the similarly named Newtown, founded in 1256
58 Aerial view of
Newtown
(Francheville), Isle of
Wight, which was
founded by bishops of
Winchester and went
into a gradual decline
during the later Middle
Ages. It now survives
in the form of field
boundaries which
mark the former
burgage tenements

by the Bishops of Winchester, experienced a slower decay,

but by the eighteenth century it too had gone. Even if a
new town thrived during the early medieval period it did
not necessarily maintain the same prosperity
subsequently. New Buckenham in Norfolk which was
founded in the mid-twelfth century is now no more than
a small village, yet was initially successful and by 1305
over 170 tenants were recorded here and when the medi-
eval church was constructed to replace the chapel that
had formerly served the town, it was placed outside the
arranged town plan.
Many of the newcomers failed because they were sited
within areas already well served by market centres.
210 Eastern England was both highly populated and highly
urbanised in the early Middle Ages and therefore there Medieval towns
had to be exceptional circumstances operating for late
plantations to survive. Another principal reason for
shrinkage or failure was the loss of a strategic function
and the inability to develop a commercial base instead.
Along the Welsh Marches there are a group of such towns,
created initially by the Normans to subdue the Welsh,
which withered away during the later Middle Ages. Today
59a Aerial view of New
Radnor which lies
two and a half miles
to the west of Old
Radnor in the Welsh
borderland. This
town was built in the
mid-thirteenth
century as a fortified
town but it never
really succeeded, as
can be seen from plate
59b.

59b A plan of the

decayed town of New
Radnor from Speed's
Theatre of the Empire
of Great Britain, 1611

A!
4 Ti v
> ~1 %—"**• w
m 1 . mm ^ >^>

the landscape of the Marches is littered with places that

were once granted market charters and the rights of
boroughs, towns which have since failed completely. A
rectangular-shaped field where cattle graze, as at Hunt- 211
Medieval towns ingdon, may be the sole visual evidence of a former
market-place. Narrow high-hedged fields as at Richard's
Castle mark the plots that attracted the burgesses to a
newly founded borough eight centuries ago. Deep lanes
and foot paths indicate the lines of former streets, and the
once formidable castle of a forgotten founding Marcher
lord is now no more than overgrown mounds.
At Caus in the parish of Westbury in the foothills of the
Long Mountain a few miles from Shrewsbury there are
the earthworks of a massive fortified town and castle
created by the Corbet family. Sited on a high ridge, it
commanded the valley road from Shrewsbury to
Montgomery. The ruins of a massive earthwork and stone
castle with outer fortifications now have to be disentangled
from the undergrowth; nothing except earthworks remains
of the borough. The town appears to have been created
by Roger Corbet in 1198 and it is recorded that by 1349
there were 58 burgesses living here. In the mid-fifteenth
century much of the town appears to have been burnt
down during the rebellion of Sir Griffith Vaughan. By the
time a survey was made of the site in 1521 the castle was
being recorded as being in 'grete ruyne and decay'; thus
the borough of Caus faded away in the later Middle Ages
and is remembered now by its earthworks, and its place-
name.
In the words of Maurice Beresford, Caus was like 'a
prehistoric monster crushed beneath the weight of its own
armour' which was incapable of adjusting to the new econ-
omic conditions of the later Middle Ages. Today apart
from a single farm the site is completely deserted. The
great tree-covered motte and bailey and the line of the
town ramparts can be clearly identified, but here and there
are more subtle remnants of this once important town in
the form of stone buttresses, wells and hidden sections of
the town wall.
Another town with a rather similar history lies further
west into Wales beyond New Radnor; this is Cefnllys. The
site of Cefnllys stands on a rocky spur 300 feet above the
wooded gorge of the river Ithon. The Mortimer family
built a castle here between 1240 and 1246, at the same time
as other outposts at New Montgomery and Paincastle. It
is recorded that in 1332 Cefnllys had 20 burgesses and a
survey of 1360 records it as a borough. But it would appear
that this highly exposed settlement had little chance of
long-term success and was already in decline by the time
that Edward I led his attack on Wales. A document of
212 1383 mentions only 10 burgesses here. Like other border
boroughs of its type the earthworks of the actual town are Medieval towns
difficult to disentangle. Only a short stretch of street with
possible burgage plots can be identified as earthworks
within the rampart of the Iron Age fort, and like so many
of its colleagues it has been extensively robbed by stone
quarrying. Like Caus it is dominated by a massive motte
and castle defence. At the close of the sixteenth century
the antiquary Camden described Cefnllys as a 'lonely

ruin', but surprisingly it survived as a 'rotten borough7 60 Aerial view of the

failed Marcher town of
into the nineteenth century. Cefnllys. The
At Huntingdon on the Welsh/English border in Hereford medieval borough
a borough was created in the late twelfth century as part occupied an Iron Age
hillfort, but its isolated
of a policy of political reprisal. In 1173 after a rebellion upland location meant
against the king, the honour of Kington, a planted that it could not
borough close by, was suppressed and absorbed into the prosper by trading
during the late Middle
new Marcher kingdom of Huntingdon. This was granted Ages and it therefore
to William de Braos and, as a result, Kington castle was went into a decline.
abandoned sometime before 1230 and the government of By the time the
antiquarian Camden
the lordship was settled at Huntingdon. The outlines of came here he was able
the new borough were sketched out between the castle to describe it as a
mound and the church. Ironically Huntingdon failed to 'lonely ruin'.
Nevertheless it
make any real progress and the successful town in the survived as a rotten
area was Kington-in-the-Fields which had been laid out in borough into the
a valley bottom some distance away from the old borough nineteenth century
of Kington with its church and castle. Huntingdon is today
perhaps one of the most spectacular of the failed border
boroughs, occupying as it still does a little territorial
enclave which projects into Wales. The borough boundary 213
Medieval towns

56 Huntingdon,
Herefordshire, a
failed medieval
borough planted on
the Welsh border

is still marked by a pronounced indentation in the border.

The earthworks here take the form of an extended outer
bailey marking the town precinct and the lumps and
bumps of the medieval settlement indicate former town
houses. Its situation, however, is so rural that it is difficult
to imagine that the settlement ever harboured any urban
ambitions.
Another site where today it is difficult to imagine that
there was ever a town is Richard's Castle near Ludlow. In
1304 there were some 103 burgesses here. However like
Huntingdon and Caus and Cefnllys, Richard's Castle went
into a decline in the later Middle Ages. Now only the
church of St Bartholomew survives, noted because of its
detached bell tower, along with the earthwork outlines of
214 the borough. The reasons for its failure appear to be largely
commercial. Sitting on a high bluff looking eastwards it Medieval towns
was to some extent rather uncomfortably situated and as
Ludlow thrived in the later Middle Ages so the commercial
fortunes of Richard's Castle must have declined. A little
to the south, Wigmore occupies a very similar situation
and although a village with a market area survives here,
only the enormous earthworks of the castle and former
borough give some indication that this was the capital of
the great medieval Mortimer kingdom.

215